If you saw the Microsoft in Education event yesterday in which Microsoft unveiled many new features and products for classes and students, you may have heard the presenters mention Learning Tools for OneNote as well. Learning Tools, and specifically Immersive Reader, which is perhaps the main component of it, has been known to improve reading comprehension among students, especially those with dyslexia.
But what is so special about Learning Tools that makes it so effective in improving reading?
The Immersive Reader, when enabled, displays text in a special format that lets the student focus only on the text and not the interface of OneNote. It then speaks out the text word by word while highlighting them so the student knows which word is being read. There are settings that let students speed up and slow down the dictation, change the text size, and also change spacing between words. There is a grammar component as well with settings that let the student breaks down words by syllables, and also highlight nouns, verbs and adjectives.
Learning Tools works not only with text typed in OneNote but also screen clippings from web pages and scanned images of books (as long as the text is displayed clearly).
Watch the video below to see how Learning Tools works.
Learning Tools gives more confidence to dyslexic students. It encourages them to read, sustain attention, and improve their reading speed. Watch this video below to see a special education teacher talk about her students using OneNote. One of them, who was dyslexic increased his reading speed from 14 to 22 words per minute.