Karaoke Literacy

From SPARK

Brief Summary

Creating read-a-long text for health education and literacy.

To communicate clearly is a real challenge for the literacy specialist. This problem can be overcome by creating a read-a-long video CD in the target group’s language. Special electronic tools, such as Sony's Movie Studio 3.0 (some details included), along with appropriate visual materials can be combined in a relatively inexpensive way to accomplish this task. In remote areas where the electronic tools are not available, flipcharts can be used along with cassette recordings.

Introduction

Communication with indigenous people groups is a real challenge. Most of these people do not read or write. One approach to bridge the communication gap is by creating a read-a-long Video CD in their language. This allows them to see the text as the text is being read.

What was done?

The Need

Literacy poses many challenges. One challenge is for the literacy specialist to clearly communicate in the language of the target group. Understandable pronunciation is only one of many problems. For remote people groups there is a need for the distribution of health materials. This is the target of the government in this SE Asia country. But how may this be accomplished when the language is a barrier?

The Karaoke Literacy Solution

Our organization has created “shell books”, small books with illustrations and pertinent information. One major topic of these books is health. These books are translated into the vernacular language of a people group.

To supplement this translated material, a “Karaoke VCD” has been created. This allows viewers to listen to their language while viewing the highlighted line of text on screen. The highlighting is changed to match the recorded text.

How does this work?

We use Sony’s Movie Studio 3.0 to match the sound to the text and to control text highlighting.

• First we create a good recording of the shell book using a native speaker of the target language.

• The text of the shell book is copied into a text editor.

• The text is imported into Sony’s Movie Studio 3.0, eight lines at a time.

• The audio is imported into the Movie Studio.

• Eight templates are created to place behind the text, one for each line to be highlighted.

After editing and aligning the text, templates, and audio, we end up with a movie. Each line viewed is highlighted as this is being read.

Making the Video CD

Movie Studio 3.0 allows one to output in a number of formats. We choose the VCD option with PAL formatting for our location. When the program is finished, a VCD is burned in the CD burner of the machine running Movie Studio.

Visual VCD

We’ve made a version of a shell book using the illustrations and no text. Movie Studio 3.0 allows panning of the illustrations. This adds interest to the product and is more appropriate for applications where literacy is less of a goal, and communicating a message clearly is most important.

Future options

We plan to produce a version which shows the illustration for a few seconds before reading the text. Another consideration is to have one line of text appear at the bottom of the screen so that the illustration may be viewed for a longer period of time.

Results

The initial testing took place in April 2005. Beginning readers were seen following the text on the screen as this was being read. The literacy specialists were encouraged.

However, the technology is beyond that which is locally available. Only a few can benefit in a rural setting, usually the head of the village or a wealthy person who can afford to own and maintain a Video CD player.

For remote locations the use of a cassette recording and a flipchart are much more appropriate. VCD media is appropriate where VCD players are currently in use.

Purchasing and renting a portable VCD setup will be considered for the future. Our “test bed” literacy team is willing to rent the equipment when this becomes available.

But for less “remote” areas, VCDs seem a reasonable investment. The media cost is quite inexpensive (less than half a US dollar). Since the VCD players are seeing daily use with other media, distribution involves little more than providing the media and encouraging the target group to use their equipment for a literacy class.