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Watch-me!-Read, speech-recognition software originally developed through IBM's Reinventing Education partnership with the School District of Philadelphia, is designed to help students in grades k-2 gain a solid grounding in reading. To build this innovative application, IBM researchers collected over 110,000 words spoken by 1,800 children around the United States to capture the variety of intonations and accents that would enable the program to communicate with children from a wide range of backgrounds. Through Reinventing Education 2, IBM is partnering with the Houston Independent School District, which already has a world-class reading reform program underway, to adapt and implement Watch-me!-Read.
Using Watch-me!-Read, a child can read aloud from a book within the program or any other story scanned into the tool by a teacher or composed by a student. The child is accompanied by a computerized "pal" who provides as-needed assistance throughout the reading session. The "pal" recognizes mistakes and asks students to repeat words they have misread, reading words correctly to them if necessary. At any time during the reading, students can hear back what they have just read and can create multimedia presentations, complete with a video introduction, that can be shared with their peers or teachers. The program stores a catalog of the specific words that the child has read incorrectly for further study and practice.
Watch-me!-Read is helping teachers who, in a single classroom, must often work with children who progress at varying speeds. A number of children -- especially from disadvantaged backgrounds -- may not have had the reading practice that many of their classmates have benefited from prior to attending school -- such as being read to by their parents. Other children, due to language barriers or mild learning disabilities, may also lack the basic grounding in reading necessary for proficiency. Because teachers often do not have the time to provide every child with individualized reading attention, Watch-me!-Read assists in addressing differences in reading experiences and language backgrounds through an engaging, book-based approach. Independent evaluations from Vanderbilt University documented significant improvements in students' ability to read and comprehend material after using Watch-me!-Read.
IBM is developing a web-based version of the program and offers an adult version of the software, which is being used in adult literacy programs nationwide.
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