Elisa Balbuena - ILA Newsletter Project: Effective Literacy Website #3

Elisa Balbuena

ILA Newsletter Project: Effective Literacy Website #3

            Learning Ally (https://learningally.org/#close) is a website and phone and tablet application that provides a digital library of 80,000 high interest audiobooks to teachers and students. What sets this literacy platform apart from many others that provide similar resources is that the audiobooks are human voiced. This makes it a great tool for students who are struggling readers or have learning disabilities or physical impairments that prevent them from reading at grade-level.

            Learning Ally allows students to listen to books as they read. Text is highlighted as the story is narrated to help students stay focused. Students are given control over their reading and learning experience to meet their needs and can adjust the speed of the narration, text size, and background color, among other options. They can also bookmark and annotate as they go, and they are able to see a definition of a target word if they highlight it. If they choose, students can download audiobooks for offline use, something that is very beneficial for students who may not have access to the Internet at home. All of this is in addition to being able to hear a book or story read to them with a human voice, which is particularly helpful for students with a learning disability such as dyslexia. The only thing that is not available through the platform is built-in comprehension assessments. Teachers would need to come up with their own means of assessment, or they can use the built-in annotation features as a form of assessment instead.

            With the use of Learning Ally’s platform, teachers can assign books to students, either as a class or individually. They can also give students free rein over the full library of resources that the platform offers, which gives students the freedom of choice and promotes pleasure reading. Teachers can utilize the platform to supplement their own curriculum or resources or as a tool to help differentiate learning. The platform can also be used to help students build their reading stamina, depending on what type of assignment is given. Learning Ally’s teacher dashboard allows teachers to track student progress with the reading, showing how many pages and how frequently the students read.

            Learning Ally provides students with access to mass market and classic literature and fiction, non-fiction, and curriculum-aligned titles. With a huge digital library available to students and teachers, the possibilities of supplementation or differentiation are great. The platform is very flexible and gives students the ability to take control of their reading experience, allowing reading to be accessible even to struggling readers or those who are affected by learning disabilities or certain physical impairments. Whether students have reading difficulties or are advanced readers, the Learning Ally platform is a great literacy tool to use in the classroom.