Last Updated on September 10, 2020
I founded Listenwise to inspire individuals to fulfill their potential through the power of listening. In the last 5 years, podcasting has really exploded but we’ve only begun to see its impact in the classroom. Over that time, we’ve learned so much and there is so much more to do.
I’ve learned that we need to continue investing in Listenwise to provide a broad solution to help all learners and teachers. We need to add a full range of content to support younger students as well as students who are at earlier stages of their language acquisition. We also have recognized the difficulty of teaching listening comprehension without measures of listening complexity and performance. Now we are on the cusp of bringing Lexile measures for listening to Listenwise. However it is very difficult for us to make these types of investments while keeping Listenwise affordable for a wide range of schools. It is time for us to make some changes to our free product in order to ensure Listenwise can meet everyone’s needs.
Beginning on March 1, 2020, “current events” will be the primary content in our free version. ELA, Social Studies, and Science podcasts and lessons will no longer be available without a paid Premium subscription. The free product still has a lot to be enthusiastic about…
- 1000+ current events with new ones added every school day,
- carefully chosen stories about important events in the world,
- really engaging content for listening practice,
- and our very popular debate Fridays.
Plus features to make it easy to use in the classroom, such as listening comprehension questions and the ability to share the audio directly with students using Google classroom.
We have tried to give plenty of advance notice to all impacted users so they can plan accordingly. If you’ve been using our free product, please check your email for some special options available to you for access to the full Listenwise collection for the rest of this school year or contact us!
More details on the content and features that will make up our free and paid products moving forward can be found on our plans chart.
We believe this is the right path forward to build a sustainable future for Listenwise and our community so we can continue developing high-quality lessons and features that support students building listening comprehension skills for years to come. We value our users and look forward to achieving the mission with you.
Please feel free to send us your feedback about these changes or other comments/concerns at feedback@listenwise.com.
Sincerely,
Monica Brady-Myerov
Founder and CEO
