iPods greatly increase reading fluency

iPods greatly increase reading fluency

This article shares results of a project in which iPods greatly increased reading fluency.

Recent articles, Apple iPad apps add learning tools,  A novel approach to iPod use in class,  Video games increase math results in eight grade, and Please use your PDA in class have championed the need to integrate new technologies into training, education, and speaking presentations.

A recent blog on Edutopia, The George Lucas Educational Foundation web site, reported on an interesting iPod application that proves the learning effectiveness of the iPod technology.

The article was called iPod, iListen, iRead. In the article, author Milton Chen reports on a creative use for iPods to help students master reading and writing.

Kathy Shirley, technology director for the Escondido Union School District near San Diego got the idea to have students record their readings on an iPod. That way she could, on her schedule, verify the students’ level of reading comprehension.

A pilot program using this idea, appropriately called iREAD (I Record Educational Audio Digitally), was launched in 2006 with six teachers of English language learners working with low-performing readers, content experts, and IT staff.

By 2010, the program has grown to include more than 100 classrooms with students of all levels k-8 and 1,300 iPods. Students record their reading practice and assessments. The recordings are then uploaded to iTunes, allowing the teachers, and their parents, to review the student’s progress.

According to Shirley, “Voice recording using the iPod provides that instant feedback loop, as students can easily record their fluency practice and listen immediately to the voice recording. It's difficult, especially for struggling readers, to 'step outside themselves' during the moment of reading. They are concentrating so hard at the act of reading that they have no idea what they really sound like. The iPod does something that even the teacher cannot do, provide a means for the student to receive feedback by listening to their own recordings. The iPod is very much like a mirror for students.”

Of course it is results that matter, and the results are promising. The school district is experiencing large gains in reading speed, with an average word count per minute gain from a pre-project 12 to the current 20.

All too often, we perceive effective training, teaching, and speaking techniques as those that make us better deliverers of information.

Sometimes the opposite is true. Effective presentations can be the result of us involving and engaging the learners in their own learning.

For more information about this project, or to read the original report, follow this link.

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Lenn Millbower, the Learnertainment® Trainer and former Disney training leader, helps trainers, teachers, and speakers keep their learners awake so the learning can take through one-on-one coaching, keynotes and seminars, open enrollment workshops, instructional design consulting, and his published works. He is a member of the GPS Consortium.