[OLPC-Chicago] Language learning (TinyLanguage Project)

[Scott Van Den Plas]

Hello all,

Sorry I couldn't make it to the meetup, I was out of the country at the
time.  A number of you have come to me to tell me that an idea similar to
the one we are developing was pitched at the meeting, and this is great to
hear!  As a number of you know, we have been working on a language learning
program for low cost computing devices, including the OLPC, called
TinyLanguage.  I have recently applied for a Knight Foundation grant for the
idea and have been slowly moving along that process.  I would love to merge
our efforts to cut out the redundancy.  Along those lines, here's what we
have encountered and learned (sorry for the length in advance).

First off, Rosetta Stone has been unsuccessfully (last I checked) applying
for patents and copyrights in their learning methodology.  There is a
significant amount of prior work, and the program we are working on is
extremely and fundamentally different in scope and application.  The only
cross over is that they happen to be language learning programs.  I suggest
that you take this same route to avoid any, even if accidental, appearance
of "stealing" the idea.  We probably want to avoid referring to this as
"Rosetta Stone-like" and start calling it by what it really is, a
comprehension based language learning tool.

Here is a posting from Illlist that I made last october:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Scott Van Den Plas <scottv at gmail.com>
Date: Oct 12, 2007 11:44 AM
Subject: [1337] Help me with my idea
To: The illList <illlist at googlegroups.com>



Hello Illlist,

I've talked to a number of you about this idea in the recent past, but
I would like ideas from the group.  I know that most of you are
familiar with the various pushes to bring computing and connectivity
to third world countries (Intel's Classmate http://www.classmatepc.com/
and Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child http://laptop.org/).  A few
months ago, I started thinking about what new challenges we are bound
to introduce with this technology, and came up with a major problem
that needs to be addressed.  Stay with me on this, I would love your
feedback but this is fairly long.

Right now, English is the lingua franca of the Internet, but
multilingualism is the future.  English enjoys a lead position on
content, but the majority of Internet users do not speak English or
speak English as a second language.  We are introducing connectivity
to the third world, where there may or may not be a formalized
language program.  From the Technology Trends section of this document
(http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-english-next.pdf):

1. Technology is enabling new patterns of communication in ways which
have implications for language patterns.
2. Anglo-centric technological limitations are largely overcome,
allowing practically any language or script to be used on the internet
or in computer software.
3. As English becomes used more widely as a language of international
reach, a greater diversity of viewpoints are represented.
4. Other world languages, such as Spanish, French and Arabic, are also
being adopted by the new media.
5. Lesser-used languages are flourishing on the internet.

So the question became how can we reduce the language interference
that is bound to become more of an issue... or how do we teach a large
group of people a foreign language without knowing their native
tongue?

Creating instruction in the foreign language to be given in the native
language is time consuming, and requires a teacher to be present for
translation.  It is possible to teach language in another method,
focusing on comprehension of the language first (which is incidentally
our primary goal).  We can great a language game, populated with
creative commons image and audio content, to provide fairly advanced
language training.

Imagine I showed you a series of three pictures.  The first picture is
a cat about to jump onto a chair.  The second picture is the cat
jumping onto the chair in midair.  The third is a picture of the cat
sitting on top of the chair after the jump.  For each of these
picture, I tag them with the following written and spoken phrases "The
cat will jump," "The cat is jumping," and "The cat has jumped."  We
show the student the picture and associated phrases so they know what
phrase goes with what picture.   We then have the student match which
phrase goes with which image.  We have demonstrated via this method
both the noun for cat and the verb for jump (as well as simple
conjugation).

We can create a number of independent simple games like this and
string them together.  We then assign a rough difficulty value to each
game.  Based on the performance of students on each individual game,
we can adjust the scale of difficulty for that game.  As students do
better on a difficulty range, we move them automatically up to more
difficult games.  Ideally, I would do this in English first (I am
certainly not qualified to start on a Cantonese edition on my own) and
then move on to other languages.  I would also love to see the target
countries turn around and contribute some of their own native language
content.

So I want to build a massive library of creative commons images
grouped together and tagged with spoken and written phrases.  Then I
want to use this data to make a free and open language program
targeting third world children.

There are some interesting things we may be able to do from a computer
science angle with this sort of image data mapped to all sorts of
natural language descriptors.  I also think there are possibly other
ways to use this sort of system to provide an all around education.
That document I referenced earlier has a section on content and
language integrated learning that might be informative.

I would love to hear what you all think about the idea.  I have, like
Dylan, applied for Knight Foundation funding for it, and I am chasing
down at least one other grant right now.  If anyone has ideas about
the application itself, or about how to turn this into a viable
business model, I would love to hear them.  I've been kicking the
concept around for months, but I would like to actively get some
feedback.

Thanks,

Scott

<end of message>

Since sending that message, I applied for a Knight Foundation grant with the
idea.  In November, I was asked to submit a formal proposal and now I am
waiting to hear what comes next.  It is possibly and likely nothing at all.
However, if it turns out to be something, I would love to get the student
presenters involved and working on this.  No matter what the outcome, I
deeply believe in the idea and would like to see it successfully launched.

We have tried to stick to some general principals:

1)  Make the application free and open, but more importantly, make the
supporting data set free and open.  Use creative commons licensing to
protect yourself, but do not restrict any projects cascading from this.  We
want to teach, first and foremost.
2)  Make it new and better, do not emulate the past.  Think about ways to
teach that have not been tried yet.
3)  Simplicity wins.  Complexity in language is a massive entry barrier for
a student.  Make sure that the first activities students try do not turn
them off.
4)  Target more than OLPC.  We all love OLPC, but this is an emerging
market.  We do not know and cannot predict who will win this race, but it
would be a mistake to write this kind of application for only one device.

Lastly, comprehension based learning is terrific for teaching vocabulary,
but is terrible at teaching grammar and conversational interaction.  The
focus of something like this is strictly comprehension, the first step in
learning a new language.  You will not walk away from this program fluent in
a foreign language, but you will walk away much more ready to learn.
Understand first, then speak.

I think this may warrant a separately focused group, outside of
OLPC-Chicago.  Would anyone be interested in this?  Could someone please put
me in touch with the other group working on the similar project?

Thanks!

Scott
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