The purpose of this package is to support language revitalization efforts of Native American tribes. Hence, its name [AC]quisition [O]f [R]estored [N]ative [S]peech. The software is freeware and can be freely used for non-commercial purposes. It conforms to best practice criteria for working with linguistic data, in that it supports industry standard export and import facilities.
The ACORNS program allows language instructors and students to easily prepare and execute files containing language lessons. The software is intuitive and requires minimal technical training. Each file contains a series of lessons that link together through use of mouse clicks. The ACORNS application supports a variety of lesson types. Please refer to the help pages that are available for instructions. After creating a file, you can create a lesson by clicking on the icon that looks like a light bulb. You are then in setup mode. After creating a lesson and saving your file, you can execute the lesson. Do this by clicking on the icon that looks like a lightning bolt. To return to setup mode, simply press the esc key on your keyboard or click on the close button in the execute frame. ACORNS also allows you to create web pages from your lessons. They then will execute in a browser window. Use either the icon that looks like a spider web or the one that looks like a mobile phone for this. This procedure is much like creating PowerPoint presentations; instead of making slides, we make lessons.
Language instructors can use ACORNS to easily create and then exectute these lessons and post them in HTML pages to the Web. Students can also create lessons as part of class projects, so it is easy to create an on-line library of language lessons. ACORNS has capabilities to remap the Keyboard to any native language font installed as a True Type Font (ttf).
The author of the original program is Dan Harvey from Southern Oregon University, who retains the copyright to the software with all associated rights. You can contact him by email at harveyd@sou.edu.
We anticipate that this be a long term development project involving both undergraduate and graduate students. We plan to add many additional features lesson types as the software matures. We welcome and seek your comments and feedback.