UDIO : Rich and authentic literacy experiences for struggling middle school readers

While current educational technologies have the potential to fundamentally enhance literacy education, many of these tools remain unknown to or unused by today’s practitioners due to a lack of access and support. Adaptive Educational Technologies for Literacy Instruction presents actionable information to educators, administrators, and researchers about available educational technologies that provide adaptive, personalized literacy instruction to students of all ages. These accessible, comprehensive chapters, written by leading researchers who have developed systems and strategies for classrooms, introduce effective technologies for reading comprehension and writing skills.

This chapter describes a digital tool, Udio, designed specifically to support the literacy development of young adolescents who find reading and writing challenging. Educators in a middle school classroom can readily describe the challenges they experience in getting struggling readers to engage willingly and purposefully in reading text. The struggling reader prefers to stay along the sidelines when reading, whereas more skilled readers plunge directly into the reading process, extracting the core ideas, and relating them to what they already know. The struggling reader is often reluctant, even withdrawn, and the chance to engage and participate meaningfully in reading and discussing text in the classroom is limited. Overwhelmed by cognitive and emotional demands as they struggle to become literate, these students view reading as an imposing barrier resulting in fewer opportunities for active reading practice across the curriculum. A comprehensive teacher guide includes mini-lessons and suggestions for connecting Udio to the classroom curriculum.