Lexia Reading joins the iPad revolution

Lexia Learning yesterday announced that their popular desktop software, Lexia Reading, will be available for the iPad late this year.

The Lexia Reading app may seems like just another “learn to read” app on the surface, but it will be the only research-validated literacy app for iPad when it debuts later this year, according to a press release.

The software uses different games to keep students engaged and it touches upon the five sub-disciplines of reading: phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.  The difference between Lexia’s offering and other literacy apps is the critically acclaimed and recognized research that goes into the games themselves, and even more so the groundbreaking back-end reporting tools designed for teachers.

When a student is doing an activity in the Lexia Reading app, the teacher will receive real-time data straight to their iPad or computer. This provides a channel of evaluation without breaking up the lesson and allows educators to “assess without testing” — not to mention rids students of the test anxiety that can skew results. Just as specific as a traditional pen and paper test, the reporting resources will let teachers know where exactly each student is struggling — not just “phonetics” but “has trouble with the ‘K’ sound.”  This information will be displayed in an easy-to-read and colorful way so that teachers can spend less time concerned with their software, and more time concerned with their students.

Micromanaging student success is the goal on the classroom teacher scale, but it goes even further than that. Educators outside of the classroom could use these powerful tools and become part of a district-wide — or even nationwide — database, creating extremely informative reports.  Benchmarks for the entire country could be seen if the software was widely adopted, which could help educators on a broader scale figure out what is difficult for which students, and why.