LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) -A Las Vegas parent has created a new approach to reading apps.
Like many other students, Aubrie Vinzant, 8, struggled to catch up with reading during and after the pandemic.
“There really wasn’t much education happening, so it went into the first grade, got back into school again, really it was about halfway through the first grade that we realized that she couldn’t read,” her father, Dave Vinzant, said.
They tried private tutoring as well as other programs, but it got expensive.
“The frustration level was really high, so after an hour of trying to get through a 10-15 page little book, she was crying. I am giving hints that I shouldn’t be giving just to try to get it over with, so I realized then that I needed to do something else,” he said.
So Vinzant, with no computer programming background, created a free web application called WordStumble. The program uses artificial intelligence on ChatGPT.
“What is magical is it is able to take all of those words that she knows, all of these words that she is struggling with, five or ten of them, take them and send them to ChatGPT, and it returns a custom children’s story, it only uses the words that she knows and only uses the words that she doesn’t know, so it keeps her on a path that’s at her level,” Vinzant said.
The application offers a selection of over 200 word groups, carefully constructed to cover phonics, sight words, grammar, and dozens of various common categories.
“I want other kids to use it. This is now my passion, it is a dream that I see is working for her, and is starting to work for other kids, so I know that it can work,” he added.
Vinzant is currently looking for investors to launch a phone app version of the program.
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