Millions of young peoples’ education has been disrupted by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. As always, we strive to empower all learners to achieve more. Inclusive classroom tools are designed to provide the scaffolding each student needs to feel supported even as they challenge themselves – or face external challenges. We are careful to design every tool with the constraints students face in mind, whether it’s working on mobile devices, learning in a second language, or growing skills with a disability. When we design intentionally for diverse needs and situations, it creates tools that lend themselves to resilience through their broad applicability and accessibility. In the face of a mass migration like this, educators around the world are seeing an influx of students who need a sense of normalcy – and need to be included.
Ukrainian language support for auto-detect in Reading Progress
To help ensure Ukrainian students worldwide have the ability to practice and continue to grow, today we have globally rolled out auto-detect speech detection for the Ukrainian language in Reading Progress, bringing our total number of languages and locales supported to 105. To see the full list of languages, please visit https://aka.ms/ReadingProgressLanguages
Reading Progress is a free tool designed to support educators in creating personalized reading experiences that build confidence and reading fluency in their students. Built into Assignments in Teams, Reading Progress passages are easy to create and differentiate for impactful instruction. Educators can translate passages to Ukrainian right in Microsoft Word, and use the auto-detect feature in Reading Progress to mark the student’s reading accuracy and fluency in Ukrainian. This can be leveraged to allow the student to continue developing fluency in their native language, while also providing some context to help them engage in content learning with their classmates in a novel language.
Reading Progress works on all platforms, including Desktop, Mac, web, iOS and Android. Educators upload a single reading fluency passage or differentiate for their class’ many levels and needs. Students read their passages out loud, creating a recording teachers can access and review at their convenience. With auto-detect, Reading Progress interprets the student’s pronunciation to identify where students are challenged and support educators in tailoring phonics lessons to meet students exactly where they are in their growing skillset. With auto-detect in Ukrainian, educators who do not speak Ukrainian can still get a sense of a student’s reading level and adapt to support student growth. In addition, Reading Progress recordings allow educators to check students’ progress more regularly while freeing up time for relationship building and providing the differentiated support that students in crisis need.
Immersive Reader and Microsoft Translator also support Ukrainian and are available in tools across Microsoft 365, helping educators to differentiate and providing an entry point for displaced Ukrainian students – no matter the reading level. With Immersive Reader, we support Ukrainian read aloud, as well as Ukrainian translation between 100+ languages. More details at https://aka.ms/LearningToolsLanguages.
Read Aloud support for Somali and Zulu in Immersive Reader
We are excited to announce Read Aloud for the much requested languages of Somali and Zulu . These two new read-aloud languages are now globally rolled out in Immersive Reader. We also have both languages supported in Immersive Reader translation, allowing easy translation and read aloud of these two languages. More details at https://aka.ms/LearningToolsLanguages
These updates are globally rolled out and available today
Mike Tholfsen
Group Product Manager
Microsoft Education