flash sites

[Mia Kalish]

Hello Brent in Kenai.

I almost made it to Kenai a few years ago . . . hope to make it to AK
sometime  . . .

I'm willing to share, even develop, but I don't want to do stuff that uses a
bridge language. I think it's bad form. It also doesn't provide the
opportunity for the brain to develop knowledge of syntactic and
morphological patterns. The prime goal of 2L<-->Bridge is the 2L<-->Bridge
relation. This doesn't help develop speakers. 

Flash forms could be developed for "plug-ins", but not easily for languages
that use special fonts, since they have to be broken apart and regrouped
into symbols, which I guess could be scripted, although selecting the text
would be tricky. . . but then, the person using the plug in also has to be
able to "copy" the language into the Flash environment. . . usually the
fonts are the problem, because a) specialty fonts don't map to regular
fonts, frequently because people have used the number keys; b) because
without the break apart I mentioned, the user has to have the font on their
machine to display the font correctly . . .(Flash 8 might have an imbed, but
this is another sophisticated scripting option if the procedure is to be
externalized for plug-in-ability). Sounds like a pain to me, and certainly
not something I (personally) would want to spend my time on, since there are
so much more interesting things to do. 

On the other hand. . . . 

I think it would be easier - and certainly more fun (at least for me) if
there was a community who worked on the materials together. That way, people
could have the fun of working together, software wouldn't have to be
developed that tried to imagine how it might be used without knowing who all
the users would be, and people wouldn't have to develop all the different
expertises (See? I made up a word! Isn't it nice?) to be able to get their
language projects off the ground. 

Also, as a community, we could develop some really interesting animated
games that could work so people not only learned the language, but also the
syntax and morphology. As a community, we would have the benefit of all that
creativity. I met a man at the conference, he's Miami, and he did some cool
flash-card games for learning morphology. And it worked; the kids were able
to figure out the patterns without someone having to hammer them into their
heads. This would be cool, and the games could be reusable for all languages
with particular forms. With lots of formlets, people could pick and choose
to suit their individual languages. For example, both Miami and Southern
Athapascan have a collection of words that are effectively stems and cannot
be used correctly without the personal prefix. So a Body Part game could be
used for Miami, Chiricahua, Lipan, Navajo, and Mescalero and all the other
languages that have this form. <SMILE> See? 

I have number games on my website at LearningForPeople.us that work for
Welsh, Estonian, Spanish, English, and maybe soon Navajo and Apache. It
takes about 6 hours to do the car puzzle and the 6-format number practice.
So if people can do the numbers 1-100 in their languages, and they can do
the recordings of the numbers and send them to me appropriately labeled,
they can have games in a few days. <SMILE> Is that a good share? 

Mia 

-----Original Message-----
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
On Behalf Of Brett Encelewski
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 6:17 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] flash sites

I would be very interested in knowing if the webmasters would be 
willing to share--as well--it would cut down on training, planning, 
and implementing costs as well as time.  If these orgs are willing to 
share (for the greater good) it would keeps us from reinventing the 
wheel.

> I want to learn how to use it now. 
> Do you
> know if there is any sharing of formats so you could use one 
> format and plug
> in another language? This might be a naive question on my part, 
> but I'm
> asking anyway.

BRETT A. ENCELEWSKI
Language Archivist
Kenaitze Indian Tribe, IRA
Kenai, AK

"A people with no history has no past, and therefore no future."
                --Robert A. Heinlen

"Think globally, dream universally."
                --Unknown



----- Original Message -----
From: Jan Tucker <jtucker at STARBAND.NET>
Date: Friday, January 6, 2006 3:38 pm
Subject: Re: [ILAT] flash sites

> Thanks Jordan, I really enjoyed exploring all the different ways 
> that flash
> can be used to teach language. I want to learn how to use it now. 
> Do you
> know if there is any sharing of formats so you could use one 
> format and plug
> in another language? This might be a naive question on my part, 
> but I'm
> asking anyway.
> 
> The sounds of Gaelic, Sami, and Inuit I believe where wonderful to 
> hear and
> compare. This is some amazing work in my view. What a fun way to 
> use the
> internet to learn language.
> 
> Jan
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Indigenous Languages and Technology
> [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of Jordan Lachler
> Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 8:01 AM
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Subject: [ILAT] flash sites
> 
> 
> For the flashmongers out there, here are a couple of sites doing some
> interesting stuff with flash and indigenous language learning.
> 
> Gaelic
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/alba/foghlam/beag_air_bheag/
> 
> Sami
> http://www.ur.se/ur/sok/frameset_web.html?/samasta/index.html
> 
> Tlingit
> http://www.sealaskaheritage.org/programs/language_resources.htm
> 
> ---
> Jordan
>