PhoneticExplorer

Basic idea

A phonetics toy, allowing children basic exposure to sounds of the world's languages, via the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA - [[1]]).

The IPA symbols are displayed; user can click on a symbol and hear it pronounced.

sounds are organized into rows (e.g. nasals) and columns (e.g. bilabials) and other categories
hover mouse over a symbol to see its full name
click on a symbol to hear it pronounced (in context?)
double-click a symbol to add it to your "tray" at the bottom of the screen
click a "play" button next to the tray to play the sounds of the tray in sequence
save your tray contents to the journal, tagged as "phonetic words" or something. Tagged as "words", "phonetic"

could integrate to word list building, dictionary building, etc.
special project: give kids a structure to build a mapping from their writing system to IPA symbols. Then they push the 'play' button for letters -> IPA -> audio transformation: instant feedback. (Idea from Paul Zwierzynski)
- This should have the advantage (compared to Speech / espeak) that it can be customized to minority languages by mother-tongue speakers of those languages.

There is far more information that *could* be displayed than will fit on the screen.
- Scroll it? OK, if necessary.
- Display the broadest categories only, and drill down to get to the symbols? Not great for exploring.
- Display only most common symbols on main page, and drill down for less-common symbols?
Finding reliable quality, copyright-unencumbered sound recordings
- Wikipedia seems to provide recordings in GNU Free Doc License; is the quality good, across the board?
OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines:
- What does collaboration/sharing mean in this activity?
- Competing goals:
  - conformance to OLPC-specific HIG
  - portability to other low-cost computing platforms

Copy an existing activity like TamTamMini to make a grid of symbols linked to sounds
Set up a few (half a dozen) sounds with symbols, names, sounds, grid layout. Start with consonants. Then vowels. Maybe never diacritics & suprasegmentals (until Graphite is ported to the XO?).
User testing with children
Fill in the gaps
Release early and often (as soon as presentable): don't get bogged down in comprehensiveness, complexity and advanced features
OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines:
- Sharing/collaboration:
  - Share the tray?
  - Go see what sharing looks like in other, similar activities. How do you avoid fighting over navigation control? First one in gets control?
- OLPC-specific HIG features, like sharing and journal, should be implemented in a modular way so as to allow relatively easy replacement or removal when porting to other low-cost computing platforms.