Language Education Board
This board uses the fabric and pin and play to allow spatial organisation of sound bites, statements, greetings and other language related areas. By plugging a chip in, it simply adds the word to the phrases available for a particular language. Pressing a chip would play a sound back.
Different chips can hold different sound clips. Different languages could be activated by adding “Language Chips”, or two if working in a translation/tuition mode. Volume controls could be added using the potentiometer dials co control master/translation languages.
Different sound bites can be grouped together into areas, for e.g. “Greetings”, “One Liners” or “numbers” etc. This can be arranged depending on the needs and abilities of the users. Lessons could be easily added, and pins can be added and removed depending on language skill.
PACT Analysis
People: Language students of all ages. Aimed at beginners/intermediates. Broad range of abilities. Can either be in group or individually, perhaps in student-teacher context. minimal language knowledge needed as it’s a learning tool, but competency in at least a native language.
Activities: Learning meanings and associating phrases in different languages. Listening to accent and pronunciation. Assorting grouped phrases spatially depending on preference. Generating sentences or phrases, or moving pins in a line.
Contexts: Well suited to indoor classroom interaction, either in schools or colleges, or language learning centres. Portable and moveable to each classroom. Could be transported from home to a learning centre. Would still work in a private setting at home, although main emphasis is classroom setting. Only consideration is somewhere where sound is possible, or consider headphones instead.
Technology: The pins could store the data on a memory chip (word, spelling, pronunciation), but probably more suited to holding an ID for a phrase. Communication with PC/ language database recognises ID and activates phrase. Standalone could be phrase only, or PC interface for profiling and sentence tuition. Needs to be accessible to most people, no major technological setup required.