Multilingual Education and India

At the recent International Mother Tongue Language Day, the use of technology was emphasised. Bloom Library and Storyweaver are two pieces of simple software which come to the rescue of educators, parents, and students who want to create books in their own language. It is good to note that, rather than competing with each other, they complement each other and host each other's books and resources on their websites. As many of you are already aware, there are two very useful online book-creation tools that are making enjoyable reading material available for children in many different languages. They are Storyweaver  from Pratham Books and Bloom Library   by SIL International. Both of these online libraries not only offer books in many languages but also allow one to create one’s own books and download them for future use. They also have a variety of  image libraries which can be used by someone creating a resource. 

  Kalika Bali’s talk on TED.com There is a lot of technology involved in producing educational materials. However, most language technology is focusing on majority languages while the minority languages stay behind. In a recent TED talk, a language technology enthusiast working with Microsoft, Kalika Bali, is talking about how this gap can be bridged.

Software to build a Community Library   Just making a reading method for children in minortity language communities is not enough. They need books to read, many books! BLOOM software was recently selected as one of the three finalists in an " All Children Reading" software contest . Bloom is a low-tech piece of sofware that helps with making books in any language. The website states: "Bloom dramatically lowers the bar, so that many more people can get involved in building a large collection of local language books. Bloom was designed with new computer users in mind, and it has special features to guide them in simple book making, so people need far less training than alternatives such as Word, Publisher, or In Design." I have heard from several people that BLOOM can handle non-Roman Scripts, but more than that, I learned that their helpdesk is very responsive when you happen to encounter a problem. Bloom has started a Bloom library in which you ca...