--- Forwarded Message from Harry Alexis Diakoff <[log in to unmask]> ---

>Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:38:50 -0500
>From: Harry Alexis Diakoff <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
>User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812)
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Open source software for CALL support

We should greatly appreciate
any comments or criticisms
from LLTI members because
these tools are still being
actively developed. There
are far more possibilities for
enhancement than we have
resources to explore and we
would prefer to focus our
efforts where they are most
likely to be appreciated.
I append the announcement
of our beta release, but we
would encourage you to
visit our site, http://alpheios.net.

Thank you, Harry Diakoff for Alpheios

------------------------------------------------------------------------



logo.gif

Online reading in a second language: a language-independent architecture 
for software tools to support reading and learning.

(with illustrations for Classical Greek, Latin, Chinese and Arabic)

The Alpheios Project announced today the beta release of a software 
infrastructure and codebase aimed at contributing to the standardization 
of a key component of computer-assisted second language learning: 
support for extensive reading. The software promotes literacy by 
providing lexicographical and grammatical tools to help read texts of 
the user's own choosing. Both vocabulary building and appreciation of 
grammar are well supported but there is no direct support for speaking 
or writing.

In addition to reading support, the infrastructure provides a convenient 
base for pedagogical applications that can be customized to the goals 
and needs of individual students or courses, and can track progress 
toward specific proficiency targets. The infrastructure is compliant 
with the most important standards for data exchange and integrates 
easily into learning management systems such as Moodle or Sakai. The 
tools are currently implemented chiefly as Firefox browser extensions 
and have equivalent functionality under Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft 
Windows.

The project has been privately funded over the past three years and work 
to date represents more than fifteen thousand man hours. The 
architecture has been specifically designed to be as language 
independent and modular as possible to facilitate the rapid addition of 
new languages (and new language resources such as additional 
dictionaries or grammars), while supporting quite advanced functionality.

To illustrate this functionality and language independence, we have 
developed reading tools for some of the most pedagogically demanding 
languages. Classical Greek and Latin tools are available now and similar 
resources for Arabic and Chinese should be available shortly. These 
tools will support reading of any standard HTML text in these languages, 
whether on the Web or a local computer. Work is continuing on the 
development of a variety of pedagogical applications based on this 
infrastructure, and we are also making available prototypes of a number 
of related resources, including a graphical interface for treebank 
editing and one for aligning a text with a translation, to illustrate 
further capabilities of the infrastructure.

The beta release of the reading tools is available at:

http://alpheios.net <http://alpheios.net/>

and the prototypes of the pedagogical applications and other resources 
under development are available at:

http://alpheios.net/content/resources-under-development

The tools are entirely free and the code is open source under a GNU GPL 
license.

Comments, suggestions and criticisms will be most welcome because the 
software is still under active development.

To the extent that our limited resources permit, we would be happy to 
provide advice on how best to adapt our tools to your language or your 
language resources, although we reserve the right to give priority to 
languages of special interest to us, such as Sanskrit, Farsi, Hindi, and 
monolingual English applications, and to our own pedagogical 
applications. Currently we can only consult about applications that will 
remain open source and freely available to all.

Sincerely Yours,

The Alpheios Team





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