What is IDL literacy software?

A popular literacy software, IDL is in use across the whole United States, providing great results at upping students’ reading and spelling skills. Here’s all about it.

In short, the IDL literacy software is a program that provides a multi-sensory approach to help learners with dyslexia and other learning difficulties improve their reading and spelling ages. The software was created with dyslexic students in mind, but it can also be used for interventions besides providing support in schools across the nation.

What makes IDL literacy so popular is the fact that its benefits have been proven through various scientific studies. Namely, the consensus of all these reviews is that it can advance a person’s literacy ability for 11 months after just 26 hours of use. Having that in mind, it’s only fair to sniff around a little to see how IDL can provide such satisfactory results.

What is IDL?

At some point during the 1980s, several educators affiliated with the Starcross Education Research Association came together and developed the International Dyslexia Learning Solutions IDLS Group. Later on in 2012, the Big Lottery financed an initiative called Lifting Barriers which allowed for the development of the current IDL. Afterward, IDL was introduced to 12 primary and secondary schools for three years.

During these three years, it was essential for IDL to provide that it will help students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities to improve their reading skills and uplift their confidence and self-esteem. So, what happened? Well, it turned out that IDL can provide students with an average gain of 11 months in reading and spelling ages after just 26 hours of use.

What is an IDL assessment?

Like all great literacy tools, IDL offers its own assessment of dyslexia and other difficulties, named IDL Literacy Screener. What makes it so great is the fact that it only takes half an hour to troubleshoot reading issues in students of grades 8 and higher. It’s meant for use when there’s a concern for a single learner’s or a group’s literacy development.

The fact is that detecting a problem early on can provide enough time for a proper response. As such, you can give the assessment test to a whole class or just one student to identify problems and teaching worries. After the test is taken, the SENCO and teachers can analyze the results and, in turn, come up with effective means of intervention.

What are the four components of IDL?

The IDL literacy program is based on four fundamental ideas. These include multi-sensory lessons, progress monitoring, ease of use, and independent studying.

• Multi-sensory lessons: IDL utilizes sight, hearing, touch, and speech to enhance literacy and even math proficiency. It makes use of the fact that visual, aural, and touch senses are all connected.
• Progress monitoring: IDL allows teachers to determine all the areas where students are having the greatest difficulties, as well as how well they can perform in comparison to age-appropriate expectations.
• Ease of use: IDL features a straightforward design that makes it simple for students and teachers to utilize. While students can work freely or with little supervision, teachers can easily track and monitor progress.
• Independent learning: Because students can work independently on the program, IDL allows for bigger intervention groups to be formed and monitored simultaneously.

Nevertheless, none of these four would mean much if IDL wasn’t possible to use from different locations. Namely, students can utilize IDL on a computer or tablet at home or school. Students' progress is saved in the cloud, so they can continue where they left off.

What are the advantages and goals of IDL for learners in primary and secondary schools?

Sure enough, there are numerous literacy programs and tools all over the internet. Some are good, others great, and some are less than effective. However, IDL separates itself from all others due to certain advantages and goals it sets. So, let’s check out some of these in the following few paragraphs, shall we? By identifying them, we’ll be able to have a better view of the overall program and whether it’s for you or your child.

1. The first benefit of using IDL literacy is that it can be used from practically any location. All you have to have is a stable internet connection, and you’ll be able to connect with the rest of the class and your teacher to receive tests, monitor progress, and save your data on the IDL cloud for further assessments.
2. Another advantage is that IDL is easy to use. You don’t have to be a computer expert to set it up for your child or yourself. It’s simple yet effective. The instructions are clear, and the overall interface is a joy to work with.
3. Besides offering literacy help for dyslexics, there’s also an IDL numeracy program for students with dyscalculia and other math-related learning issues. The numeracy software offers a completely graded course to support the KS1 and KS2 National Curriculum for math.

The main goal of IDL literacy and numeracy is to provide help to primary school and secondary school students with special educational needs in reading, spelling, and math.

The second goal of IDL’s programs is just as important as the first. Namely, dyslexics and others with certain learning difficulties commonly have self-esteem problems. However, with the help of IDL, they can start to perform like the rest of their class while restoring confidence and belief.

Speechify—helping those with Dyslexia learn

Just like we’ve said, IDL isn’t the only tool to help dyslexics and others with learning difficulties learn and carry on with education. There are other programs and tools out there. One of the best is Speechify—a text-to-speech program that can turn anyone into an efficient reader, despite their current dyslexic tendencies.

Speechify is based on three main components—artificial intelligence, machine learning, and optical character recognition. Together, these three can transcribe any text into audio that’s narrated by one of 30+ AI voice-overs. In fact, it works in more than 15 languages, making it perfect for students who are learning a foreign language such as French, Spanish, or Italian.

Speechify is available across all popular platforms. It works on iPhones, iPads, and Android smartphones alike. Then again, it’s also possible to add it to your web browser if you’re using Google Chrome or Safari. Additionally, Speechify is also available for download as a standalone app for macOS computers.