OpenwordsWebapp

#OER #opensource #languagelearning #foss #socialenterprise

Introduction

Openwords webapp is an open source language learning webapp. We're currently looking for partnering universities, NGOs, or businesses. All Openwords code is available at this Github repository.

Openwords webapp allows instructors to author a variety of different kinds of problems for their students. These problems include listening/hearing, sentence construction, fill in the blank, conjugation, typing, simple review, vocabulary, minimal pairs (teaches phonetics), and other kinds of problems. Openwords is meant to allow students to practice on problems alongside the classroom in support of instructor goals and priorities. Openwords lessons can also be constructed for individual learners/autodidacts.

The Openwords organization is an alternative enterprise fully committed to open source technology and open educational resources (OER). Openwords is not obligated to pursue profit maximization for shareholders. Instead Openwords can focus on our educational, social and technological priorities. We do aim to create sustainable and growing revenue for our team through open source revenue models with client universities, NGOs and businesses.

Openwords Markup Language (OWML)

Openwords webapp uses a markup language for specifying language learning problems.

Openwords Markup Language documentation

OWML language is straightforward, human readable, text based. Individual lesson files consist of a series of language learning problems. Each problem consists of several lines of text. Openwords webapp "reads" these simple text files and presents lessons, composed of a sequence of problems, to the learner.

Lesson authors can use the OWML to author problems. Additionally, computational linguists and others with programming skills can use the OWML as a target for automatically creating language learning problems from a variety of open data sources. For example, repositories of parallel texts can be leveraged to create sentence problems in the OWML. Openwords is also building a GUI Lesson Builder to build OWML lesson files.