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Presence Examples From the web site of the National Science Foundation (NSF) "Baldi" the Virtual Tutor Helps Hearing-Impaired Children to Learn Speech; Teachers and students can customize classwork with a free toolkit Fri, 17 Aug 2001 Information technology (IT) research has
created a 3D computerized tutor that helps profoundly deaf children to
develop their conversational skills. "Baldi" the animated
instructor converses via the latest technologies for speech recognition and
generation, showing students how to
understand and produce spoken language. The conversational agent for language
training was developed through a three-year, $1.8 million National Science
Foundation (NSF) grant. Baldi could transform the way language is taught to
hearing-impaired children. In addition to helping students accurately produce
expressive
speech, the interactive system's curriculum-development software lets
teachers and students customize classwork. Students can review classroom and
homework lessons to improve vocabulary, reading and spelling, in addition to
speech. The project is led by Ron Cole at the
University of Colorado, Boulder. Grades 6-12 at the Tucker-Maxon Oral School
in Portland, Oregon are the first to use Baldi in the pilot study. Also
contributing to the research are the Oregon Graduate Institute's Center for
Spoken Language
Understanding, the Perceptual Science Laboratory at the University of
California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. The
tongue model used in Baldi is based on data collected by researchers at Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore. Based on the research of UCSC psychology
professor Dominic Massaro -- whose work is funded by NSF's directorate for
Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences -- Baldi's 3D animation (including
articulated mouth, teeth and tongue) produces accurate facial movements that
are synchronized to its audible speech, which can be either a recorded human
voice or computer-generated sounds. As a virtual being,
Baldi is tireless, allowing students to work at a comfortable pace in
studying the ways that subtle facial movements produce desired sounds. According to Cole, the project began
"with a vision in the mid-1990s to develop free software for spoken
language systems and their underlying technologies. We want to give
researchers the means to improve and share language tools that enhance
learning and increase access to information." At the Tucker-Maxon school, Baldi is used
by profoundly deaf children whose hearing is enhanced through amplification
or electrical stimulation of the cochlea. Teachers and students alike
participate in designing the project software and applications, and that
involvement provides real-time feedback to the researchers. The teachers use
a toolkit-available via the web at no cost to researchers and educators-with
graphical authoring software that lets them design their own multimedia
courseware. "The students report that working
with Baldi is one of their favorite activities," Cole said. "The
teachers and speech therapist report that both learning and language skills
are improving dramatically. Activities in the classroom are more efficient,
since students can work simultaneously on different computers, with each
receiving individualized instruction, while the teacher observes and
interacts with selected students." This project is the first to integrate
emerging language technologies to create an animated conversational agent,
and to apply this agent to learning and language training, Cole said. Baldi
is state-of-the-art in its integration of speech recognition, speech
synthesis and facial animation
technologies. The graphical authoring tools are likewise cutting-edge
examples of rapid prototyping for development of conversational agents. To create Baldi's speech recognition
capabilities, the researchers compiled a database of speech from more than
1,000 children. Those samples then shaped an algorithm for recognizing fine
details in the children's speech. Also, the animated speech produced by Baldi
from textual input is accurate enough to be intelligible to users who read
lips. Results from this project can be
incorporated into animated conversational agents for non-hearing impaired
applications such as learning new languages (e.g., English as a Second
Language). They may also be useful for diagnosing or treating speech and
reading disorders. Last fall, Cole received a five-year,
$4-million award from NSF's Information Technology Research initiative. The
new project will develop interactive books and virtual tutors for children
with reading disabilities. These successors to Baldi will use the latest
technologies by which computers can interpret facial expressions, integrating
feedback from audible and visible speech cues. For examples of the project software, see:
http://cslr.colorado.edu For information about Baldi and the UCSC
Perceptual For more about the Tucker-Maxon Oral School, see: http://www.oraldeafed.org/schools/tmos
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