First Voices and the Mac Help Preserve Aboriginal languages (fwd no date)

[Phil Cash Cash]

Dear ILAT,

You can access the Vocab LanguageLab 1.0.2 software mentioned in the
news article at the following link.  It appears you can dowload a demo
version.

http://www.cabsoft.com/vll.html

Phil Cash Cash
UofA, ILAT




> ----- Message from cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU ---------
>     Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2003 10:33:42 -0700
>     From: Phil Cash Cash <cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU>
> Reply-To: Indigenous Languages and Technology
<ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
>  Subject: First Voices and the Mac Help Preserve Aboriginal languages
(fwd no date)
>       To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
>
> First Voices and the Mac Help Preserve Aboriginal languages
> http://www.apple.com/ca/education/profiles/firstvoices/
>
> “Two tribal school teachers” reach out to the world
>
> English-speaking people can scarcely imagine losing their language,
> but
> many people around the world are facing this disturbing prospect. As
> transportation and telecommunication technologies make the world
> smaller, they also reinforce the dominance of a few modern language
> groups. Regional languages spoken by relatively small population
> groups, including Aboriginal peoples, risk extinction within a few
> generations as young people leave them behind.
>
> But what if you could use the same communications technology that
> threatens aboriginal languages to preserve and teach them? This
> possibility was not lost on Peter Brand, a 55 year-old Australian
> born
> teacher and advocate of Aboriginal culture. After a year of teaching
> Aboriginal children in his country’s outback and several years
> visiting
> Indigenous cultures in other parts of the world, Peter settled on
> Vancouver Island where he taught for the Saanich Indian School Board
> for 11 years.
>
> In 1999, Peter was teaching Grade One at LAU-WELNEW Tribal School in
> Brentwood Bay. A computer lab upgrade to 25 networked iMacs enabled
> the
> school to experiment with simple indigenous language teaching tools
> using iMovie. “We had a Saanich language font created for the Mac,
> started shooting video of plants and wildlife, and subtitled the
> footage with Saanich words,” says Brand, who worked with John
> Elliott,
> son of David Elliott, developer of the Saanich writing system.
>
> Pretty cool little tool
>
> Brand spent the next spring break working with John Elliott and Ken
> Foster, technology coordinator for the local public school district.
> The project was an alphabet book for the Saanich language. Working in
> HyperStudio, they developed video, sound and text for each of the 40
> Saanich alphabet characters. “Then we found a pretty cool little
> tool,”
> recalls Brand, “a piece of Mac shareware called Vocab. At that time
> Vocab was a text-only word study application that enabled users to
> create word lists and present the words in quizzes and tests.”
>
> Vocab became particularly useful at the tribal school after its
> developer, Angus Gratton, added a sound feature. Many of the students
> used Vocab to test themselves in the Saanich language. The ensuing
> months saw the development of Vocab LanguageLab, a multimedia
> authoring
> suite as a companion to the original Vocab application. “By this time
> the kids were using iMovie to create rich media they could import
> into
> Vocab LanguageLab along with sounds, pictures and video. It became a
> complete kit for teaching indigenous languages.”
>
> As Brand explains: “Many Aboriginal people are very visual learners.
> We
> found that our Apple equipment enabled students to do things quickly
> and easily with digital video. Our students began creating media-rich
> learning resources for their fellow students, written in their own
> unique orthography, or written language style.” Academically, Vocab
> LanguageLab helped to raise the children’s language proficiency by
> encouraging them to spend more time working on language related
> activities.
>
> The limiting factor, however, was the fact that only a small audience
> was being reached. So Brand and John Elliott began to conceive a
> means
> of migrating their work to the web.
>
> In March 2001, Simon Robinson, the head of the First Peoples’
> Cultural
> Foundation, walked into their computer lab. He said he had heard good
> things, and asked for a demonstration. Brand and Elliott gave him the
> full show, including their vision to make the multimedia language
> tools
> web-accessible.
>
> Final tweaking of the web applications
>
> Shortly after that, Robinson invited Brand to co-ordinate the
> official
> FirstVoices project. “The project has taken on a life of its own,”
> Brand elaborates. “Significant investment has been made to bring it
> to
> its current form. We’re going through a final tweaking of the web
> application after beta-testing this year, and we expect it to be in
> full operation by early 2003.”
>
> What exactly is FirstVoices? It’s an easy-to-use, secure,
> cost-effective
> web-based tool that enables any language group to develop its own
> authentic and authoritative archiving and language reference resource
> from within its own community. Text, sound and video can be uploaded
> to
> the FirstVoices online database to establish rich language resources.
>
> “It’s extremely gratifying to witness the fruition of something you
> believe in passionately,” says Brand, who lauds Apple for its
> enthusiastic support in Canada, the US and Australia. “I never
> imagined
> that two tribal school teachers plugging away at something could
> ultimately reach out to the world in this way. Now that FirstVoices
> is
> supported by a team of committed language revitalization advocates,
> it
> can develop into a very important resource for Aboriginal languages.”
>
> Brand encourages people to check out the site, now in late-stage
> beta,
> at www.firstvoices.com.
>
> For more information about Apple technology in the classroom visit
> the
> Apple Canada web site at www.apple.com/ca/education
>
>
> ----- End message from cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU -----