Microsoft Makes Its AI-Powered Reading Tutor Free

Microsoft today made Reading Coach, its AI-powered tool that provides learners with personalized reading practice, available at no cost to anyone with a Microsoft account. From a report: As of this morning, Reading Coach is accessible on the web in preview -- a Windows app is forthcoming. And soon (in late spring), Reading Coach will integrate with learning management systems such as Canva, Microsoft says. Reading Coach builds on Reading Progress, a plug-in for the education-focused version of Microsoft Teams, Teams for Education, designed to help teachers foster reading fluency in their students. Inspired by the success of Reading Progress (evidently), Microsoft launched Reading Coach in 2022 as a part of Teams for Education and Immersive Reader, the company's cross-platform assistive service for language and reading comprehension.

canva vs canvas

[Chalex]

I think they are confusing "Canva" and "Canvas".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canva - graphic design

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructure - Canvas LMS

Just watched a demo

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Reading Coach is essentially automated feedback for reading out loud. Text in -> Back-end generates text-to-speech -> Student hits record & reads the text out loud -> The back-end compares the student's speech to the text-to-speech model. That's it.

There doesn't appear to be any instructing, modelling, coaching, etc., involved. Why have they called it "Reading Coach"?

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

> automated feedback for reading out loud

Now that's an idea - Teddy Ruxpin on steroids. OCR so it can read a book with a kid, object/face recognition for tracking multiple children, voice recognition to listen to the kid read, and a bit of AI chatbot programming and TTS so it can help when the kid stumbles.

It could grade and provide progress reports to parents as well.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Do you think it could consistently attract & maintain the attention of a class of 25 primary aged children, all day, every day, 5 days a week? Without attention, there's literally no learning.

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[Baron_Yam]

Nope. But if they're inexpensive enough, you could put them in different outfits or otherwise customize them and have one 'reading buddy' per kid and I'd bet you could get an hour or two a day out of it. Maybe only 15 minutes at a time, but I think it would work at that scale.

Kids (at least mine) could never get enough of having things read to them, and a device that could slowly wean them from being read to, to reading it themselves, and having infinite patience for the task? As long as the parent or te

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

You haven't answered *how* such a robot would attract & maintain children's attention. Have you ever worked with or observed someone working with groups of primary aged children? Have you noticed that some people appear to have some kind of mystical power to attract & hold children's attention as if they were under a spell but it's difficult to say how? That's not by accident or through some "gift" that they're born with; it's learnt. It's difficult to learn & not everyone can do it but it's lea

Personalized reading practice ö

[Mirnotoriety]

Personalized reading practice .. du mean like reading books ö

foreign language

[bugs2squash]

sounds like it would be a good way to learn a foreign language

at no cost to anyone with a Microsoft Account

[Vomitgod]

so there is a cost....

Hey MS

[gtall]

How about you fund books for kids and libraries. Every ad dollar you spend doesn't have to go towards use of your alleged software.

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[gosso920]

All the books will be from Microsoft Press.

Free now, pay later....

[bsdetector101]

They hook you, for free, then a year later they change it to pay !