IMPROVING LITERACY TECHNOLOGIES

Literacy technologies, which are now ubiquitous in our societies, can take different purposes, such as supporting literacy research, helping in the assessment of literacy, and enhancing literacy capabilities. The focus of WG3 is on the development of technological tools to study literacy processes, to assess literacy skills, and to foster literacy learning and teaching.

By putting together researchers from different European countries with different languages, who are involved both in the study of literacy and in the development of literacy tools, this WG will create a common and rich context to nourish a pan-European reflection for standardization procedures, and, of major importance, for taking into account the specificity of the different European languages.

WG3 aims to promote data sharing between the members of the action by creating multilingual corpora and data repositories, to set up guidelines and standards for making data interpretation comparable and for facilitating interoperability of systems, and to make literacy technologies accessible to both the general and academic public.

Objectives

• Review existing research tools and recording format.
• Propose standards for allowing exchange of data and interoperability.
• Develop open access databases of texts coupled with real time data.
• Review existing learning tools and assessing their learning effect.
• Publish an inventory of empirically tested literacy tools worldwide.
• Develop open access multilingual corpora of texts.
• Promote an interdisciplinary approach for coupling analyses of products and processes.
• Develop open access databases of literacy assessment.
• Communicate with private companies that sell digital devices used for literacy technologies (e.g., electronic pens, digitizing tablets) or that distribute edutainment programs.
• Train ESR in using the literacy technological tools developed within the network.
• Raise awareness of the general public to the value, but also caveats of literacy technologies.
• Promote the access and use of literacy technologies in developing countries worldwide.
• Develop collaborative research and apply for funding within H2020.

Teams

Working group leaders: Mark Torrance and Heikki Lyytinen 

A. Developing tools and data standards for handwriting capture and analysis (leaders: Guido Nottbusch and José Paulo Leal)

B. Writer support through online feedback (leader: Mark Torrance)                                                                                                                    
Team members: Cerstin Mahlow, Per Henning Uppstad, Christer Johansson, Vibeke Rønneberg, Lars Johnsen, and Evgeny Chukharev-Hudilainen

C. Developing and inventory or tools for supporting learning to write (leaders: Christian Rapp and Émilie Ailhaud)                                      
Team members: Otto Kruse and Carola Strobl

D. Development and cross-language evaluation of Thesis Writer (leader: Otto Kruse)          
Team members: Christian Rapp and Špela Arhar Holdt     
Review “Innovative digital technologies for supporting writing”                                                                                                                                      

E. Developing task and norms for cross-language comparison of keyboarding skill (leader: Luuk Van Waes)                                                        
Team members: Mariëlle Leijten, Victoria Johansson, Mark Torrance and Lise Fontain                                                                                          
Report “Task and norms for cross-language comparison keyboarding skill”