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WordAloud^® - teaching English and literacy worldwide

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin

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LISTEN: Proposed Project for the Minerva Initiative

When faced by a page covered by meaningless symbols, the child is baffled. What a big leap in understanding if the child can realise that the writing is a coding of the sounds of the language. This is where "teaching technology" can help. The LISTEN project shows how the teacher can use speech technology (and speech synthesis in particular) to produce sounds from symbols, word by word, in the simplest possible way for the child. And the teacher can demonstrate, conversely, how the sounds (phonemes) become represented as symbols (graphemes), by typing in simple words and having them automatically spoken back to the child.

In order to help the child with visual impairment or visual processing difficulty (such as dyslexia), the teaching technology presents text a word-at-a-time, in big bold letters, using colours of text and background that are most comfortable for the child. The project will demonstrate how this teaching technology can be used for teaching literacy skills both for individual tuition and for class teaching. Children can continue to practice and hone these skills using the teaching technology by themselves on a computer in the school or at home.

The project will act as a focus, and a point of dissemination, for teaching methodology, teaching technology and teaching material or "content". Pupils and teachers will be asked to contribute material, such as simple stories with illustrations, to be used in teaching at other schools. This material will be stored in an open repository. The technology will be extended to allow children in different schools, and different countries, to communicate and share content via the web, online, for open distance learning.

A number of European-wide problems need to be tackled urgently:

• There is a problem of illiteracy in Europe, and a significant proportion of young adults (over 20% in some countries) leave school without adequate reading skills for employment.
• The literacy problem is particular acute for children with special needs (e.g. dyslexia) and children of ethnic minorities.
• Teaching literacy in special schools requires accessible teaching technology.
• There is an increasing problem of foreign language learning in schools, as more countries join the EU and foreign languages are learnt at a younger age.
• Uptake of ICT in schools has been disappointing.
• Concrete evidence is lacking of the effectiveness of multi-modal technology in the teaching of basic literacy skills.
• There is a problem of high perceived cost of using computers - including the cost of software and hardware acquisition and the cost of teacher training.
• Open sharing of resources and use of the Internet needs to be improved.

The project will show how certain innovative, affordable and accessible teaching technology (e-learning platform) can improve the teaching of basic literacy and language skills, especially for children with special needs.

The project will demonstrate and evaluate the use of teaching technology to support the teaching of basic literary skills to English, Greek and Italian children and for teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). We will concentrate on children with reading difficulties, e.g. children with dyslexia, learning difficulties (LD), attention problems (ADD/ADHD), visual impairment or hearing impairment. We will pilot the use of the teaching technology in special schools and mainstream schools in UK, Greece and Italy, demonstrating inclusivity of the technology. We will also take a dozen children from a selected school in each country for a course of 2 hours per week for a 6-week period. to validate that the technology can produce rapid results. They will be encouraged to practice their newly acquired language and literacy skills on a home PC or laptop if available.

The project will employ particular software teaching technology developed by Cloudworld. This supports three modalities which can be used individually or in any combination at the touch of a button (or key): text, speech and pictures. The text can be displayed a word or a sentence at a time, and synchronised with the speech. Pictures are associated with sections of text, typically to illustrate the meaning or context. Characters can be enlarged until words fit the width of the screen.

Suitable child-centred content will be developed in the project. This content will be focussed on basic concepts and will employ simple words and sentences, but with an effort to maintain interest through pictures. The technology is highly configurable to the needs of the child. You can display text as fast or as slow as required for the child to follow. The text can be in large lettering and in various fonts and colours. You can have pictures displayed alongside the text to illustrate its meaning. You can speak the words as they are displayed or you can leave the text to be spoken by a speech synthesiser. (Note that the synthesiser can be useful for a child using the software at home for revision, exercises or reading practice. And the synthesiser may be vital for a child with a visual impairment.)

We will consider teaching in various environments and contexts, ranging from class teaching using multimedia presentation with interactive whiteboards, to individual tuition using a laptop. The teaching and management style of different countries will be taken into account.

Objectives

The project is designed to discover about how technology can help make teaching more effective - and can help to improve the teaching process - in comparison to more conventional teaching methods. We expect faster learning by pupils for given teacher effort.

The objectives are:

• to show how technology, with suitable content, can be applied to improve teaching process for teaching of literacy skills;
• to show how the same technology can be used, with similar content, for the teaching of languages;
• to show how the technology can be adapted for applicability for use in any European country;
• to show how the technology and content can be used for Open Distance Learning (ODL);
• to show how the technology can be used for teaching pupils with dyslexia, vision impairment, hearing impairment or other disabilities which affect the ability to learn to read;
• to identify the barriers to adoption of e-learning technology by teachers, particularly teachers of younger learners, in various learning environments.

