A digital library for children is an app or website with thousands of children's books that a child reads on a tablet, phone or computer. It suggests books at the child's reading level, and it records the reading for teachers and parents. Many such libraries also read each book aloud and highlight each word as it is read, which helps children who are still learning to read.
Why not just give children a shelf of books? Many schools in India have few books in their libraries, and many homes have none at all. A digital library puts thousands of books on one tablet. It can also do three things that a shelf cannot. It can match each book to the child's level, it can offer the same story in several Indian languages, and it can tell the teacher who is reading and who is not.
The library sorts its books by reading level. A level describes how hard a book is to read: the length of its sentences, how common its words are, and how much of each page is pictures. A child who is just starting reads books with one short sentence on each page. A confident reader moves on to chapter books. After many books, the app has a good estimate of each child's level, and it suggests books just above it.
For instance, a Class 3 teacher at a school in Bhopal sets her class of 32 children a goal of four books a month. One boy starts at level 2. The app suggests level 2 books about animals and cricket, because those are the books he has finished before. After each book, it asks him three short questions about the story. When he has finished five level 2 books and answered most of the questions correctly, the app starts to suggest level 3 books. At the end of the month, the teacher's screen shows that 28 of the 32 children reached the goal. It also shows that 4 children opened books but did not finish them. She can then pick books for those 4 herself.
Many digital libraries are freemium. A basic set of books, or use in school hours, is free. Families pay a subscription to read the full library at home. Books in Indian languages matter here, because children learn to read most easily in the language that their family uses at home. This need is explained in the Indian-language internet.
A teacher can also link books to a lesson. A Class 3 chapter on water from the digital courseware can come with three suggested stories about rivers. The same matching by level is a form of adaptive learning.
How is a digital library different from an audio series app? An audio series app sells long stories for listening, in many short episodes, mostly to older listeners. A children's digital library is about learning to read, so the child follows the words on the screen.