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The purpose of the ACORNS software package is to support language revitalization efforts of Native American tribes. Its name, [AC]quisition [O]f [R]estored [N]ative [S]peech, reflects this purpose. Also, as the Acorn is sacred to the tribes of Northern California and Southern Oregon, the name ACORNS is chosen in honor of the tribes who helped spawn this effort.
ACORNS software runs on all major computer platforms. We anticipate that this be a long term development project and eagerly seek your comments and feedback.
ACORNS is open source. It can be freely used for non-commercial purposes, and is freely downloadable under Open Source GNU licensing. Use of the software implies agreement to the GNU licensing terms described at HTTP://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. The author of the original program, Dan Harvey from Southern Oregon University, retains full copyright privileges. Please feel free to contact the author (harveyd@sou.edu) if you have any questions or comments.
Chapter 3 The Sound Editor
Section 3.1 Sound editor options
Section 3.2 Sound editing panels
Subsection 3.2.1 Recording
Subsection 3.2.2 Zooming
Subsection 3.2.3 File management
Subsection 3.2.4 Editing
Subsection 3.2.5 Speed
Subsection 3.2.6 Volume
Subsection 3.2.7 Display modes
Subsection 3.2.8 Selection
Subsection 3.2.9 Undo and redo
Subsection 3.3.10 Gloss and Native text
Section 4.1 The controls at the bottom
Section 4.2 Executing picture and sound lessons
Section 4.3 Executing multiple choice lessons
Section 4.4 Executing hear and respond lessons
Once you have completed your lesson set-up, it's ready to execute. We execute a lesson by clicking the tool bar icon with the picture of red lightning. (To view this icon, refer to Figure 1.8). Alternatively, the Execute command can also be found under the Tools menu. If you should want to return to set-up mode while a lesson is executing, simply press the escape key.
Executing a lesson shows us what the student will see. If we make a web page out of an ACORNS file, the lessons it contains will execute in a browser window when the student visits that page on the web or opens the file from a CD. In this case, there will be no lightning bolt icon for a student to click, because the lesson will execute automatically. In this chapter we will explain the execution of each of the three lesson types that ACORNS now supports. Of course, we expect to incorporate many other lesson types as the software matures.
When you execute a lesson, a series of control buttons will show at the bottom of the display. These are fairly consistent from one lesson type to another. Two examples show below in Figure 4.1 and 4.2, illustrating how the controls will appear if you have set up your lesson with layers or links. Clicking the green arrows in Figure 4.1 will move your students "up" or "down" through your stack of layers.
The chain button in Figure 4.2 is, of course, a link. By clicking this button, students can switch to a related lesson. If your lesson does not feature links, the Link button will not show. Similarly, if a lesson has no layers, the Layer buttons will not show.
Now note the four blue buttons on the right. These allow students to navigate among your lessons. Moving from left to right, respectively, they mean: 1) go to first lesson, 2) go to previous lesson, 3) go to next lesson, and 4) go to last lesson. If a student clicks on Previous or Next when none exists, a beep will sound.
Finally, the Options button, signified by a green circle and the letter "i," provides access to information and lesson settings. When students click this button, a pop-up menu will appear with additional options. These options can vary based on lesson type, so we'll describe them as we go.
Figure 4.3 shows a Picture and Sound lesson in execution. Actually, this ACORNS file contains seven Picture and Sound lessons. The first lesson (filling the entire Lesson Display area) is set up to function like a table of contents. Thus it shows an image for each of the following six lessons, with links to bring students to another lesson as soon as they click one. You can create this kind of "table of contents" image using a program like Photo Shop or Gimp (freely downloadable). Another way is to draw your image by hand, then use a scanner to import it to your system.
When the student clicks on the link beneath the words "My Body," for example, they are routed to the lesson shown in Figure 4.4. This lesson features a picture of a boy with a basketball. Note the acorns scattered throughout the picture. When a student clicks one of these acorns, they can hear and read the indigenous word that applies. Figure 4.5 shows what they see when the recording plays.
Note the Options button at the bottom of the frame, which you may recall from Figures 4.1 and 4.2. When a student clicks this button, it triggers the pop-up shown below in Figure 4.6.
Here the student can choose to turn off the translation that appears when an acorn is clicked. The student can also use this pop-up to alter the size of the picture. If they click Increase Scale Factor, the picture will grow by 10%. The Decrease Scale Factor option causes it to shrink by the same amount. Near the bottom, the Help option offers information summarizing what the options on this menu can do. Finally, Exit Play Mode will stop this lesson's execution, returning the user to set-up mode. Note that web pages do not provide this option; lessons viewed on a web page cannot switch to set-up.
Picture and Sound lessons support layers. Look at Figure 4.7. Though the image is exactly the same as the one shown in Figure 4.4, if you look carefully, you'll see that the acorns are stuck to different places on the picture. This is because the student using this lesson clicked the upward pointing green arrow from the control buttons at the bottom of the frame, and switched to a different layer.
On the upper right, ACORNS displays the total number of questions answered so far, next to the student's count of correct answers. The gloss and indigenous translation show on the upper left. This information can be turned off, however, if the student doesn't want to be able to see it. Figure 4.9 shows the menu that a student will see if they click the Options button.
Figure 4.10 illustrates a Hear and Respond lesson in execution. Note the instructions at the upper left of the display, which serve to make the student's experience more enjoyable. If a student cannot figure out what the correct word is, they can click the "up" arrow key to view the answer. To hear the phrase again, they can click the "left" arrow key. To stop a recording that is playing, they can click the "down" arrow key. If they click the "right" arrow key, the correct answer will automatically be filled in and the lesson continues to the next blank word. Of course, the users are always allowed to type their answer and see if they are correct. After typing, the student must click "enter" to see if they are correct and update their score.
Like other lesson types, Hear and Respond lessons provide Layer buttons at the bottom of the frame (recall Section 4.1). However, in this lesson type, the layer control is programmed to adjust the difficulty level. The harder the level, the more missing words. Students can increase or decrease the difficulty level by navigating the layers. Figure 4.10 shows the help message that appears when a student moves the mouse over the Up Layer icon.
Figure 4.11 shows the menu that pops up when a student clicks the Options button in a Hear and Respond lesson. Here students can change the font size of the transcription in their Lesson Display. They can also navigate to a different type of layer. If you set up your lesson with various layers of annotation, translating your recording into various languages or dialects, the student can access them here. Changing the annotation layer will cause ACORNS to display the transcription text using a different translation.