A research-based, interactive application to teach phonics, vocabulary and typing.
The project idea is to develop a typing and language learning application for the target users of the 'Children's Machine' ($100 laptop)

Assessment

Two user tests were conducted during the course of development, first one in May and the second June.

The first was with a 7 year old Chinese boy from E.V. and it focused on the learner's interaction experience. It was a wizard of Oz to test our concept, rather than a formal assessment of the learning outcomes. Results from this first test showed that our design was not intuitive enough as the learner did not know what to do.

After making extensive changes to our design, a second user test was conducted with a 2nd Grade class at Adelante Spanish Immersion School. We chose this school because the students share characteristics similar to our target users: non-native learners of English with limited or no experience with computers.

With consultation from the phonics teacher Mrs. Amelia Maynes, a phonic lesson which the class has not learned yet was specially developed for the user test. Three students were chosen by the teacher to participate - two boys and one girl.

Several important observations were made from this user test:

• Learners were relatively engaged with the program. All three completed the lesson.
• The original 20 word lesson with 4 word reviews was too long as the kids take a long time to type all the letters in the words.
• Help button is not intuitive and helpful enough.

Because of the lack of time, we did not manage to assess the learning outcome from going through a lesson of the OLPC Typewriter. However, several important design changes were made as a result of the observations made. These include:

• Reducing the number of words from 20 to 15
• 3 word review instead of 4
• Flashing letters in sync with (in addition to) finger movements when help button is pressed
• For lesson mode, show the next letter to type (instead of the showing the letter learner just pressed)
• Replacing clipart images with creative commons licensed flickr images

Future Plans

We plan to continue with more direct testing with elementary schools with a large population of non-native English learners from low socioeconomic background in the nearby school districts. At the same time, we are looking into the possibility of testing our application with users in Brazil and Nigeria through the OLPC.

The assessment will be measured in terms of the learning objectives of those individual lessons. Because typing skills in terms of speed take a considerable amount of time to develop, the assessment will primarily focus on language learning goals and correct typing technique (rather than of speed). Hence, the assessment will encompass:

• Phonics acquisition (of those explicit taught in the lessons)
• Vocabulary recall
• The right typing technique

At the end of each lesson, there will be a practice component in the application that will provide an assessment of the students' proficiency in the above mentioned three aspects. A longitudinal study can be conducted to assess the effect of using the OLPC Typewriter on learners' English acquisition. Part of this study will involve feedback from the teachers on whether the students have shown any noticeable progress in these specific skills. When students begin demonstrating reading ability, even rudimentary ones, that reflects an understanding and application of the knowledge and skills learned in our application, and also begin to type using the right technique, we will know we have done something right.

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