Why get involved?
This project aims to make a dent in the world literacy crisis, because our future, and that of our children, depends heavily on having well educated populations around the world. Without literacy, there is more crime, less stability, less productivity, and less success for individuals and families. It's important to us all, because we all live with the results of our education systems, for better or worse.
We would welcome your involvement in the project, in any ways that appeal to you. Please let us know who you are, how you would like to help, and any further information that will help us to take the project further, drawing on your contacts, expertise, resources, and interest. If you are able to help with initial funding, you can do so directly through the Go Fund Me platform linked below. The project will be run frugally, so that as much progress as possible is made quickly, in helping to address the problems we face all around the world. We are starting with the UK because that is our home, but expect to work with other countries within months of getting things started.
Are you a Parent or Teacher?
Every parent wants their children to succeed in life, and reading is an essential skill to gain early. If you have one or more children that are just starting to read, we would love your feedback on how the app helps them learn, what they find easy or hard, how it affects their motivation, and how you have used it with them. This app is very different from many that are supposed to help children learn to read, because it assumes that learning is enjoyable, and that there is no need to add cartoons, noises, and other distractions to the app to make it "engaging". It focuses on the actual task of reading, and the process of learning to do that.
If you are a teacher, you can use the app with the children you teach, and we would love your feedback on how it complements the approaches you are already using.
The app can be used both with beginner readers, and with catch-up readers, who have often failed to learn all the basics, and are now struggling daily with materials that they can't actually read. By reviewing the basics, which can be done very quickly in most cases, we can give them a firmer foundation on which to build their more advanced skills. And by providing interesting materials that support them in extending their reading skills, we can supplement the work done by teachers, parents and teaching assistants and give them a boost to both their skills and their confidence.
What is your Accent?
Learning to read English is challenging for anyone, and if the guidance you get is in a different accent from your own, you have a double translation to do, turning written words into a sound, and then relating that sound to the word as you would normally speak it. Regional accents vary widely, and we intend to enable the app to accept multiple sound vocabularies so that learners can use it hearing familiar sounds. If you are interested in helping us to create regional accent variations of the materials, please let us know, so that we can start testing this process.
We will seek agreements with authors to have their work "re-voiced" in multiple accents, and if the book is not available for free, to split the income with the voice provider.
Once we have the basics working, we intend to enable the app for second language learners, offering a translation of any word or sentence, as well as the sound and syllable breakdown in the base language (initially English). For a person learning to read English, but with a second language like Spanish or Hindi as a mother tongue, this will help build their understanding as well as their ability to read the sounds.
Are you working with Adults?
We believe that the app will be a great help to adults who are learning to read, or building their reading skills. It will offer support without embarrassment or criticism, on demand 24/7, for long or short periods without needing advance planning. This means that they can access the app for a few minutes whenever they have time, waiting for a bus, taking a break, or whenever. It should support any teaching that is going on, and in many cases may be able to replace it once sufficient materials are developed.
The basic materials used to teach reading should work as well with adults as with children, but the later texts will need to be tailored to adult needs, covering a relevant vocabulary for working people, as well as offering engaging stories that build fluency. We would welcome help and advice in putting these texts together in the system, for the benefit of all adult learners.
Are you an Author or Publisher?
We intend to create a simple system for adding any book to the system, so that it is as easy as possible for authors and publishers to make their works available through the app. The author will be able to:
Create an account
Import the text from a Word, pdf, eBook or text document
Automatically have the book formatted for use in the app
Automatically have sounds associated with every familiar word
Rapidly identify and add sounds for unfamiliar words such as technical terms and unusual names
Set a purchase price for the work (or make it available for free)
Receive regular automated payments from sales of the work as they occur
We look forward to welcoming the authors of a wide range of books, from reading primers through fantasy and novels, to non-fiction books, reference materials and instruction manuals, so that there is a wide variety of written materials available to beginning readers through the app. We hope to encourage many people who are interested in promoting literacy to create relevant materials, eventually in any language, so that the app can make a worldwide impact on illiteracy.