Lyric Reader

The Lyric Reader architecture is based upon the Goal Based Scenario philosophy (Schank 1992). All Lyric Reader applications place students in a culturally relevant environment and ask them to perform authentic tasks that require students to reconstruct and construct lyrics to existing songs. As students construct the lyrics to existing songs they are building their beginning reading skills. When the child encounters difficulty they are able to receive "just in time" guidance from a computer animated helper. When students construct lyrics to songs they are improving their vacabulary and written skills.

Learning Cycle

Components

Pedagogical Framework

Context Builder

Learning Cycle

Reconstructing lyrics allow students to build their beginning reading skills by experiencing expectation failure (Schank 1992). When a student constructs parts of a song by using their oral knowledge of the song lyrics, they think they have constructed the song correctly. But when the student hears the lyrics they have constructed played back to them they may experience an expectation failure if the song does not sound the way they expect it to. At this point, the student is able to focus (maybe with the help of the system) on the parts of the lyrics that are incorrect. The student is ready to receive specific word recognition help because she has realized that she has a problem.

The process is repeated many times over the course of reconstruct lyrics. The number of times the student repeats the cycle is dependant on how well the student is able to read and her knowledge and familarity with the song. The expectation failures that the students have are opportunities that if recognized and dealt with properly can turn into learning moments. With each mistake and try at constructing the lyrics, the student is building her written language; she is focusing more and more on the letters that make up individual words and she is strengthening the bond between the phonological, contextual and meaning representations of the word and its orthographic representations.

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Components

The Lyric Reader Architecture allows students to work through the above learning cycle in a culturally relevant environment. The Lyric Reader Architecture consists of two major components, the pedagogical framework and the context builder. The pedagogical framework is responsible for providing the instructional core for all Lyric Reader systems. The pedagogical core is what binds the distinct Lyric Reader systems together and enables teachers and parents to be assured that students, using different Lyric Reader applications, are receiving similar instruction. The context builder is responsible for personalizing each Lyric Reader application for a given target audience. Tools have been created to assist designers of Lyric Reader system in entering this data.

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Pedagogical Framework

The pedagogical framework consists of four modules that interact to create the instructional theory and guidance for Lyric Reader applications. The four components are:

Cover Story:  The cover story is the background story line that creates the need for the mission to be accomplished. It needs to be interesting and intrinsically motivating for the student. In Lyric Reader systems it is important that the cover story be based on an activity that is drawn from the student’s life experiences and activities that involve the genre of music around which the application is being developed. When deciding upon a cover story, it is important to consider whether the story will allow enough opportunities for the student to practice their reading skills.

Role:  The role defines who the student will play within the cover story. When defining the student’s role, it is important to think about whether it really represents the best person in the scenario to be required to practice the necessary skills.

Mission:  The objective of the mission is to give the student a goal she will be motivated to pursue. It needs to be somewhat realistic in nature. It should take the form of a goal that a real person would plausibly need to achieve for an important reason. The mission for a Lyric Reader application should also require the student to read and use the words in the lyrics correctly in order to achieve the goal successfully.

Interface:  The interface for each Lyric Reader application is designed around the musical genre chosen for the system. The goal is to situate the student in an environment that is related to the musical genre. In addition, Lyric Reader is designed to draw on the cultural affordances that children bring to the classroom, thus, icons are chosen that have existing meanings to students. To guide the interface designer each task has a template of graphic items that are needed. This template is given to the designer to instantiate based upon the musical genre of the system.