District overview: Aurora Public Schools is located to the east of Denver CO.
District size: 38,000 students
Student body: 42% of students speak English as a second language, 14.5% of students benefit from Special Education programs
Mote Partner since: 2022
Mote had first become part of Aurora's Edtech toolkit in 2022, for use with voice recording in Google Slides and Forms. After Mote added features like Auto read aloud in Google Forms and launched the Mote Sidebar in late 2024, Aurora's team were some of the earliest adopters.
In early 2025, EdTech Co-ordinator Dusty Burton decided to evaluate alternatives to the district's incumbent assistive technology literacy platform. “Students deserve better” was the mantra that drove Dusty, and that persuaded colleagues across the district to embrace change.
Impressed with the usability and voice quality of Mote's Read Aloud features, Dusty nonetheless made it clear that Aurora needed a robust and comprehensive platform of tools, including a picture dictionary, text prediction, highlighting and screen masking. Further, Aurora’s Special Education team needed a solution for State testing, a kiosk mode application that can support speech to text and text prediction. The Mote team committed to meeting Aurora’s needs and proceeded to implement the updates in time for a final decision in May, when Aurora’s team confirmed the decision to migrate.
During onboarding, Mote’s team delivered a program of train-the-trainer and PD sessions to introduce Mote’s sidebar and literacy tools to teachers and specialists across Aurora PS. Dusty and his team provided training, answered questions, gathered teacher feedback and escalated issues. They also monitored adoption using Mote’s analytics dashboard, which showed how quickly students were embracing tools like Read Aloud and translation support. Dusty especially appreciates the Mote team’s responsiveness when issues are escalated:
“Mote are the most responsive Edtech partner I have ever worked with - if a teacher reports even a minor product issue to us, we can escalate and receive a same-day response, and usually a same-week resolution." Dusty Burton.
