When your child reads a page aloud to Pip, Pip listens on the phone, tablet or computer they are using whenever that device can recognize speech by itself, so their voice does not leave it. Where the device cannot, Read to Pip works the way it always has (see When a device cannot listen on its own). You do not need to turn anything on for this. The microphone still only opens when your child starts reading to Pip and the device allows it.
If you would rather your child's voice was never sent anywhere, even on a device that cannot listen by itself, turn on Keep my child's voice on this device only. You will find it on your child's settings page, under Look and sound, in Reading aloud to Pip. It is off unless you turn it on. Readers added by a school keep reading to Pip the way their school agreed to.
What changes for your child
Your child reads a page out loud, a piece at a time, exactly as before. When Pip listens on the device:
- The word your child is on lights up as they reach it.
- If they stop on a word for about three seconds, the word glows softly. That is only an offer: they can tap it for help or keep trying.
- If they are still stuck after about five seconds, Pip helps one step at a time: first the word's first sound, then sounding it out together with the same letter sounds a tapped word plays, and then Pip says the word and they read the sentence again.
- Heart words, the ones taught whole because they do not follow the usual sounds, are said straight away.
- Pip never stops your child in the middle of a sentence to fix a word. At the end of a sentence, Pip may go back to one word with the sound the book is practicing, and only if that sound did not come out. Nothing on the screen marks a word in red, keeps score or counts time, and Pip never says a word was wrong.
- For a child who reads most pages smoothly, Pip waits a little longer before offering help and does not light up each word.
Pip judges only the sound the book is practicing. The way your child speaks is never counted against them: "dis" for "this", "han" for "hand" and other regional and family ways of saying words all count as reading the word, as they do everywhere else in TaleTykes. If Pip is not sure what it heard, it counts the word as read.
What happens to your child's voice
- The device turns what it hears into positions on the page as your child reads. The sound is dropped as it goes. It is not sent to us or to anybody else, and it is not saved on the device.
- On an iPhone or iPad this uses Apple's speech recognition in its on-device mode, where the device supports it. On a computer it uses the browser's own speech recognition, and only when the browser can promise it runs on the computer itself (recent versions of Chrome can; some need to download a language pack first, which they do in the background).
- For each word, we keep a short note: where it was on the page, whether it was read, how long it took, and which help was offered and whether your child asked for it. We never keep the word itself or anything your child said. The notes are deleted after three months.
- The page's counts go to your child's Progress page like any other page read aloud.
To delete every note at once, press Delete listening notes on the same card. That also deletes the page records made from them. The day's totals on the Progress page stay, the same as for any other reading.
When a device cannot listen on its own
Some browsers and devices cannot recognize speech without sending it somewhere. What happens on those depends on Keep my child's voice on this device only:
- Off (the usual): Read to Pip works the way it always has. The recording goes to our speech provider to be turned into words and is deleted as soon as that is done. Read-along and the tools inside a book explains that way of listening.
- On: Pip does not listen at all. Instead the screen says Reading with a grown-up: you listen as your child reads and tap any word that was tricky, then press Done. The microphone stays off, Pip counts the words you tapped, and nothing your child says is sent anywhere.
If something here does not work, ask us from Help in your dashboard.