Open Allure for Learning

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Open Allure is a project aimed at developing new ways to share what we know with one another by permitting the collaborative creation and experience of interactive dialogs. These verbal exchanges give your interaction with the computer a very different quality and permit immediate feedback to help reinforce or reorganize your thinking. Because voice recognition is still imperfect, the interface could also support making choices by gesture: your webcam watches you as you raise your hand.

So with the same basic hardware (headset microphone and webcam) you might use with Skype, Open Allure offers you a conversation with your computer: it talks, it listens, it watches, it responds.

The script for this dialog is something anyone can create. The syntax is simple: just a question, a set of answers, responses to those answers and an indication of where to go next (one question ahead, two questions ahead ... or off to an entirely different sequence somewhere else on the internet). This makes the flow of questions potentially very learner-specific. Imagine lessons which find and focus on just the things you don't understand well.

As of 2011, Open Allure is multilingual and mobile. Portuguese (pt) and Italian (it) versions are available for download. Please request other languages if you have interest. An Android version and Java source code is also available.

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Read the book, The Success of Open Source by Steven Weber, to see how open source software is the precursor to open source knowledge.

NOTE: Data about and involved in the development work is being recorded and collected for research purposes from your participation in this open source project and will be used in a PhD study of open source software development. Participation by individuals under the age of 21 is prohibited.

History

In reverse chronological order:

Since March 2011, development work has gone into the companion Java project, Wiki-to-Speech.

On 15 March 2011, Chatterbox Challenge 2011 begins. Vote here.

On 9 March 2011, posted http://bit.ly/WikiToSpeechChatterboxChallenge'>presentation video showing capabilities of http://code.google.com/p/open-allure-ds/downloads/detail?name=Wiki-to-Speech-osx-0.1d38-for-Chatterbox-Challenge-2011.zip'>Wiki-to-Speech version 0.1d38 running a script intended for entry in the http://www.chatterboxchallenge.com'>Chatterbox Challenge 2011.

On 4 March 2011, posted http://bit.ly/TEDActiveWikiToSpeech'>presentation video intended for Steve Hargadon's talk at on elev8ed at TEDActive.

On 4 February 2011, the http://open-allure-ds.googlecode.com/files/WikiToSpeech.zip'>Android source code and http://open-allure-ds.googlecode.com/files/WikiToSpeech.apk'>.apk file were posted for downloading along with a YouTube demonstration video.

On 2 January 2010, Portuguese and Italian versions of Open Allure were posted. Scripts can dynamically switch languages via the in-script language override.

On 31 December 2010, http://open-allure-ds.googlecode.com/files/openallure-osx-0.1d30.zip'>Mac (13MB) and http://open-allure-ds.googlecode.com/files/openallure-win-0.1d30.exe'>Windows versions (4MB) of Open Allure 0.1d30 were posted with supporting files.

On 19 December 2010, http://open-allure-ds.googlecode.com/files/openallure-osx-0.1d27.zip'>Mac and http://open-allure-ds.googlecode.com/files/openallure-win-0.1d27.exe'>Windows versions of Open Allure 0.1d27 were posted.

On 21 October 2010, http://www.ispeech.org/'>iSpeech responded to a request for a trial.

On 19 October 2010, the http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/kauffman-labs-for-enterprise-creation-seeks-education-founders.aspx'>Kauffman Foundation Education Ventures Program declined an application for Open Allure.

On 7 October 2010, noting that http://newmusic.itunes.com/redir/cbx-cgi.do?v=2&la=en&lc=&a=R2H5Xxsrc7WoTUg20Bb%2B5II%2BsoCBW9G3Pjiftg1Cr9u6vg5It2pZOnFPWOsg2MxOdcfu86GFZmBA3s9p3jMZ1O%2B73O52JIjuLcUcOsLFpKvZPsUHN4G0L6%2F6IBLkgNUaa8NuS0B%2BER5AzNGytH3mlfrKpJpa3N6W9g6tC43lAII%3D'>Khan Academy is now on iTunes U, made a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDhl7V40RmI'>demo video of Open Allure giving a lesson using Khan's words and images.

