Background:
It all started in July 2022, with the discussion between two minds that are determined and committed to solve hard problems for the society in their respective spheres of influence. A veteran from the space of digital public good and a senior government officer of an education department. It was when the ai4bharat.org initiative got launched announcing the disruptive innovation with indic languages.
It is recognised that to prepare the children for the future, in this globally connected world, language proficiency plays an important role in enabling access to opportunities and possibilities. The idea of artificial intelligence can solve the challenge of language learning has germinated
An initiative sprung, inspiring many more in the pipeline:
- TheALL by EkStep Foundation
- A Pioneering community initiative supported by EkStep Foundation which seeks to develop tools and processes for accelerated learning of language fluency skills with the support of the Language AI tools and technologies.
Release objective:
The elementary objective of the first version of the ALL is to find an answer, that AI models can be fine tuned for Tamil language, could play a feedback mechanism for children while speaking simple words, sentences and paragraphs in Tamil and English, correcting in real time.
Persona
- 6th to 8th grade student, studying in tamil and english medium in Government Schools
The Story
- Kayalvizhi (fictitious name), a 7th grade student from, government school from the rural part of Tamil nadu, can speak Tamil language with basic reading abilities. However her fluency in comprehending Tamil has been rustic, especially with the learning loss due to Covid.
She engages with the ALL, through a simple portal interface on her schools hi-tech lab computer and starts the journey by picking up familiar words in Tamil, the tools thrown at her. As she gets familiar with interacting with the tool, she extends to pick longer sentences in tamil. The ALL tool captures her voice and boom reverts back with feedback on which words were spoken correctly and which requires correction. As she practices, till she gets right, the tool patiently in a non judgmental manner helps her to gain grasp and confidence over her ability to speak Tamil sentences fluently.
Now that she has gained fluency with ther speaking in Tamil, ALL, now pushes her to explore speaking in English language, starting with the simple words and sentences that are translated from those she just read and spoke in tamil.. A reference audio version is available to overcome the reading constraints. Followed by a similar feedback from the AI models, to gain confidence and command over speaking english, subsequently.
At the end of, as short as a 30 mins period, Kayalvizhi is able to gain proficiency with over 10 words and 10 sentences in both Tamil and English.
Use Cases
- Read and Speak in Tamil - Words and Sentences
- Listen and Speak in Tamil - Words and Sentences
- Read and Speak in English - Words and Sentences
- Listen and Speak in English - Words, Sentences and Stories
As
- SpeakwithMe
- A capability to help the learner with feedback/correction on a word or a sentence prompted in Tamil.
- Subsequently the word or a sentence is prompted in English
- Play with me
- A random set of sentences in English, generating mechanic, listens and evaluates the fluency and correctness of the spoken sentence, powered by the AI behind.
- Learn with Friends
- A story basic mechanic, which enables the learner to engage with the tool directly or along with another fellow learner, ability to score individual learner performances, gamifying the learning experience, evaluated by the AI behind.
Key features:
- Read words and sentences displayed in the Screen
- Listen to the displayed words and sentences
- Able to record , words and sentences spoken by the student
- Play back of the words and sentences spoken by the student
- Play a reading game of a Story - as a single player and two players,
Tech Stack:
- A React JS based client side component
- Language AI Models by ai4bharat through APIs (Speech to Text and Text to Speech)
- A serverless deployment on S3 buckets, rendered directly on the client machine as Jason objects
Released On:
15th March, 2023
Deployment/Hosting Environment:
- Hosted as an Appliance in the ALL Server - a Language Learning infrastructure hosted by Ekstep Foundation
