The new Speak Agent version 1.5.1 is chock full of new features and enhancements. Here are the details:
Introduces the newRead Along activity, which uses dialogic reading and self-reflection learning strategies. Read Along provides short ebook-style stories. Students can read or listen to each page and then answer page-specific prompts in an open-ended way. This develops comprehension (Stage 2 in our ALL progression). Students can also add their own annotations. Anything they write is saved to their digital portfolio, which their teacher(s) may access. Read Along works well as independent practice!
Enhances the My Voice activity to enable lesson authors to enter sentences, short passages, or even poems that students may listen to, read aloud, and record. This winter we’ll also add open-ended prompts to better support preparation for WIDA Access and other tests with speaking components.
Speeds up activity loading. We trimmed and standardized the loading screens for quicker loading. You will also see some nice graphical changes coming this winter.
Improves help for students. We’ve been working to make the left sidebar HELP button more consistent and useful for students, without interrupting practice. We’ve also improved instructional text and audio.
Squashes bugs. For example, some game levels in Scrambled Sentences were getting mixed up. Also, sometimes text on the lesson cards was getting chopped off or hidden.
Activity guides. We have a first set of activity guides developed (more on the way!) that provide the learning goals, strategies, and how-to information for each type of activity in Speak Agent.
As always, if you have a brilliant idea or something that’s bugging you aboutSpeak Agent, we are listening! Just contact us.
Written by Katie Cunningham
Katie is CTO and Co-Founder of Speak Agent, Inc. A leading expert in the Python programming language, Katie designed the Speak Agent architecture and wrote the very first line of code for the current platform. She is an accomplished technical author and keynote speaker worldwide, as well as a leader of the Washington DC chapter of PyLadies, an organization dedicated to training women in Python.
Visit with Speak Agent at the 2018 WIDA Annual Conference. The company will both present and exhibit, showcasing its latest research, WIDA standards correlations, and newest academic language learning activities and strategies.
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