Academics' Choice Award™ Winner
The Learning Ally Audiobook Solution
Ages: 3 - 12Price: $135.00/year (for parents) | $1500/year (for school site license)
Type: Audio, App, Book, Website
By Learning Ally
Description
Students with learning differences, including dyslexia, make up a large population of today's learners. These students often suffer undue hardships academically and in their social and emotional wellbeing due to reading challenges in decoding, comprehension and fluency skills. With the right strategies and resources, like the Learning Ally Audiobook Solution, more learners can reach their full academic potential and work on their intellectual level. The goal is to help more educators bridge the achievement gap by giving students the opportunity to read grade-level and interesting age appropriate audiobooks, while receiving essential and direct evidence-based reading instruction from their teacher or specialist.
This multi-award-winning solution encompasses a proven reading accommodation with built-in classroom features that students with learning disabilities need and want; access to a quality digital library of curriculum-aligned educational textbooks, literature and popular titles, all narrated by skilled professionals, subject experts, voice artists, authentic authors and passionate volunteers who engage students at their grade-level and age appropriateness. The multisensory reading experience enables students to (see and hear and be enveloped in a story or text) with correct prosody while reading for school and for pleasure. Skills are naturally boosted in comprehension, fluency, vocabulary and critical thinking. For anytime, anywhere reading, Learning Ally's mobile app has built-in classroom features and tools that enable students to more comprehensively complete reading assignments in a timely manner all in one app. A suite of professional development resources for teachers include
accountability data on students' reading progress, insightful information on students' reading preferences and ready-to-implement reading activities that complement classroom learning and motivate students to read all year long.
Videos:
You-Tube Main Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/LearningAlly
Middle School Teacher Laura Younts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N75MqRDyibw
Demo of Human Narration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwSn47FJB5s
Dana Blackaby Dyslexia Specialist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7g3rc2tBfA
Lori Ayres Special Education Teacher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klTwPMHk13o
Review Highlights:
Learning Ally offers 80k "human-read" audiobooks for struggling readers and students with learning disabilities. It offers books kids need to read and want to read. The fact that real human voices are used to read the stories aloud is an incredible feat and feature. When real people read a story, there are so many more nuances that benefit the listener such as inflection, tone, pitch, pauses for effect, voice changes based on characters, etc. that a machine-read story simply can't deliver. Maybe in the future, but right now, and especially for early and struggling readers, the human-read aspect of the platform is a major plus.
The Learning Ally Audiobook Solution includes contemporary literature including graphic novels such as Guts and classics such as A Wrinkle In Time, To Kill a Mockingbird, I Have A Dream, and thousands more. Readers and teachers can search by grade, Lexile reading level, genre, and standards such TexasAIM, EngageNY, etc. Not only are the stories read by real humans, the reader can increase or decrease the speed of the reading, the words are highlighted as they are read aloud to make it easy to follow along, and users can click on any word to start a page or a chapter. The platform also supports visually impaired readers with programs such as JAWS. Users can even change the space between lines, increase font size, double click or tap on a word to get a dictionary definition, and a vocabulary list is auto-generated based on what words are looked up!
Readers can also take notes and share them with a teacher and/or parent. This feature allows educators to request paragraph, page, or chapter summaries to ensure reading comprehension is taking place. I also love the Netflix-like feature that automatically stops the audio after an hour of no engagement asking, "Are you still reading?" This is a critical feature when educators review the comprehensive reports including number of students reading, those nearing fluency, total pages read, what books read, average time reading, and total time.
Learning Ally has been around for more than 70 years. It works on pretty much every platform and is built to handle multiple schools and classes. It's time-tested and teacher approved. Professional development learning opportunities are also offered such as their Spotlight on Dyslexia program, which earns teacher credit. The platform also offers a Summer Reading Together program with monthly prizes such as headphones and gift cards to incentivize reading. I wish the platform was available to everyone, but due to licensing restrictions, in order to utilize the platform students/parents must provide a proof of need.
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