On 4 October 2010, uploaded code for http://code.google.com/p/open-allure-ds/downloads/detail?name=openallure-0.1d22.zip&can=2&q='>Open Allure 0.1d22 with fade-in text along with a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT0NrHGNq2k'>demo video. Now that people have seen http://www.blio.com/'>Blio and http://vimeo.com/15444551'>Qwiki using text-to-speech, perhaps the idea of using text-to-speech under user control may catch on.

On 2 October 2010, uploaded first http://code.google.com/p/open-allure-ds/downloads/detail?name=setup-0.1d20.exe'>Windows setup.exe version of Open Allure.

On 23 August 2010, became aware of http://startl.org/2010/08/15/what-do-teachers-want-in-apps-for-education/'>Startl: What Do Teachers Want in Apps for Education?

On 31 July 2010, Derek Jacoby of Singular Summer http://biobit.ca/?p=69'>interviewed John Graves

On 11 July 2010, FTP site set up with http://openallure.mindspages.net/files.

On 11 June 2010, posted 0.1d19 version of Open Allure and associated video.

On 1 June 2010, Ron Stephens posted a podcast interview with John Graves about Open Allure on Python411. Here are notes on the interview.

On 31 May 2010, learned about Andreas Lutz Flash-based voice and gesture recognition. While this system has none of the scripting capability of Open Allure, it shows how the interface design could be polished and the application made web-based.

On 28 May 2010, the 0.1d16dev release was cloned to github.

On 17 May 2010, the 0.1d18dev release posted including in-script rules. Now Open Allure can respond verbally the way a book "responds" with an index, by taking a sought after term and "turning" to the point in a script where it is discussed.

In May 2010, John Graves became a member of the Singularity University Graduate Studies Program 2010 (GSP10).

Researchers at MIT have developed more sophisticated, 3D, webcam-based gesture recognition using a colored glove.

On 19 April 2010, the 0.1d12dev release posted allowing for automatic page turns (demo video) with [next], a variant of [input]. This gives Open Allure the ability to give a presentation which could be interrupted with a question.

On 17 April 2010, the 0.1d10dev release posted -- the first unicode-aware version. This version also runs on the Mac (although without iSight input due to YUV rather than RGB video capture).

On 29 March 2010, the 0.1d8dev release was registered to PyPI and included open/start commands to begin a new sequence from any input prompt.

On 25 March 2010, the 0.1d7dev release posted along with a demo video highlighting the new three panel interface and smile/talk/listen photos.

On 17 March 2010, the 0.1d6dev release posted along with another demo video highlighting the role of gesture (touchless pointing) in the chat interaction. For those interested, here are links to the NZ Sign Language gestures for Open and Sexy (NOTE: These gestures are not recognized by the system at this time). In addition, a sample script and ubuntu video demonstrate how concise and effective an Open Allure script is relative to the old 2001 AIML syntax.

On 11 March 2010, Open Allure entered the Chatterbox Challenge 2010. While the current version would be technically disqualified, a new version, incorporating code from Damien Elmes's Anki project and the South African ibid project may be a viable contender.

On 10 March 2010, the 0.1d5dev release of Open Allure included the first NLTK-based text inputs. This approach involves using regular expressions to match input strings and having the matches categorized by type so the response can be tailored appropriately (math responses need to do calculations, wordMath responses need to replace words with numbers and then do calculations, text responses need to be passed back into Open Allure through the nltkResponse.txt file). Two videos of the results were posted showing both a Windows and a ubuntu version working. A .zip file (21KB) was also posted for downloading.

On 27 February 2010, the 0.1d1dev release of Open Allure included the first access to webpages for question/answer/response/action sequences as shown in this demo video.

On 16 February 2010, the first source code for PyGhost, a voice and webcam gesture-based spelling game, posted.

On 10 February 2010, the first source code for PyPong, a webcam gesture-based game, was posted along with a demo video.

By 18-24 January 2010, the first prototype tutorial software was shown at LCA in Wellington, New Zealand during the education miniconference. See article at iTWire.

The Open Allure Dialog System project began on 27 November 2009 when Brian Thorne and John Graves started brainstorming for a project name on Google Wave. Brian then created this code repository site.

The idea for the project combined Brian's interests in computer vision and augmented reality games with John's interests in voice applications and educational software--all of which had been showcased at Kiwi PyCon 2009 in Christchurch, New Zealand on 7-8 November 2009 ( slides "Python in Computer Vision" and "Voice Interaction in Python").

A series of introductory and demo videos are posted on YouTube.