MEDIA ADVISORY March 6, 2001 PA/M 01-08
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH AND VIRTUAL TUTOR FEATURED ON ABC-TV'S PRIMETIME THURSDAY
"Baldi" the computerized 3D tutor for children with hearing impairments
This week the ABC-TV news magazine PrimeTime Thursday will feature a National Science Foundation (NSF) information technology research project. Correspondent Jay Schadler will describe how "Baldi," a 3D virtual tutor, is helping hearing-impaired students to understand and produce spoken language. The animated instructor converses via the latest computer technologies for speech recognition and generation.
NSF today issued a press release (with images) about the project, which is led by University of Colorado professor Ron Cole. The release is available at http://nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/press/pressrel.htm.
The "virtual tutor" is one of several NSF projects in which computer research is being used to educate people with disabilities. A second NSF release this week features a computer-animated "signing avatar" that translates English into sign language, helping deaf and hard-of-hearing children develop language and reading skills.
Who: University of Colorado professor Ron Cole, leader of the NSF project "Creating Conversational Agents for Language Training: Technologies for the Next Generation of Interactive Systems"
What: Segment on ABC-TV PrimeTime Thursday
Where: To be aired on local ABC-TV stations
When: 10:00 p.m. EST, Thursday, March 8, 2001
See: http://nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/press/pressrel.htm
("Baldi" the Virtual Tutor Helps Hearing-Impaired Children to Learn Speech)
(Learning by Signing: Computerized Characters Boost Deaf Education)
For more information:Tom Garritano, (703) 292-8070/[email protected]
-NSF-