[kde-edu]: Math Software for young children

[Mario Fux]

Am Dienstag, 25. Januar 2005 18.04 schrieb Master Maths:

Morning

[snip]

> Hello all
>
> We all recognize the need for a central framework for kde-edu to become
> anything more than just a collection of software. But this list is
> waaayyyy too quit if we want to implement something like that.
> We should have a lot more dialog on this matter, including developers,
> users, artist, educators everyone involved on this list.
>
> This will be a big project and will take many hands to make it work.
> That is probably the biggest problem with getting this of the ground, who
> is going to do the work?
>
> Probably the easiest way to get started is to take some current project
> that will give us most of the basics that we can build on, maybe Arnold's
> work in kdenonbeta, or perhaps look at KDevelop, chop what we don't need
> and go from there.
> Most of what we could need is already part of KDevelop.
>
> All the gurus can't stop shouting to use KParts so maybe we should.
>
> Anna-Marie has asked for some ideas so here's mine.
>
> We use a very effective CBT (Computer Based Training) system at work, and
> like many other similar systems it uses voice and flash animations to
> teach the theory and application of Maths. It is server-client based
> system that "pushes" modules requested by the clients. It also keeps a
> record of the progress made for each user on the system.

Just a hint or idea: Use the data of wikimedia.org and their different modules 
(Wikibooks, Wikipedia, Wiki Commons, Wikispecies etc. and the new one, 
Wikiversity).

> If we are in any way to live up to our edu label we are going the have to
> teach using pictures and sound.
> Maybe make the edu framework a window to teach through. "skin" it for the
> different grades, and make the kde-edu tools available from this framework.
>
> "Theory" heavy subjects, like maths could make more use of the animated
> svg and audio via smil 2.0 with help from edu tools to show application.
> "Experience" heavy subjects, like languages could make more use of "show
> and test" kde-edu tools.
>
> Another exciting prospect is that in 12 - 36 months voice synth systems
> will be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, this will make
> teaching via a CBT system, so much more manageable (no voice artist and
> your voice over in a text file instead of 5 gigs of recordings like we
> have now).

See KTTS [1]: The KDE Text-To-Speech System.

And festival [2], a voice synth system, has a new technology in its 1.9 
version with a way better "sound".

BTW: I hope to see a speech recognition system (perhaps sphinx [3]) in a 
future version of KDE (and GNOME and Co).

> Your coments please.
>
> Please excuse the long wind.
>
> Kind Regards
>
> Trenton

thx for your work
Mario

[1] http://accessibility.kde.org/developer/kttsd/
[2] http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/
[3] http://cmusphinx.org