Google has a new teacher called Diya – Times of India

Google’s ‘Read Along’ Android app has a web browser version now and can be accessed in beta. The Read Along application is designed to help kids learn the rudiments of language by refining their pronunciation skills. Aiding the young ones would be Google’s virtual assistant ‘Diya’.
The web version has hundreds of illustrated stories which have been grouped according to the different reading levels. To use the web version, the kids need to select a story and then read the story aloud on the microphone of a laptop, tablet or mobile. The words that get read will be highlighted in blue and if there is any mispronounced word, it will get marked in red. To know the correct pronunciation of the word, kids need to click on it. Doing so will summon Diya who will pronounce the word correctly for the children.
The stories are available in English, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Spanish and Portuguese. Also, new stories have been added to the online collection and they will be accessible by the end of the year on both the Android and web versions. The content of these stories will be adapted from USP Studios and ChuChu TV. The alphabet and phonics books from the education company Kutuki will also be adapted for Read Along.
The Read Along app has been available for Android since 2019 but its transition to the bigger screen of laptops and tablets should make using the application easier for kids. Also, now with desktop and tablets, there are more devices to access Read Along’s educational content.
Read Along for web browsers supports Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge and will soon add support for other browsers including Apple Safari, as per Google.
Is Diya going to spread the light of knowledge amongst the kids? We hope so.