ACORNS Revitalization Software - new release available

[Dan Harvey]

Hi All,

There is a new release of ACORNS language revitalization software that is now available at: http://cs.sou.edu/~harveyd/acorns The software can be freely downloaded.

The previous release provided language teachers an easy interface to create language lessons, and then post them on the Web. In the last year, I have trained a number of tribes in its use. I have three visits scheduled to BC in September for more demonstrations and training.

ACORNS 3.0 provided:
1) Picture and sound lessons - where the student clicks on places in a picture and hears an appropriate recording
2) Multiple Choice Lessons - where students sees four pictures, hears a sound, and clicks on the correct one. This kind of lesson is similar to popular commercial software which our country uses to train diplomats
3) Hear and respond lessons - where students hear a story and have to fill in some blank words
4) A software application that enables ACORNS users to edit pre-recorded sound files

ACORNS 4.0 adds some significant new features:
1) Hear and click lessons - where students hear a story and click on the appropriate picture when the story is playing back something that relates to that picture. At the Sausalito conference, one of the language teachers referred to this kind of lesson, as a 'fly swatter' exercise.
2) ACORNS can now decode nine audio formats
3) A simplified installation procedure is now available. For Windows user, a standard installation program is available for download. For MAC users, you can download a dmg file which has the distribution in it. For Linux users, a tar.gz file is available for download.
4) ACORNS now properly handles animated picture files. This is important to create lessons and convey motion.
5) The program now handles systems with multiple microphones, where you can select which one you want to use.
6) There is a copy and paste option that allows you to copy lessons from one ACORNS file to another
7) The program can now handle longer recordings than was possible in version 3.0

Based on user request, there are some other minor enhancements. A few of these follow
1) The multiple choice lesson can now handle layers, which allows the same lesson to work with up to ten different dialects.
2) The resolution of pictures is now improved
3) Picture and sound lessons do not have control buttons covering the bottom  of the pictures.
4) There is better responsiveness to mouse clicks

We are also close to having a demonstration version of a multilingual dictionary. I hope that some linguists would be willing to try out the demonstration version and provide constructive feedback. With this program, a single dictionary will be able to handle a single language, or hundreds. Flexible hard copy and Web-based features will be included in the final version. It will conform to best practice criteria, and be able to import and merge existing dictionaries, and output them for further processing by other external programs.

If you have any questions, please contact:

Dan Harvey
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Southern Oregon University
harveyd at sou.edu