The Design of New Digital Resources of Personalized Support of Reading Skills for Novice Readers and Children with Dyslexia: A Presentation of the iRead Software Linguistic Domain Models: New Digital Resources of Personalized Reading Support

Abstract

The aim of the current paper is to present and discuss the development, structure, content, and use of a flexible, scalable and cost-effective cloud-based software system used in the iRead project.The iRead Project (Infrastructure and Integrated Tools for Personalized Learning of Reading Skills) aimed to offer personalized learning services to novice readers and students with reading difficulties or dyslexia by developing an integrated supportive tool for tablets, the iRead software, which includes a set of educational applications, like mini-games, an e-reader and a text classifier. iRead is built and operates around a comprehensive knowledge base, which includes a structured and detailed model of linguistic content that is essential to reading development, the domain model. iRead Domain models are essential for the operation of all iRead apps and were designed to provide personalized learning support to students with dyslexia by enabling each app to select linguistic content based on the particular learning needs of each student. The sophisticated and thorough structure and linguistic content of the iRead domain models, along with the ability of iRead to adapt to students’ needs, constitute unique features that render iRead innovative.