Bolo app, a new speech-based personal reading tutor by Google, aimed at rural kids of India has been launched. This application is free and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store. Bolo App can also work offline and does not require an active internet connection.
Bolo app: Google’s gift to children of rural India
Tech giant Google has always surprised us with its philanthropic moves. Moreover, every such move of Google is loaded with cutting-edge technologies and focused on the education sector. Bolo app which aims to bridge the learning gap in India uses Google’s speech recognition and text-to-speech technology.
Bolo app comes with a built-in fun and helpful reading buddy, ‘Diya‘ that encourages, aids, explains, and corrects children, as they read aloud– anytime, anywhere. Application’s interface is very engaging which invokes the interest of the children in reading so that their love for learning grows and ultimately turns into a daily habit.
Bolo app: From survey to serve society
Pratham Education Foundation, one of the largest non-governmental organizations in India conducts an Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) which is India’s largest NGO-run annual survey. ASER finds out whether children in rural India go to school, whether they can read simple text and whether they can do basic arithmetic.
The ASER reading test assesses whether a child can read letters, words, a simple paragraph at grade 1 level of difficulty, or a ‘story’ at grade 2 level of difficulty. The test is supervised one on one to all children in the age group 5 to 16 and the child is marked at the highest level that he or she can reach.
As per the 13th edition of the survey (ASER 2018), of all students enrolled in Std 5 in rural India, only about half of them can confidently read a Std 2 level textbook. This lack of reading ability can significantly impact further education, and ultimately children’s ability to realize their full potential. While the reasons behind the lag in learning levels are varied and complex, limited access to quality material, under-resourced infrastructure, and barriers to learning outside the classroom, are amongst the primary ones.
Findings of the survey and expanding smartphone penetration in rural India gave Google a push to launch the Bolo app project. Initially, Google piloted the Bolo app on a limited scale with 1500 children in 200 villages in 3 blocks of Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, India from Oct’18 to Jan‘19 with the help of operational support from the ASER Centre. The results were very encouraging, with 64% of children showing an improvement in reading proficiency in just 3 months time period.
These findings of the pilot project were encouraging and thus Google has finally released it in whole India. As a next step, Google is interested in increasing the applicability of the Bolo app and use of it as a supplementary reading intervention to study its impact. Google has invited additional partnerships to test Bolo in different settings for the purpose of further research.
Bolo app: Highlights 
A personalized reading tutor: The reading buddy ‘Diya’ assist with both positive and corrective feedback just like a personalized reading tutor.
Reading material: the content of the app is absolutely free. Initially, Google has provided 50 stories in Hindi and 40 in English from Storyweaver.org.in with more being included from the other partners soon.
Play games and earn in-app rewards and badges: Children’s favourite ‘game zone’ offers interesting word games helping reading become both fun and daily habit.
English to Hindi translation: Google assistance based tutor ‘Diya’ apart from reading out the text can also translate the English text in Hindi.
No advertisement: Application doesn’t include any kind of ads and works offline.
No privacy concern: The app collects images and voice data of the child, which are locally stored on the device and not shared with Google to respect privacy.
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