ACORNS new release is available

[Dan Harvey]

We apologize if you get multiple notifications.  The new ACORNS 7
release is available for free download at http://cs.sou.edu/~harveyd
Click on the acorns link and then to the download page. It runs on all
major computer platforms.

The new release has many enhancements; a brief description of some of
these follow:

1) You can, with a single click, create web pages out of indigenous
language lessons, and these do not require Java or any browser
plugins. These web pages work on all of the popular desktops, tablets,
and mobile phones. The pages are open-source using HTML5/JavaScript,
and generate media utilizing industry-standard audio and picture
formats. The web pages reconfigure themselves to the type of device
and accommodate both portrait or landscape mode.

2) There is a new lesson, which we call Questions and Answers. The
student is asked a question and has the task of responding with one of
a group of acceptable answers. A single lesson can have many of these
questions, and ACORNS randomly chooses which ones appear to the
student. This lesson type is in addition to the nine other lesson
types that were part of ACORNS release 6.

4) We are also releasing Version 2 release of our Sound Editor. The
new version allows rate of speech changes while maintaining pitch,
several audio filtering options, and supports both wide and narrow
band spectrograms.

5) There are many other enhancements, but probably more than I should
mention here.

ACORNS does not yet incorporate automatic language independent speech
recognition. When perfected, we plan to release this capability as an
upgrade to version 7, and we will integrate this facility into Hear
and Respond and Questions and Answers lessons.

Our hope is for this program to be useful to tribes working to restore
their language and culture. It is free for non-commercial use.

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