ACORNS Overview

The purpose of this package is to support language revitalization efforts of Native American tribes. Hence, its name [AC]quisition [O]f [R]estored [N]ative [S]peech. The software is freeware and can be freely used for non-commercial purposes. It conforms to best practice criteria for working with linguistic data, in that it supports industry standard export and import facilities.

The ACORNS program allows language instructors and students to easily prepare and execute files containing language lessons. The software is intuitive and requires minimal technical training. Each file contains a series of lessons that link together through use of mouse clicks. Presently, the program supports Flash Card Lessons, Hear and Click Lessons, Hear and Respond Lessons, Magnet Game Lessons, Moving Pictures Lessons, Multiple Choice Lessons, Pictionary Lessons, Picture and Sound Lessons, Questions and Answers Lessons, and Story Book Lessons.

1. Flash Card lessons contains three piles of cards. The students job is to correctly identify the audio and eventually through correct answers move all the cards to the rightmost pile.
2. Hear and Click lessons annotate stories with pictures. Students click on the correct picture as the story plays back.
3. Hear Respond lessons display a story with words missing. The student fills in the blanks and facilitates comprehension and spelling learning.
4. Magnet Game lessons displays words of a sentence or phrase about the display. The student drags magnets holding adjacent words together, and ACORNS joins the words together into a larger magnet. When the entire sentence or phrase is completed, the student can hear the corresponding audio.
5. Moving Pictures lessons displays four pictures at a time that move about the frame. Students click to hear attached audio. Periodically, the pictures change.
6. Multiple Choice lessons attach multiple recordings to a series of pictures. You hear a recording and select the correct picture. This works much like commercial products that our country uses to train diplomats.
7. Pictionary lessons display a dictionary in picture form. Clicking on a picture will display the associated text and playback an appropriate audio.
8. Picture Sound lessons attach recordings to places on a picture. Clicking on parts of the picture enables you to hear the correct word or phrase.
9. Questions and Answers lessons pose questions to the student, who replies with an answer. If the answer is correct, the student hears a positive feedback.
10. Story Book lessons play a story and display a picture that relates. Students listen along as the translation words are highlighted. Many other types of lessons are in our plans.

Language instructors can use ACORNS to easily create and then exectute these lessons. Student can also create language lessons as part of class projects. ACORNS can also generate web pages that execute with browsers on the popular desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone devices. It is possible to create an on-line library of language lessons. ACORNS has capabilities to remap the Keyboard to native language fonts. The download version supports any indigenous keyboard font installed as a ttf file.

The author of the original program is Dan Harvey from Southern Oregon University, harveyd@sou.edu. We anticipate that this be a long term development project involving both undergraduate and graduate students. We plan to add many additional features lesson types as the software matures. We welcome and seek your comments and feedback.