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Carnegie Speech ELL Speech Technology Coming to K-12

Carnegie Speech is bringing its technology for English language learners to K-12 schools through a new partnership with Sunburst Digital. Carnegie Speech is a venture originally founded on research commercialized through Carnegie Mellon University and the Language Technologies Institute. Sunburst is an ed tech developer the provides educational resources to K-12 schools.

As part of the partnership, the two have released two new products for K-12: Carnegie ESL and Carnegie ESP. The solutions use voice processing technology to analyze spoken words in any of 110 languages students may speak natively.

Carnegie ESP ("Early Speech Program") is targeted toward students in kindergarten through grade 5 who work with speech pathologists and language therapists one to two times per week.

"These in-school professionals face enormous obstacles in balancing how to effectively screen and monitor the growing enrollments of learners struggling with speech processing and developmental challenges," said Sunburst CEO Ken Leonard in a prepared statement. "It's altogether common that new immigrant populations can be misplaced in speech and Special Education programs, reflecting how difficult diagnosing their individual situations can be without the proper tools. With Carnegie ESP, that entire screening pain is mitigated and made much easier."

Carnegie ESL is designed to increase fluency quickly. (Sunburst CEO Ken Leonard claimed the tool can improve a student's fluency "by more than two times in as little as 10-20 hours of use.")

"Our Native Accent solutions have become the de facto standard for employers, governments and knowledge-based organizations intent on improving the English language grammar, fluency and pronunciation for their diverse populations of human capital who are non-native English speakers," said Angela Kennedy, CEO of Carnegie Speech, in a prepared statement. "It was only a matter of time before we found the right partner for K-12."

Further details can be found at carnegie.sunburst.com.

About the Author

David Nagel is the former editorial director of 1105 Media's Education Group and editor-in-chief of THE Journal, STEAM Universe, and Spaces4Learning. A 30-year publishing veteran, Nagel has led or contributed to dozens of technology, art, marketing, media, and business publications.

He can be reached at [email protected]. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidrnagel/ .


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