I have been waiting for this awesome news that Buncee and Microsoft shared today. It is one of the best announcements and integrations yet!
Today, we’re thrilled to announce Immersive Reader will now be available as an Azure Cognitive Service, allowing third party apps and partners to add Immersive Reader right into their products, starting with the partners below. The Immersive Reader helps people of all abilities, including dyslexia, ADHD, emerging readers, non-native speakers, people with visual impairments. If there’s an app you love to use in your classroom and you would love to see an Immersive Reader icon show up there soon, let them know. We’ve made it easier than ever, you might even call it Literacy as a Service!
The Immersive Reader is part of Microsoft's suite of Learning Tools that brings accessibility to all readers through the following features....
- Enhanced dictation: Improves authoring text
- Focus mode: Sustains attention and improves reading speed
- Immersive reading: Improves comprehension and sustains attention
- Font spacing and short lines: Improve reading speed by addressing “visual crowding”
- Parts of speech: Supports instruction and improves writing quality
- Syllabification: Improves word recognition
- Comprehension mode: Improves comprehension by an average of 10%
- Translate Text: Choose from over 60+ languages
This is their first wave of partners. Over the last few months, Immersive Reader was enabled in these programs to give students and teachers a chance to try this early integration.
I was asked to give Immersive Reader a try with the integration with Buncee. This is the feedback that I gave mentioned in the above Microsoft article,
Shannon McClintock Miller, K-12 district teacher librarian at Van Meter Community School in Van Meter, Iowa - "Wow! I am so excited about finding the Immersive Reader from Microsoft in Buncee now. This will bring Buncee's to life for our readers and learners as they now can listen to the digital stories and projects they create and write. This is truly a game changer for Buncee!"
And today, this integration with Buncee is LIVE for everyone to use and as I said, it is going to be a huge game changer for not only Buncee but all of the students and teachers that use it every single day.
In this new post, from the Buncee blog, they shared,
We’re so excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Microsoft Education in a special private release to bring Immersive Reader to your classroom! With this new integration, we’re taking another stance for the inclusive classroom. Together, we want to ensure that we empower learners of all ages and abilities. For students learning a new language or struggling with text comprehension, this integration will not only teach students how to read and write but also nurture a love for it. Here’s what you can expect with this new feature in Buncee:
- Increase fluency for English language learners or readers of other languages
- Help build confidence for emerging readers learning to read at higher levels
- Offer text decoding solutions for students with learning differences such as dyslexia
Watch this video to see how Immersive Reader works within Buncee and...
...you can also check out this How To article at the Buncee Help Center here.
I couldn't wait to give Immersive Reader a try again in a few of the Buncee's that we created last year with our students at Van Meter. Let me show you a few things too!
You will find the Immersive Reader icon at the top of your Buncee by the Clipping feature.
It looks like this. When you click on the icon, it takes you...
students can click on the words in the sentences to find pictures of many of the words.
At the bottom of the page, they will find Voice Settings button which includes Voice Speed and Voice Selection to be changed, along with the Play button.
I can't wait to start using this with our students in the fall. For now, a few of the ideas I have are:
Using it as a way for students to listen and speak to Spanish. All of our elementary students have Spanish every day, so this is a great way for them to practice and become more fluent.
Create ebooks for others to listen to. This will be a great project to do across grade levels as our school serves kindergarten through 12th grade.
Serve as a tool to support all readers, especially those who are beginning and struggling readers.
Create flashcards of sight words to help our youngest readers learn these important words.
The possibilities are truly endless with this integration and that within other platforms, such as Flipgrid and Follett too. I can't wait to see what we do at Van Meter with Immersive Reader and we can't wait to learn and follow all of your ideas too!
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