Next version of ACORNS

[dan]

One of the major goals of ACORNS 7.0 is to have the ACORNS lessons
work on tablets and smart phones. This is proving to be a challenging
project. The industry is moving away from Java Applets, so version 7.0
requires a significant amount of redesign. Furthermore, there are five
major browsers on desktops, and at least four more on tablets and
smart phones. There are also a host of tablet/smart phone computer
platforms. Each combination of these technologies present their own
idiosyncratic problems, so ensuring that ACORNS lessons will work
cross-platform is difficult.

In ACORNS 7.0, we also are hoping to incorporate language-independent
speech recognition in a question/answer lesson. The expert speaker
asks a question and the student answers verbally. The program
determines if the answer is correct, close to correct, or wrong. This
capability is also quite challenging.

As a result, it will take some time to complete version 7.0. We'll
post further when we have more to say about the new version.

[Joyce Tang Boyland]

Keep it up, we appreciate it and are looking forward to whatever you have coming!