FOSS Literacy Software???? was: Edubuntu Ideas, Advocacy, and so forth

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Sat, 20 Oct 2007, M. Fioretti wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 19, 2007 15:25:47 PM +0100, Gavin McCullagh
> (gmccullagh at gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> > == FOSS Literacy Software ==
> > This is needed in my 1st World country and I'm pretty sure it must be
> > relevant in others, not to mention the developing world.  A multi-lingual
> > Literacy platform which could change its language, look and content to suit
> > the age-group/location/language of the user would be an awesome
> > contribution to the planet.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this. What should this
> "multi-lingual Literacy platform" be and do? Thanks,

There are several literacy packages for windows, though there don't seem to
be any mature ones for linux (please feel free to enlighten me if I'm wrong
on this!).  I'm not an expert on literacy so perhaps I'm wrong in what I
say -- this is more of a programmer's perspective than a teacher's.
Perhaps this is what David calls "babysitting software". I was asked to
find some for age 12-18 to use on our thin clients but I haven't been able
to.

If literacy software is really useful, it would be nice to have it be
multi-lingual, ie that you might write the software and the content and
then have it reasonably straightforward to translate or re-write the
content in a way that it would work for teaching literacy in a different
language.  It also seems that teaching literacy, if you are not to bore or
patronise the student, you might wish to tailor the content to that
person's age group and ideally their interests (though interests might be
asking a little too much).  The artwork and content you would use with a
7-year old child might be different to what you would use with an adult or
a teenager.

The reason I say a "platform" is that the content would ideally not be
bound up in the software.  It would ideally allow a teacher to craft the
content to their students' language, interests and age group.  On the other
hand, one would want to make as much of the pre-made content available as
possible so every teacher wouldn't have to reinvent it.  I imagine one
could do this already in SCORM, in which case a set of SCORM packages for
different languages/age-groups and a piece of software for crafting
literacy-teaching SCORM packages might be a good approach.

Perhaps I'm just blowing hot air here :-)

Gavin