SLIS 761 Post #3 - "Reading Progress" Impresses

I think that it is safe to say that the last two years have been rough. With the lockdown in 2020, a lot of educators and students have had to switch over and adapt to virtual instruction. I know that at least in my county, virtual instruction is still being utilized when a class has to quarantine because a student tests positive for COVID. It can be difficult to keep track of a students progress with these shifting education delivery methods. For the ELA teachers, I think that I have found a tool that can help improve a student’s reading fluency, while also offering a way to keep track of their progress. Located in the Microsoft Teams for Education application is a new tool, aptly titled, Reading Progress. According to the Microsoft Education Center (n.d.), the purpose of this tool is to, “help students build confidence and reading fluency through personalized reading experiences built into Assignments in Microsoft Teams” (para. 1).

I learned about this tool from a Joyce Valenza (2021) post in the School Library Journal’s NeverEnding Search blog, titled “Launching Real ‘Reading Progress’: A Game Changer from Microsoft Education.” As Valenza explains in her post, the way that the tool works is: the educator inputs a passage of text into the application, selects how sensitive they want the voice recognition to be, and uploads it to the Assignment section of the Teams application. When the student opens the Assignment on their device of choice, including mobile phone, they are able to record themselves reading the passage. After they submit their recording, the software will analyze it for accuracy and submit the data to the educator for further analysis. The educator can then attach their feedback for the student to the Assignment.

When I look at new tech tools, the first two questions that I have are: How much does it cost and how hard is it to implement? I think that we can all agree that the best answer to the first question is “free.” In the 2012 study, “School Librarians as Technology Integration Leaders: Enablers and Barriers to Leadership Enactment,” Melissa P. Johnston found that two of the barriers to successful technology integration were a lack of time and a lack of funding (p. 27). Funding is not an issue, since this Microsoft Teams for Education is free to educators and students, and Reading Progress is included in the software. The fact that the assignments can be completed asynchronously helps to mitigate the difficulties brought on by a lack of time.

Valenza (2022) had a wonderful suggestion for a collaborative use of “Reading Progress.” In her post, she wrote that, “Librarians might create grade- and curricular-relevant folders of highly engaging content, perhaps OER. Librarians might also create little library-based corners for Reading Progress” (para. 19). Overbay et al. (2011) wrote in the article, “A Technology Plan That Works,” that, “Relationships are key in schools, and investing carefully in people and relationships is the best way to ensure that an initiative will succeed” (p. 56). Allowing librarians to help select material creates a good opportunity for librarians and teachers to build relationships through collaboration. Creating a space for students to work on these assignments would give librarians an opportunity to teach the students how to use the software effectively, while not passing the cost of that time onto the teachers.

References

Introduction to Reading Progress in Teams. (n.d.). Microsoft Education Center. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://education.microsoft.com/en-us/resource/50b18238

Johnson, M. P. (2012). School librarians as technology integration leaders: Enablers and barriers to leadership enactment. School Library Research, 15. http://www.ala.org/aasl/slr/volume15/johnston

Overbay, A., Mollette, M., & Vasu, E. S. (2011). A technology plan that works. Educational Leadership. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/a-technology-plan-that-works

Valenza, J. (2021, August 31). Launching real “Reading Progress”: A game changer from Microsoft Education. NeverEnding Search, School Library Journal. https://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2021/08/31/launching-real-reading-progress-a-game-changer-from-microsoft-education/