Outputs

• Reports, guides and demonstrations of the use of the teaching technology (TT) with various teaching methods and with various teaching environments;
• Reports of the effectiveness and improvement using TT in pilot studies;
• Content suitable for teaching of literacy and language for wide application in Europe: illustrated stories and rhymes with graded difficulty; material to develop phonemic awareness and vocabulary; word lists, etc.;
• Content available in several European languages;
• Localisation of the teaching technology, e.g. for Greek alphabet and speech;
• Accessible multilingual web site with content for teachers to use directly;
• Web group set up to enable networking among teachers.

Activities

• Comparison of existing teaching environments in partners' countries for applicability of ICT for language and literacy learning.
• Preparation of suitable multilingual content: text and graphics.
• Training in the use of the TT e-learning platform.
• Setting up and administering pilot trials of the TT.
• Individual and group tuition in literacy and language using the TT.
• Preparation, distribution and processing of questionnaires for teachers, teacher trainers, special needs experts, and other target groups, see below.
• Dissemination activities, see below.
• Software development of the TT for localisation (Greece and Italy).
• Software instrumentation for the collection of usage data.
• Software enhancement with feedback from the project.
• Management: coordination, meetings, report writing, etc.

Target groups benefiting

The project aims at direct benefits for teachers, children, schools, teacher training, and parents generally, but particularly targeting people and organisations concerned with children with literacy or language learning difficulties (e.g. resulting from dyslexia or visual impairment). The project will also have a benefit for disabled people, since the TT is highly accessible and can be used, for example, by a parent or teacher who is visually impaired.

Although project concentrates on teaching of children, and content is developed accordingly, the TT is applicable to 'life-long learning', especially for dyslexics and other disabled people.

Approach

Use of word-at-a-time display with speech has many potential benefits, and supports the teaching of reading by a variety of methods: for phonics to 'whole language' approach. Addition of pictures as a third modality gives the opportunity to enhance understanding of material to reinforce learning.

There has been little research on how effective various computer-assisted learning techniques are, as regards learning basic literacy skills. We will study the use of computer presentation of text on a monitor, television set or projected onto a screen, and compare this with conventional classroom use of large print books, writing on a whiteboard and showing of flash cards. We will study the use of synthesised speech, and how it can reinforce learning. We will identify the barriers to adoption of the technology.

At a more fundamental, pedagogical, level we will study the use of particular TT with a word-at-a-time display which can be synchronised to the synthesised speech, and discover the extent that this helps in the teaching process of teaching various basic literacy skills: phonemic awareness, segmentation, word decoding, whole word recognition, short-term memory (for contextual clues) and extraction of meaning. We will show the extent to which this improves reading speed and pupil confidence. And we will show the extent to which the technology helps in pupil concentration, in comprehension of the material being read, and in longer-term reading skill retention and memory of the material.

We will also study the use of our innovative teaching technology in the context of open distance learning (ODL). One of the advantages of the technology is that material can be prepared in web format (i.e. marked up in HTML) and presented directly to the pupils e.g. using an interactive whiteboard. Teachers can prepare teaching material in advance of lessons, and incorporate material from the web. Different material can be linked together, and the links followed during presentation. The software we will use allows browsing of the web for online teaching. The project will develop suitable content which can be published on the web, for teachers to use anywhere. The project will set up a web group to support networking between teachers (and teacher training establishments), in order to build up a body of experience with the new technology and build up a repository of high-quality material for the teaching of basic literacy skills and TESOL.

Innovation

The project will employ novel and innovative software teaching technology developed by Cloudworld. A unique feature of the TT is that it supports three modalities (text, speech and pictures) which can be used individually, or synchronised in any combination, at the touch of a key or by clicking on a button. The text can be displayed a word or a sentence at a time, and synchronised with the speech. Pictures are associated with sections of text, and displayed alongside them. The text display and speech is highly configurable to suit the child, e.g. as regards speed of display and colour and size of characters.

Not only is the TT itself innovative, but the use of such technology in the teaching of basic literacy and language skills is innovative.

Dissemination

The dissemination strategy will focus on:

• the training of teachers and teacher trainers in use of the TT platform;
• the support of workshops and working sessions;
• use of trained experts to diffuse best practices and experience after the end of the project to inform and train the target sector to develop and exploit the platform and educational tool methodology;
• the creation of a website and a newsletter (in several languages) for widespread use among target groups, such as vocational training bodies;
• a special video as a promotion material with instructions, real use case scenarios and success stories with the use of the results of LISTEN project.

Other aspects worth noting:

• innovative use of technology to support the teaching of literacy skills, an area where technology is not normally used;
• support for teaching in inclusive environment, i.e. including disabled children in group learning;
• an e-learning platform which is child-centred and highly configurable enabling it to be tailored for particular individuals or groups.
• support for disabled teachers;
• a teaching tool which can be used as a web browser;
• content produced in web format, for direct access from the tool.