Google recently launched a new website that will assist children to read which is called ‘Read Along’. The app, which was first released in India as Bolo in 2019 and then globally as Read Along the following year, teaches children to read independently with the help of a reading assistant named Diya.
The public beta of the website version of its “Read Along” Android app is now available for everyone to access.
In Read Along, children will have to read into their device’s microphone after selecting a story. Then, the words they read will be highlighted in blue, and mispronounced words are underlined in red. You can click an underlined word, and a virtual assistant, Diya, will pronounce it for you.
The web version will allow children to use Read Along on larger screens by logging into a browser from laptops or PCs at Read Along page. All speech recognition occurs in the browser, just like in the Android app, so children’s voice data remains private and is not sent to any servers
On top of that, Google says that Chrome, Firefox, and Edge are among the supported browsers. More browsers including safari will also be included soon. In terms of languages, English, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Spanish, and Portuguese are all available to choose from.
This platform could greatly contribute to children’s learning process, especially now that digital education is highly promoted across the globe. Besides, it is also convenient for parents to speed up their children’s reading ability as the platform offers many interactive stories that can easily attract the children’s attention. Google claims that more than 30 million children have read more than 120 million stories on Read Along in the last three years.
