ACORNS Version 7 and Sound Editor Version 2 Available

[dan harvey]

We apologize if you get multiple notifications.  The new ACORNS 7 release is available for free download at http://cs.sou.edu/~harveyd

Click on the acorns link and then to the download page. It runs on all major computer platforms.

The new release has many enhancements; a brief description of some of these follow:

1) You can, with a single click, create web pages out of indigenous language lessons, and these do not require Java or any browser plugins. These web pages work on all of the popular desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. The pages are open-source using HTML5/JavaScript, and generate media utilizing industry-standard audio and picture formats. The web pages reconfigure themselves to the type of device and accommodate both portrait or landscape mode.

2) There is a new lesson, which we call Questions and Answers. The student is asked a question and has the task of responding with one of a group of acceptable answers. A single lesson can have many of these questions, and ACORNS randomly chooses which ones appear to the student. This lesson type is in addition to the nine other lesson types that were part of ACORNS release 6.

4) We are also releasing Version 2 release of our Sound Editor. The new version allows rate of speech changes while maintaining pitch, several audio filtering options, and supports both wide and narrow band spectrograms.

5) There are many other enhancements, but probably more than I should mention here.

ACORNS does not yet incorporate automatic language independent speech recognition. When perfected, we plan to release this capability as an upgrade to version 7, and we will integrate this facility into Hear and Respond and Questions and Answers lessons.

Our hope is for this program to be useful to tribes working to restore their language and culture. It is free for non-commercial use.

Dan Harvey

Professor of Computer Science

Southern Oregon University

har...@sou.edu