From Ulaan Baatarto iPhone:

A Digital Library for the World’s Children

Ben BedersonComputer Science DepartmentHuman-Computer Interaction LabUniversity of Maryland

“Once upon a time a huge tribe of cats lived in a remote village. A river divided the village in two. Black cats lived on one bank and blonde cats lived on the other… In summer and autumn, a black cat ruled the village and in spring and winter, a blonde cat ruled the village.”

-Black ears … blonde ears (2002)

“I think you can hear me now. If you are all willing to listen to each other, we will be able to solve our problems. Only when you can do that will we be happy and able to live in peace.”

-Black ear … blonde ear (2002)in www.childrenslibrary.org

The Tamer Institute for Community Education, Palestineby Khaled Jumm’a, Illustrated by Foutinie Dedwase

International Children’s Digital Library

research led by the UMD

3,000,000 unique visitors

books in 51 languageswebsite in 16 languages

150,000 pages of digitized books100,000 visitors per month

now a non-profit foundation

users in 200+ countries

www.childrenslibrary.org

Children’s Libraries

• Many schools are without books

• Or books in the right languages

• Printing is expensive

• Scaling up is challenging

Technology can be a solution…

Demo

Canadian retired teacher leads non-profit group

electronic & physical materials

South African rural communitiesto teach in

supports pre-school children

ICDL contributes

uses

to this initiative

Taiwanese teachers support working mothers &

English taught as a 2nd language

their children…

ICDL is tool for 2nd language

ICDL books used to read/writetheir own stories

acquisition

Romanian class translates books on bullies

half the class translates a book

ICDL supports translation

the other half reviews

& language acquisition

translations

work

4-Country, 4-Year Study

• Children, teachers, librarians, parents in Honduras, Germany, New Zealand, USA participated

• Case study methods were used to understand how children changed in their attitudes towards books, technology & world views

• Children’s motivation to read was increased with the ICDL

• Children read more diverse books…

• Children’s confidence with technology increased…

• Children’s world view expanded…

4-Country, 4-Year Study

Teacher’s Domain - WGBH

Mongolia• Working with Ministry of Education• Funded by World Bank• Adding digital access to

traditional literacy project

• Phase I – Urban• Phase II – Rural• Phase III – Mobile

December 2006

December 2006

December 2006www.read.mn

OLPC & ICDL• First pilot now

• Thousands of laptops in schools

• ICDL on every laptop

• Goal: 200,000 laptops to all children

Readability

Readability

DemoDemo

Textbox Workflow

1,000 translation volunteers=> 75 proofing automated output

25,000 pages proofed in 15 days

Similar to automated process!

experimentread ½ book each with…

physical book

standard

ClearText

PopoutText

27 adults

The Blue Sky

Ciconia Ciconia

…are these any good?

ClearText

A Book on Every Device

• Let the library follow you

• Mobile phones are everywhere

• Capacity is growing very fast

Create Stories on a Phone

• Physical world

• Record and share

=> Creative expressionfor education

Mobile Relationships

• Gives distribution

• Supports collaboration

• Go where the kids are

• Social change in acceptance

Future Directions

• Distributed Human Computation (DHC)

• Combine – machine translation– monolingual speakers

=> 10,000 books in 100 languages each

Translation as Collaboration

Language as a Redundant Code

• Model language as an error detecting and correcting code

• Transmit through a “noisy channel”

Language as a Redundant Code

1. Errors detectable and correctable

“I has cheezburger” => “I have a cheesburger”

Language as a Redundant Code

1. Errors detectable and correctable

2. Errors detectable, not correctable

“I have cheeseburger” ?=> “I have a cheesburger”?=> “I have cheeseburgers”

Language as a Redundant Code

1. Errors detectable and correctable

2. Errors detectable, not correctable

Support communication

And shared cultural context

Language as a Redundant Code

1. Errors detectable and correctable

2. Errors detectable, not correctable

3. Errors not detectable

“I have a cheeseburger.”

Language as a Redundant Code

1. Errors detectable and correctable

2. Errors detectable, not correctable

3. Errors not detectable

Add redundancy to convert errors to type 2

Translation as Collaboration

Preliminary results:– Left: Monolingual humans improve MT– Right: Multiple passes improve results

Translation as Collaboration

futuremobile

ofHCI

hugenatural language (and vision)

physical computing

context awareness

user

social networks

generated content

privacy awareness

greater…

shipping books are difficult

the needs of the world have never been

impacted by…impacted by…20th century models of

&expensive

educational services & materialsaccess to

has declined

intolerance & prejudice

children are

continues…

ICDL Acknowledgements…

• Co-Directors: Allison Druin, Ann Weeks, Tim Browne

• Current ICDL team, Anne Rose, Sheri Massey, Evan Golub, Anita Komlodi, Jenny Preece, Weiman Hou, Dana, Tara, Jonah, Stephan, Sam, Ruby, Oska, Mamae, Camille, Sonovia, Devin, Chamira, Alberto, Alma, Jose Raul, Grace, Max, Sarah

• Funding: National Science Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Intel, Gov’t of Mongolia, Microsoft Corp., Elias Foundation, Adobe Corp.

www.childrenslibrary.org