FunWritr

a language and literacy playground

FunWritr is an educational mashup that supports student language exploration and open-ended writing. By using existing natural language processing tools such as grammar parsers contained within the Natural Language Toolkit, the semantic ontology database called WordNet, and a dynamic image repository of more than 3 billion images offered through Yahoo!’s  Flickr application and API, the FunWritr application affords users the opportunity to view visual representations of the words and phrases they write as they write them.

The FunWritr user interface is Flash/Flex-based with a Django backend and data model. Each time the learner presses the spacebar the text they have written is parsed and new visually-rich content is returned. FunWritr uses image-based, ontologically organized aspects of language to support open-ended writing for guided literacy growth, personal pleasure, and language exploration. FunWritr makes new kinds of language play possible.

FunWritr was designed around a playground metaphor. Just as playgrounds have equipment for organized, rule-based activities such as basketball, soccer, and four-square; FunWritr has part-of-speech tagging, spell checking, and ways of dealing with words with multiple meanings which can be incorporated into instructional activities that focus on spelling conventions, grammar acquisition, vocabulary building, and prompted narrative and expository writing. By offering these supports in visible but non-obtrusive ways the application is able to meet district goals and aims without getting in the way of linguistic exploration and writing for fun. This balance of discovery and the explicit-yet-subtle presentation of language conventions resonates with schools, teachers and policy makers across the country even as it wins the hearts of aspiring writers and free-spirited language tinkerers. FunWritr performs just as well with open-ended creative and exploratory activities as it does within rule-based contexts. It supports the types of exploration, construction, and fantasy play which, in our opinion, ought to be featured more prominently in schools.

Just as there are safety features and regulations on physical playgrounds, FunWritr employs several strategies to ensure the images returned are appropriate for the classroom environment. The use of dynamic, open-ended data sets such as the 3,000,000,000+ images in the Flickr database creates the possibility for potentially inappropriate content to be displayed within the context of the application's use. To minimize this possibility, the FunWritr application filters the 1200 words most likely to return such content –substituting equivalent inoffensive words in their place. Moreover the way we set our image sorting algorithm and our use of 'safe content only' tagged candidate images further reduce the possibility of inappropriate content making it onto screens.

FunWritr is a research and design endeavor of the Langauge Learning & Technology Research and Design Group at the University of Texas at Austin.