MEDIA
The Press Loves Us
CTV Morning Live Winnipeg
Help prevent the summer learning slide with an app that gets kids reading with a live teacher. It’s called Hoot Reading and it was created right here in Winnipeg. Nicole Dube learns more about how it works.
Winnipeg Free Press
Online tutoring service for struggling readers is already a success story in only about a year. There’s lots of talk of the potential damage too much screen time can have on children, but Carly Shuler has figured out a way to use that screen time to encourage reluctant young readers to read more.
The concept behind this app is sheer brilliance. Each of the two participating readers can see the other touching the screen, so that Grandma can ask her grandchild to find things on the pages of the book or she can point to items or words as they read together.
For parents who travel or grandparents who live hundreds of miles away, this could be a marvellous thing indeed..
Not only could we see each one anothers’ faces, we could easily converse. The best part was that we could see a ghost image of the teacher’s hand when he was point at a picture or getting ready to turn a page.
…reading together, talking about the pictures and then choosing a new story for next time is a ritual that clicks. “It’s so enjoyable for him because he’s so comfortable with the technology”
Kindoma Storytime is a great app for having students choral read or work with a buddy to practice fluency & comprehension
On average, families read together within the app in excess of 20 minutes, far exceeding the average time of a traditional call or video chat.
“Sure, we could’ve used Skype, but somehow the Peter Rabbit book made things feel more fun.”