LIRC@SFIT

Rural students often face problems in reading, and understanding simple text books in Hindi and English. To overcome this challenge, Google has come up with an app called Bolo, which aims at helping primary school children read and learn smoothly. The app aims to aid students improve their Hindi and English reading abilities. The beta version of Bolo is operational in an offline mode. As per the ASER 2018, only 27.2% of class III students were able to read the text books meant for class II students, while only 50.3% of class V students were able to read the books prescribed to class III students. “Learning gaps have serious implications on the future of the child,” says Nitin Kashyap, product manager, Google. Bolo will soon be available in other regional languages too. “Efforts are being made to bridge the learning gap, but the pace has been slow. Three major roadblocks include lack of access to quality education, limited infrastructure and barriers to learn outside the classro...

Google's Bolo app, which is being launched in India first, uses speech recognition and text-to-speech technology. Bolo will be available on Google Play Store in India for all smartphones running Android 4.4 (Kit Kat) and higher NEW DELHI: Tech giant Google Wednesday unveiled a new app 'Bolo' that aims to help children in primary school learn to read in Hindi and English. The free app, which is being launched in India first, uses Google's speech recognition and text-to-speech technology. The app features an animated character 'Diya', who encourages children to read stories aloud and helps if the child is unable to pronounce a word. It also lauds the reader when he/she completes the reading. "We have designed the app to work offline, so users need to just download the under 50MB app once and then they have access to close to 100 stories in Hindi and English that the children can read out loud and improve their reading skills," Google India Product Manag...