--- 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 *********************************************** LLTI is a service of IALLT, the International Association for Language Learning (http://iallt.org/), and The Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (http://www.languageconsortium.org/). Join IALLT at http://iallt.org. Subscribe, unsubscribe, search the archives at http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A0=LLTI Otmar Foelsche, LLTI-Editor ([log in to unmask]) ***********************************************