ACORNS Overview

The purpose of this package is to support the language revitalization efforts of Native American tribes, hence its name: [AC]quisition [O]f [R]estored [N]ative [S]peech. The Acorn is sacred to the tribes of Northern California and Southern Oregon. The name ACORNS is chosen in honor of these tribes who helped spawn this effort. ACORNS is open source and can be freely used for non-commercial purposes.

The ACORNS program is intuitive and requires minimal technical training. It is able to recognize any indigenous keyboard stored in true type font (ttf) format. It can decode files in nine different audio formats. ACORNS conforms to best practice criteria for working with linguistic data, in that it supports industry-standard export and import facilities using XML. ACORNS software works on all computer platforms.

The ACORNS software package allows language instructors and students easily to prepare and execute files containing language lessons. Each file contains a series of user-created lessons, which can be linked through the use of mouse clicks. Presently, the program offers the following lesson types.

ACORNS Lesson Types

• Picture and Sound Lessons allow you to insert a background image, then attach written and spoken words to various places on the picture. You can opt to use pre-existing images and sounds; however, ACORNS makes it easy to record your own sounds and load your own photographs. Thus you can customize your lesson to the particular surroundings that define the language you are teaching. When students click a place on the picture where you have attached a recording, they will hear your description of it in the native language.
• Multiple Choice Lessons allow you to create a game similar to those found in commercial language acquisition products. Each lesson consists of a group of pictures. To each picture, you can attach a group of recorded sounds. (As with Picture and Sound lessons, ACORNS allows you to load your own photographs and record your own sounds.) When students execute your lesson they will see four images displayed on the screen, then hear a phrase describing one of the pictures. Their task is to click the correct picture. When they succeed, the program randomly picks another set of four pictures and plays a sound attached to one of them. The game continues for as long as students want to play, offering a fun and intuitive way to practice associating words with concepts.
• Hear and Respond Lessons allow you to annotate a lengthy sound recording (like a story or a speech) with its composite words and phrases. The annotations you create show up on the students' screen as a transcript of the recording, but some of the words are left blank. Students listen to the recording and fill in the blank words and phrases. Thus this type of lesson facilitates practice in audio comprehension and correct spelling.
• Hear and Click Lessons allow you to annotate an audio recording of a story with still and animated pictures. The student hears the story and sees a random selection of pictures scattered around the display. Their goal is to click on the appropriate picture as the story plays back. This lesson facilitates audio comprehension and is very immersive.
• Flash Card lessons contains three piles of cards. Initially all of the cards are in the leftmost pile. The student's job is to correctly identify expressions that go with the cards. After correct answers, cards move to the middle pile. After more correct answers, the cards go to the rightmost pile. The goal is to get all the cards to the rightmost pile. A drag and drop facility exists where students can manually move cards between piles.
• Moving Pictures lessons displays four pictures at a time that move about the frame. Students click to hear attached audio. Periodically, the pictures change.
• Story Book lessons play a story and display a picture that relates. Students listen along and translation words highlight during the playback. Students can pause and rewind to rehear some of the story

Other new features

• Pronunciation feature Students can replay audio that they heard, and if they have a microphone, they can repeat what they heard, and playback to see how their pronunciation compares.
• ACORNS plugins We now have a plugin capability where third party developers can create new lesson types that integrate with the ACORNS application. Documentation will be forthcoming.
• Drag and drop A drag and drop facility allows one to drag pictures and ACORNS files over the ACORNS application frame and then release to drop. Dropping a file will cause it to open; dropping a group of selected pictures will cause ACORNS to insert them into the active lesson.
• Lesson Web-pages The process of making a web-page is simpler than in previous versions. A single click creates the page along with everything needed for it to work in a browser.
• Indigenous feedback The previous version of ACORNS played a tweet sound for correct answers; a frog croak for answers that were not quite right); and a squawk for incorrect answers. This version allows users to record their own feedback responses in the indigenous language. Each of the three categories of answers can have any number of possible responses.

Development an research in the works

• Dictionaries We have done quite a bit of work towards implementing an multilingual dictionary application which will be able to import linguistics dictionaries and facilitate study of languages across dialects. This application will also enable us to implement dictionary-based computer games for language learning; it will also provide the framework for automatic speech recognition and pronunciation verification capabilities.
• Keyboard Mapping A keyboard mapping application is in the works that will work on both PCs and MACs. Presently, MAC users rely on the program, UKELELE; PC Window users commonly employ Tavaultesoft software. For PC users, there is also a free, but limited, Microsoft application available that some use. The application that we are developing, to be named ELK (Extended Lingustic Keyboards) will be free, just as is the ACORNS application.
• Future Lessons We anticipate providing many other lessons types as the software matures. As mentioned, we are also actively working on speech recognition and speech pronunciation applications.

The ACORNS application incorporates a Sound Editor application. This application allows you easily to edit and manipulate recorded sound files. We believe that this program is more intuitive and easy to use than existing commerical products. The Sound Editor also runs as a stand-alone program.

The author of the original program is Dan Harvey from Southern Oregon Universitym, who retains all copyright privileges. ACORNS software is freeware, and you are granted the right to install it on as many computers as you wish. We do not grant the right to sell the software for profit and it should not be reversed engineered. We hope this software prove useful, but do not guarantee its suitability for any purpose. Using this software implies that you agree to abide by these terms. Please contact the author at harveyd@sou.edu for any questions regarding permissible use. We eagerly seek your comments and feedback.