The connective tissue to Microsoft’s Office suite beyond Outlook happens to be OneNote for a lot of users. As a stand alone app, OneNote has proven to be a not only be a necessary piece of an organizing puzzle for teachers and students but a wanted tool for an average user as it competes feature for feature with Evernote.
Today, OneNote picked up a nifty little feature with support for Immersive Reader in Windows 10. Immersive reader fist came to Windows 10 Online and OneNote Online back in February of this year, but it looks as though the Office team is ready to start rolling out to other software properties. Today’s update incldues:
Read Aloud—Reads text out loud with simultaneous highlighting that improves decoding, fluency and comprehension while sustaining the reader’s focus and attention. Spacing—Optimizes font spacing in a narrow column view to improve reading fluency for users with visual crowding issues. Syllables—Shows the breaks between syllables to enhance word recognition and decoding. Parts of Speech—Supports writing instruction and grammar comprehension by identifying verbs, nouns and adjectives. In addition to the Immersive Reader rollout across new apps and platforms, we are also adding new language and geographic availability for the Read Aloud, Syllables and Parts of Speech features. This expanded language support—coming to Word Online, OneNote Online, Outlook on the web and the OneNote Windows 10 app—will allow more customers across the world to experience the benefits of both the Learning Tools and the Immersive Reader. For the OneNote Desktop Learning Tools add-in, we are launching Japanese dictation, plus bug fixes and other small improvements. See all of the details at the Learning Tools language support page.
Immersive Reader is also being rolled out to Outlook on the web but a lot of the exciting benefits of the new feature will probably see its greatest adoption in schools that support Microsoft’s recently released Learning Tools for OneNote for desktop.
According to Microsoft this new Immersive Reader update will be rolling out in multiple languages such Arabic, Czech, French, German, Hindi, Hebrew, Thia, Slovak and six more that include Read Aloud capabilities, starting today and through the rest of June.
For details of the languages included or how to get started with Immersive Reader, visit the Office Blog, here.
