The GLEN (GLobal ENglish) World team is excited to announce the public release of GLEN Learn, our app for early English literacy and school readiness, as an iOS app and as an Android app.
The GLEN Learn app guides children through the building blocks of early English literacy and is aligned with research-based standards for school readiness (see our recent blog post). The GLEN Learn web app is already being used by children worldwide, but the release of the mobile app means that children can now jump the digital divide! Once the app is downloaded, children can engage with the learning content in GLEN Learn offline.
The release of the GLEN Learn mobile app is a crucial down payment on our mission of scaling early English literacy. Now children at the remotest corners of the world can take their first steps towards learning English, which has become the global language of educational and economic opportunity. Closer to home in California, where GLEN World is based, the release of the mobile app opens up opportunities to partner with like-minded organizations to work towards our vision that every child gets to school ready to learn.
The GLEN Learn mobile app is free, ad-free and there are no in-app purchases. It works on tablets and smartphones. This means that deployments in preschools, Transitional Kindergarten, and Kindergarten can go hand-in-hand with engagement at home. GLEN Learn includes illustrated and narrated stories in English and Spanish, also available separately in our GLEN Books app, designed to engage parents and children in storytime regardless of the parents’ level of education. If you would like to find out more about the design and organization of the content in GLEN Learn, you can request our handbook for teachers and caregivers here.
While anyone, anywhere in the world can learn with GLEN Learn, partner organizations also get access to a web-based dashboard with analytics on progress at the level of an individual learner as well as a cohort of learners. Please reach out to us if you would like to partner with us in closing the opportunity divide.
The release of the GLEN Learn iOS and Android mobile apps is the result of many years of work by many dedicated individuals in our GLEN World family, but we think of it as Day 1 in our own journey. Now comes the hard work of building the partnerships to make sure our work reaches the children who need it most, of scaling our organization and software infrastructure to support these partnerships, and of course, of continuing to build out content helping our children take the first steps in their academic journey.
Covid-19 has amplified the impact of endemic socioeconomic disparities on our children and has highlighted the importance and urgency of our mission. Your support is more critical than ever. Please consider donating to GLEN World to help sustain our efforts.