EDUCATIONAL MULTIMEDIA DICTIONARY Yannis Kotsanis Doukas School S.A. Mesogion 151, Maroussi 151 25, Greece [email protected]http://www.doukas.gr ABSTRACT The "Educational Multimedia Dictionary" (EMD) is a computer based reference and training tool of lexical data and aspects of the Greek Language re- lated to them. EMD is a user-friendly, interactive and explorative multimedia environment (with a “book” metaphor), which includes well-defined educational material for use in individual, group and classroom study, especially designed for chil- dren between ages 8-14. The EMD educational software is based on a user environment, which contains the electronic dictionaries with 8 linguis- tic games and a supporting environment, which undertakes the management and processing of lex- ical and audio-visual databases of the system. It has been developed within the framework of the research program DIALOGOS: Improvement of Man-Machine Communication using Language Technology, under the ILSP co-ordination (GSRT, EPET-II). Keywords: educational multimedia software, ma- chine-readable dictionaries, lexical databases, lin- guistic games, Greek language. 1. INTRODUCTION The “Educational Multimedia Dictionary” (EMD) is a teaching and reference multimedia tool which was developed (by Exodus S.A.) within the framework of the project “DIALOGOS: Improve- ment of Man and Machine Communication with the use of Language Technology” (supported by the grant: EPET II, General Secretariat of Re- search and Development, Project 715, Coordina- tor: Institute for Language and Speech Processing - ILSP, 1996-98), focusing on lexical and related da- ta of the modern Greek language. It is known that students learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process and when there is more than one media involved. The great advantage of multimedia is that they provide both these positive learning contexts in a way that mo- tivates trainees. Hypermedia can make the teacher act as facilitator/handler of information and stu- dents as active learners. In essence, hypermedia expose students to multiple contents and contexts by the diversity of media as well as stimulate a va- riety of cognitive processes. The linguistic design of the dictionary is based on the combination of a theoretical description given by the lexicographical model (used by ILSP) with the pragmatic issues posed by the potential user requirements. The definition and creation of the macrostructure of the dictionary (i.e. the words that will be included) and the microstructure of the dictionary entry (what type of lexical information is included, the features which will be used for the codification, and how it is presented to the user) takes into account a distinctive mode of presenta- tion of the lexical data, that conforms to the needs of the young user. The “Educational Multimedia Dictionary” contains original material in machine-readable form to be used by individuals and tutorial groups. It is de- signed for children between ages 8-14, providing the interactivity and the various possibilities of multimedia navigation. It features an ergonomic user interface using a “book” metaphor and a friendly but powerful data accessibility through multiple criteria. It is based on the following two sub-systems: a user environment, with electronic dictionaries and various multimedia linguistic games, and a system environment, with lexical and audio-visual data bases, that include the text, graphics, images and sounds of the dictionary. The construction of the EMD profited from existing dictionaries, in regards to design and the already coded existing linguistic data. In its current version the EMD contains: 5.500 lemmas with definitions (basic mean- ing), examples, etymology, hyphenation, syn-
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.