Apple has filed for a patent (number 20200175890) for a “device, method, and graphical user interface for a group reading environment.” It involves the use of devices such as the iPad in educational settings.
Apple notes that computers and other electronic devices are become an increasingly important tool in education today. Electronic versions of reading materials, such as textbooks, articles, compositions, stories, reading assignments, lecture notes, etc., are frequently used in class for reading and discussion purposes. Some electronic reading devices display reading materials in a way that gives the electronic reading material the look and feel of a real paper book (e.g., an eBook with “flip-able” pages). Some electronic reading devices also provide additional functionalities that allow the reader to interact with the reading materials, such as marking and annotating the reading materials electronically.
Some electronic reading devices have text-to-speech (TTS) functionalities that can “speak” the text of the reading materials aloud to the user. Sometimes, a child can have a story read to him or her by an electronic reading device that has text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities.
Apple says that, while conventional electronic reading devices are suitable for readers that are capable of and/or prefer to read independently of others, in some situations, group reading may be more beneficial to a reader than solo reading by the reader alone. For example, in a classroom environment, a group of children may participate in collaborative reading of a single story, with each child reading only a portion of the whole story. In another example, in a home, a parent may read part of a story to a child, while allowing the child to participate in reading the remainder of the story.
Apple says that existing electronic reading devices are inadequate in providing an easy, intuitive, fun, interactive, versatile, and/or educational way of organizing the group or collaborative reading of multiple readers in the same group reading session. The company wants to change that.
Here’s the summary of the patent filing: “The method includes receiving selection of text to be read in a group reading session; identifying a plurality of participants for the group reading session; and upon receiving the selection of the text and the identification of the plurality of participants, automatically, without user intervention, generating a reading plan for the group reading session, wherein the reading plan divides the text into a plurality of reading units and assigns at least one reading unit to each of the plurality of participants in accordance with a comparison between a respective difficulty level of the at least one reading unit and a respective reading ability level of the participant.”
