Studies have shown that nothing beats having parents read to and read with their children. But not everyone has that privilege, particularly those who have parents in the military or those who work away from their families. Google Assistant is now introducing a new feature that they have developed to still help parents and kids have their storytime with the help of their Google Nest smart speakers. My Storytime is the new Gooogle Assistant action that is available through smart speakers and some recording magic with the “storyteller”.
My Storytime basically lets the parent who won’t be there every night record stories or them reading stories and then upload these audio files to a secure cloud server. You can then choose to whom you can share these recordings, probably friends and family members. They will be accessible through smart displays and smart speakers and they can be triggered by the sentence “Hey Google, talk to My Storyline”.
The Oliver family, whose father is in the military, helped Google develop this product, after they asked help for an easier way for storytelling from audio files than what they were previously doing. What was happening was the Dad would record himself reading out loud stories like “The Wind in the Willows” then would upload files on the Google Drive. They, in turn, would download it from there and then cast it onto their Nest Mini. Now you get an easier way with My Storytime.
To start it off, visit the My Storytime website and log in with your Google account that’s connected to your Nest speaker. Follow the prompts for the short recordings and then you’ll build a module for a story where you will read chapters of the book. Google says the files are stored securely in the cloud and only you and those you choose to share them with will be able to access the storytime files. You can also access the files by chapter if you want to listen to it that way.
After working with engineers and designers from Instrument and Google Nest, now we have My Storytime so that process is streamlined and more convenient. This is not just meant for military families but also for grandparents who live far from their grandchildren, parents who work the night shift and miss the nightly storytime, those who travel a lot for work, and other people who still want to connect with their children through personalized stories.
