TalknType

TalknType sources in activities/talkntype TomHannen... see more templates or propose new

This will eventually be an Activity based on the 1970s toy, Speak&Spell.

The original Speak & Spell toy from the 1970s.

Initial Activity Idea

• User opens the activity, and is presented with a skill level (1 to 4).
• The activity speaks, using the eSpeak Speech Synthesis software
• The activity asks the user to spell a word from the dictionary (one of four, based on the skill level).
• As the user types each letter, the activity reads the letters out loud.
• When the user presses Enter, the activity reads the entered letters as a word.
• The activity compares the entered letters with the real word, and informs the user whether the word was spelt correctly or not.
• Another random word is offered for the user, etc, etc.

Video demo

Extremely blurry demo of how the app works currently... The sound is more important than the video... <youtube>ZvYlJVfyJsg</youtube>

Installing

The code [here] isn't ready for general use yet - it doesn't use the Sugar user interface, and only uses the terminal within sugar.

• Make sure your loudspeaker volume is turned up, using the keyboard keys.
• Open a copy of the Terminal activity. Change to root user:

su -

• Download the code and associated files into a directory:

git-clone git://dev.laptop.org/activities/talkntype

• note: you might need to install git-core for this to work. To do that, type

 yum install git-core

• Make sure the sugar-speechd and talkntype.py files are executable

cd talkntype 
chmod a+x 01talkntype.py
chmod a+x sugar-speechd

• Get out of root user, and do the rest of the instructions as the OLPC user.

exit

• Then run the sugar-speechd speech server:

./sugar-speechd

• The terminal will appear frozen, but this is ok. It means the server is running. Go back to the desktop (Home), and open another Terminal activity.
• Go to the directory that talkntype.py is stored in by typing

cd talkntype

• run it by typing:

python 01talkntype.py

• You will need to type quite slowly.
• There is no Backspace key.
• To exit the program, press 9 instead of entering a word.

To do

• Sugarise the idea into something usable by normal people! I have no real programming knowledge, so all help would be greatly appreciated! Please contact me via my userpage.
• Include collaborative elements - spelling against a friend?

Code

The code (such as it is so far) can be found at [http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=activities/talkntype]

Dictionaries

The code above only uses the simplest (level 1) dictionary, and doesn't have any of the vocabulary refinements of the original toy (ie doesn't say "spell FOR, as in for me", or "spell FOUR, as in number four".

The original dictionaries are presented below, as comma separated variable sets:

Dictionary Level 1:

"above","angel","answer","calf","does","earth","echo","extra","for","four","guess","half","health","iron","learn","ocean","once","one","oven","pint","pull","range","says","ski","sure","swap","talk","to","touch","two","view","warm","was","wash","word"

Dictionary Level 2:

"another","beauty","beige","blood","bullet","carry","chalk","child","danger","early","eight","flood","floor","front","guide","haste","heaven","linger","mirror","other","priest","ready","rural","school","squad","squat","sugar","today","union","watch","water","yield"

Dictionary Level 3:

"already","believe","built","bushel","comfort","coming","couple","cousin","enough","finger","guard","healthy","heavy","instead","laugh","measure","mother","niece","outdoor","period","plague","police","promise","quiet","ranger","relief","remove","search","shield","should","shovel","someone","source","statue","terror","trouble","welcome","wolves","woman","wonder","worth"

Dictionary Level 4:

"abscess","ancient","anything","brother","bureau","butcher","caravan","circuit","corsage","couldn't","courage","discover","dungeon","earnest","feather","freight","greater","jealous","journey","language","laughter","leisure","lettuce","machine","minute","pierce","pleasure","plunger","poultry","quotient","reindeer","rhythm","schedule","scissors","serious","shoulder","stomach","stranger","surgeon","tomorrow","treasure","workman","yacht"

Interface Words:

"a","as in","b","c","correct","d","e","eight","f","five","four","g","h","here is your score","i","i win","is","j","k","l","m","n","next spell","nine","now spell","now try","o","one","p","perfect score","q","r","s","say it","seven","six","spell","t","ten","that is correct","that is incorrect","that is right","three","try","two","u","v","w","wrong","wrong try again","x","y","you are correct","you are right","you win","z","zero"

Personal Spelling Lists

I've had a lot of fun with this activity by entering in personal spelling lists for my users. I created a custom list with abiword.

• Open Write, then abiword. Directions for this are at http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=41.msg5536#msg5536.
• Open a word list by going into File then Open.
• This will open a dialog box. On the "name" side, click on the talkntype folder.
• Select a word list. I choose words_d.txt
• edit the list, keeping the comma between the words
• You will not be able to save over the original list. So do a save as in the default folder, which should be olpc. Enter "words_d" in the title box and make sure you save as a .txt file.
• Repeat the process for the "pronounce_d.txt" file.
• Now it's time to move the files into the right place by exiting abiword and going into terminal.
• To do that, first I typed:

 su

• Then

 cd /home/olpc/talkntype

• Make a backup file of the word list you will change. I picked word list d:

 mv words_d.txt words_d.txt.old
 mv pronounce_d.txt pronounce_d.txt.old

• now move your word files into talkntype

 cd /home/olpc
 mv words_d.txt talkntype/words_d.txt
 mv pronouce_d.txt talkntype/pronouce_d.txt

• close terminal

• follow the instructions above to launch the program. Choose difficulty level 4 to activate the new words.

Other links

• Screen_Reader Another OLPC activity using the eSpeak modules.
• Speech_synthesis Speech Synthesis on the OLPC.
• [[1]] Flash version of the Speak & Spell
• [[2]] Another Speak & Spell emulator
• [Speak&Spell Wikipedia article]