In keeping with Ted's splendid redesign for this blog, I've updated the PHPBB version of The Aviary (which will hopefully help with the recent spam problem), and since the previous theme wasn't compatible with the new version, I've updated the theme as well. We've lost the cute bird motif, but overall I think it looks a lot cleaner, less dated and more usable. What do you think?
Check out the new rethemed Aviary here.
Oh, and one other bit of news -- the long-delayed Hover Plover game suite project seems to be getting off the ground at last, and we hope to be launching a crowdfunding campaign for it in the near future. We've got a game development studio on board, and they've got several ideas on what sorts of arcade-style drilling games would be best for learning steno, but if you've got any ideas of your own, please feel free to tell us in the comments! Nothing is set in stone yet, so now is definitely the time to give us input.
The thing I'm building up for myself was conceived based on my addiction to 'Head It' from Pokémon.
ReplyDeleteThe idea is you are shown a word (or a button or theory illustration) and a picture of the fingering and asked to hit it a few times. Then, after several such words, you are tested on it again. This portion works rather like the flash card program Anki, in that it brings back words and principles over increasing intervals of minutes, hours, days, months, and so on.
The next bit is drill. Basically, a word falls down the screen. Every time you input a correct stroke, it bounces back up again a bit, and when you hit the final stroke, it explodes. Each would be accompanied by a picture, and my wife voicing the word. If you hit a wrong stroke, or it goes off the bottom of the screen, you get a buzzer, and then an opportunity to practice the word a few times before continuing.
Unfortunately, games take a long time to write, and I want to learn steno fast enough to equal my current plodding speed (60WPM) by December, so I just started building an Anki deck loosely related to Learn Plover.