2025.
Amazon introduces color Kindle for Kids
After launching the first Kindle Colorsoft last year (for $280), Amazon has now introduced a more affordable version of the device, Kindle Colorsoft Kids - for $260, aimed at children. In fact, children are the main target audience for color e-readers (well, maybe also fans of comics and other graphic novels). The only hardware difference between the new version and the old one is 16 GB of RAM instead of 32 GB. The screen is the same 7-inch and the battery is the same - for up to eight weeks. In addition, Kindle Colorsoft Kids comes with an illustrated cover and a 1 year subscription to Amazon Kids+, which provides access to books, games, videos and apps. The device also includes a number of features to help children practice reading, such as the Word Wise, which helps them learn new words.
2024.
AI reading coach startup Ello now lets kids create their own stories
Ello, the AI reading companion that aims to assist kids struggling to read, launched a new product that enables kids to participate in the story-creation process. Called “Storytime,” the new AI-powered feature helps kids generate personalized tales by choosing from a selection of settings, characters and plots. For example, a story about a hamster named Greg who performed in a talent show in outer space. Kids can pick from dozens of prompts, resulting in thousands of combinations. Like Ello’s usual reading offering, the AI companion — a bright blue, friendly elephant — listens to the child read aloud and evaluates their speech to correct mispronunciations and missed words. If kids are uncertain how to pronounce a specific word, they can tap on the question mark icon for additional help. Storytime offers two reading options: one mode where Ello and the reader take turns and another, simpler mode for younger readers where Ello does most of the reading.
2024.
Google Play Books offers hundreds of free eBooks for children
Google Play Books has expanded its children's collection, giving away over 300 nonfiction children's books for free on the platform. The most exciting part of this new addition is that all titles will feature the "Read and Listen" feature. This allows children to read and listen simultaneously, a proven method for helping them develop and improve reading comprehension and decoding skills. Google has also implemented several other updates to make reading engaging and enjoyable for children. For example, children can now earn digital Reading Rewards stickers for reading children's books in Google Kids Space or the Play Books app for Android. Rewards are awarded when a child reaches a certain reading level.
2023.
Ello - AI reading coach that bolsters child literacyIn the vast and occasionally bewildering galaxy of apps,
Ello has arrived like a well-meaning Vogon poetry recital, but with a far more delightful mission: to eradicate childhood illiteracy using a heady mix of artificial intelligence and child speech recognition wizardry. This subscription-based marvel caters to budding bookworms from kindergarten through Grade 3, delivering five carefully curated books each month for the intergalactically reasonable price of $24.99. Parents kick off this literary odyssey by installing the Ello app, which greets their child with a series of probing questions to gauge their reading level and interests—be it creatures furry and fantastical, creative pursuits, sports, or the peculiarities of science. A crack team of reading boffins then assembles a bespoke library tailored to the young reader’s tastes and skills. Sibling stowaways can join the adventure for $12.49 per month each. Currently marooned on tablets, Ello’s clever crew is feverishly charting a course to bring the experience to smartphones—because, naturally, a good story belongs everywhere.
2023.
Google Reading Insights allows to track your kid’s reading habits
Google has added a new Reading Insights feature to Play Books, which is essentially a tool that allows parents to monitor their children's reading activities, whether it's their book selection or their progress on a specific book. Specifically, it shows what children have read recently, what they read most often, how often they read and how many books of a particular book they've already read. This gives parents a complete picture of their children's reading habits. All of the above also works with audiobooks. This tool is available as an addition to Reading Practice, which Google previously introduced. It's a tool for children that allows them to practice reading.
2023.
Google Play Books now offering new Reading Practice tool for kids
Google Play Books is unveiling a new feature called Reading Practice in the United States, which intends to help young readers in enhancing their comprehension skills using children's e-books. This feature will be available through the Google Play Books Android app and Google Kids Space. With Reading Practice, children will be able to expand their vocabulary by tapping on words to hear their own pronunciation and simple definition clear for children. For early readers, a text tracker will highlight the words as they read aloud, allowing them to practice any missed or mispronounced words at the end of each page. The goal is to offer parents the necessary tools and flexibility to encourage kids read more.
2022.
Google launches a website version of its Read Along education app for children
Google has launched a website for its
Read Along app for encouraging young children to practice reading. The concept of the website is similar to the app: children can learn to speak languages like English, Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, and Urdu by reading stories using Google’s speech recognition and text-to-speech text. A virtual assistant named Diya helps the children pronounce words if it detects they are struggling. Children can also ask Diya for help in speaking unknown words. The company claimed that just like the app, all the speech recognition process takes place on the browser locally and no data is sent to its servers to protect children’s privacy. Plus, the whole experience is ad-free. While the app had the advantage of offline usage, the website can help people who have low storage on the phone or schools that have desktop computers.
2021.
Amazon launches Kindle Paperwhite for kids
Amazon has launched
Kindle Paperwhite Kids. It is just the same as the base Kindle Paperwhite but with software levels enhancements added to make it kid-friendly. Another huge positive with the latest generation Kindle Paperwhite Kids is its IPx8 rating. Amazon claims this makes the new Paperwhite capable of withstanding accidental water ingress, something quite important for a kid-specific device. The e-reader otherwise comes with Vocabulary Builder and Word Wise which can be handy tools for kids to work on their English language skills. There is support for Open Dyslexic font as well which is preferred by many suffering from dyslexia. The Paperwhite Kids also comes bundled with a one-year subscription to Amazon Kids+ which means access to more than a thousand eBooks or Audible audiobooks for kids.
2021.
Microsoft’s Reading Progress makes assessing reading levels easier for kids and teachers
Microsoft’s new
Reading Progress app alleviates some of the burden from teachers, allowing students to complete their reading at home while utilizing natural language processing to pinpoint challenges and advancements. Reading Progress is an extension for Microsoft Teams that enables educators to conduct reading assessments more flexibly, reducing stress for students who might falter during a timed evaluation and identifying and monitoring key reading occurrences like omitted words and self-corrections. Teachers assign reading tasks for each student (or the entire class) to complete at their own pace, more akin to homework than a formal test. Students record a video directly in the app, with the audio analyzed by algorithms detecting common errors.
2021.
Google Play Books now has new tools to make reading easier for kids
Google Play Books has unveiled a suite of new tools designed to make it easier for even young readers to start enjoying books. The Read & Listen feature will narrate a book to your children. You can either turn the pages manually or allow them to turn automatically. The Tap to Read feature will read aloud any word that you tap on. This helps kids learn the correct pronunciation of the word and provides a description, often accompanied by an illustration, to ensure a complete understanding of the term. Additionally, the Kid-Friendly Dictionary offers simple explanations of words, further supporting the learning process.
