STTR Phase I: Commercializing an intelligent reading tutor for mobile devices

这个STTR第一阶段项目将商业化一个阅读智能导师，并把它从一个基于大学的研究环境，以商业上可行的产品。 第一阶段将集中于完成技术创新和测试和强化商业用途软件的研究目标。这款智能导师的一个独特功能是其内容创作功能，为教师和支持人员提供创建阅读材料的能力，以最好地满足学习者的需求，而无需了解任何编程，语言学或语音识别。 这款导师的另一个创新是能够在阅读的同时提供纠错，促进流畅。该项目的最初影响是能够使用智能导师来提高儿童的读写能力，该导师可在当今的移动的设备上购买，并且易于使用和创作个性化内容。更广泛的影响是为成人学习者利用和设计软件。在当今全球化的高科技经济中，识字本身比以往任何时候都更加重要。该STTR项目的拟议研究将使用个性化、无障碍、移动的和适合所有用户的环境来解决所有年龄段的识字问题。该小企业技术转让第一阶段项目将侧重于基于研究的阅读智能导师的商业化。 两个技术障碍是用户界面（UI）和提供流畅的语音识别。 开发依赖计算机提供指导的内容的主要困难之一是为每个单词提供所需的发音信息。一个关键的成功是阅读导师能够允许教师和其他人为系统创建内容，而不必了解任何编程、语言学或语音识别方面的知识。另一个关键的成功是允许教师使用括号和英语字母表的正常26个字符为字典外的单词指定自定义单词发音的能力。在商业市场上没有任何阅读流畅性程序将这种技术过程与“教师友好”的用户界面联合收割机相结合。这一创新使教师能够真正为学习者创建并添加相关的阅读材料到阅读智能导师中。本提案中研究的目标是解决技术障碍，并为跨多个平台和移动的设备的商业化准备阅读智能辅导软件。

This STTR Phase I project will commercialize a reading intelligent tutor and take it from a university-based research environment to a commercially viable product. Phase I will concentrate on the research objectives of finalizing technical innovations and testing and hardening the software for commercial use. A unique feature of this intelligent tutor is its content authoring capability that provides teachers and support staffs the ability to create reading material to best meet the needs of their learners without having to know anything about programming, linguistics or speech recognition. Another innovation of this tutor is the ability to provide error correction while reading and promoting fluency. The initial impact of this project is the ability to improve literacy for children using an intelligent tutor that's commercially available on today's mobile devices and easy to use and author personalized content. The broader impact is to leverage and design the software for adult learners. Literacy itself is more important than ever in today's global, high-tech economy. The proposed research of this STTR project will address literacy at all ages using an environment that's personalized, accessible, mobile, and adapted for all users.This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I project will focus on the commercialization of a research based reading intelligent tutor. The two technical hurdles are user interface (UI) and providing fluent speech recognition. One of the major difficulties in developing content that relies on the computer to provide coaching is providing the needed pronunciation information for each word. A crucial success is the ability for the reading tutor to allow the teachers and others to create content for the system without having to know anything about programming, linguistics or speech recognition. Another crucial success is the ability to allow the teachers to specify custom word pronunciations for out of dictionary words using brackets and the normal 26 characters of the English alphabet. There are not any reading fluency programs in the commercial market that combine this technical process with a "teacher friendly" user interface. This innovation enables teachers to truly create and add relevant reading materials to the reading intelligent tutor for their learners. The goal of the research in this proposal is to address the technical hurdles and prepare the reading intelligent tutoring software for commercialization across multiple platforms and mobile devices.