NEW DELHI:  Search engine giant Google on Wednesday launched a tutorial app called Bolo to help children in primary school learn to read in Hindi and English.The company said that Bolo came with a reading buddy, “Diya”, powered by the same speech technology that is in Google Assistant.

“Diya can not only read out the text to your child, but also explain the meaning of English text in Hindi,” Google said.

Google said it had been piloting Bolo across 200 villages in Uttar Pradesh over the past few months and early results were encouraging. 

“We found that 64 per cent of children showed an improvement in reading proficiency in just three months,” Google said in a blog post.  The app can be downloaded from Google Play and works with Android phones.

The overall size of the app is less than 50MB, which includes the speech modules and the entire experience. All the reading material on the app is completely free and the initial catalogue includes 50 stories in Hindi and 40 in English; with more being added by other partners. 

Google India Product Manager Nitin Kashyap said the company was also looking at expanding the app to other Indic languages, such as Bengali, soon. To ensure the safety of the child, all personal information always stays on the device. The users are also not asked for details like email ID and gender.

 

Reading material free
The app can be downloaded from Google Play Store and works with Android phones. All the reading material on the app is completely free.