Microsoft's Immersive Reader

Tools for reading comprehension

I opened an article on Linked In this morning about multitasking and was allowed to read it in an immersive reader. I wasn’t sure what an immersive reader was till I opened it.

Wow.

Here is how Microsoft explains its product.

Immersive Reader and more Digital Learning Tools from Microsoft Education

With these powerful solutions seamlessly integrated into your existing products, students and educators can have the digital learning tools and resources they need to succeed.

As someone who teaches grammar and critical reading, I was stunned by the interface with the option for classifying the word types. This is a literacy tool, and it explains the explosion of growth in reading and note-taking tools to help professionals read from many sources and glean the main concepts.

The rate of illiteracy in American adults is rising. The US schools are graduating students who cannot read above middle school grade levels or understand grammar basic grammar sentence structures or vocabulary.

Think Impact posted these statistics for adult literacy in Nov 2023

• On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2023.

• 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2023.

• 54% of adults have a literacy level below a 6th-grade level (20% are below a 5th-grade level).

• Low levels of literacy cost the US up to 2.2 trillion per year.

• 34% of adults lacking literacy proficiency were born outside the US.

This doesn’t even speak to the issue of understanding basic grammar information or writing.

If this is to be changed, people need to review the basics of grammar and scale their reading material. It needs to be done in a systematic manner. If it is not systematic, people become confused. Human minds like consistency and understanding expectations. If they must change social media platforms or YouTube channels for information, there is a learning curve to climb before they can digest information.

This is why I’m creating online, self-paced classes. I’m building grammar classes that explain basic concepts. I’m also creating, reading, and writing classic children's fiction. A free class I’m building will use fairy tales for reading and writing. These short sections will help build confidence for students. Once they can do these, their skills and confidence increase, and they are ready for the next steps in learning.

I started building this because of the falling literacy levels. I believe something needs to be done. I’m not sure if it will be successful, but I’m willing to donate hours of my time to improve the US or the world in this way.