Maricon Reyes
ED638-40 Fall Intersession 2020
Dr. M.Rivera
IRA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website #6: BeeLine Reader
BeeLine Reader (https://www.beelinereader.com/) is a digital reading app (IOS) and browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Brave created to facilitate reading fluency and comprehension. It is a straightforward functional tool that is easy to set-up, customize, and use. It is added to student devices which allow them a different view of the text while reading. It may be installed by students, parents, or system administrators. How does it work? Texts are displayed using an eye-guiding color gradient to help readers chunk long blocks of text, track from line to line, read more quickly, and recognize important information. BeeLine offers several reading challenges to gather information on how it impacted reading. These challenges are accessible on the developer’s site. Once installed, students should be given some time to be familiar with how the tool features text. Students can go to settings and adjust it to the color scheme that they’d like. Aside from adjusting colors, some additional settings and features include a Focus mode which helps minimize distraction while reading and Open Dyslexic font. Once completely familiar with how to use it, students can engage themselves in timed reading passages, answer comprehension questions, or write a summary. Using BeeLine Reader and practicing reading for a couple of days will allow students to evaluate the tool if it’s effectively helping them. Based on educational researches and anecdotal records, BeeLine has helped young and struggling readers achieved substantial gains in fluency and comprehension. It is helpful that students incorporate self-assessments to ensure improvements in reading fluency and comprehension.
If you are interested in BeeLine, here are a couple more information. For Teachers, there is an education version of BeeLine called BeeLine Reader Edu that allows teachers to control the sites that students go to for reading. BeeLine Reader PDF Viewer is also available for classrooms using numerous PDFs. For free access to BeeLine, use supported websites such as Bookshare platform, Reading is Fundamental’s Literacy Central platform. If you’d like to use this reading aid using the other platforms, here’s the cost for each one. For Browser plugin (Chrome/Firefox/Brave) is $2/monthly for one browser and $4.50 for 5 browsers. Annual subscriptions are discounted. For PDF plugin (Chrome/Brave) is $5/monthly for all browsers linked to the Google account. And for the IOS app, $4.99/monthly which allows you to save web content and news articles to your personal reading list. Additionally, BeeLine in-app purchase for News add-ons is a one-time charge of $1-5. There are also Kindle books with BeeLine with the ebook feature which is a one-time charge of $20, with a 3-day free trial. BeeLine also has discounted education pricing for $3 per student in a single class.
Here are some images to highlight features of BeeLine Reader.
BeeLine Reader in action with a news story.
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