for your information. please find the attach news and report on the braille project. Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2010 2:34 AM Subject: Exciting Announcement from TechBridgeWorld regarding the Braille Writing Tutor Project Dear Colleagues, As you know, TechBridgeWorld has been enhancing work on the Braille Writing Tutor which was first developed through our V-Unit program by Nidhi Kalra and Tom Lauwers when they were Ph.D. students in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Since then, dozens of faculty, students, staff, and partners have contributed to the success of this project. The Braille Writing Tutor now has functionality in several languages (English, Arabic, French, Chinese, Swahili, and Bangla), enhanced practice modes, and several educational games have been developed and tested with community partners. We are delighted to announce that version 2 of the Braille Writing Tutor hardware specifications and an early release of the corresponding software are now available on SourceForge at the following link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/tbwbrailletutor/ Please share this link with your friends and colleagues, especially those who work with people who are visually impaired and technologists in the open source community who would be interested in working with the software and sharing additional language and game functions they might come up with. The latest work with the Braille Writing Tutor project will be featured at our upcoming 2010 TechBridgeWorld Interactive event, scheduled for November 11, 2010, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. in the Newell-Simon Hall Perlis Atrium at Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh campus. If you will be in Pittsburgh at that time we welcome you to attend and enjoy the event! Details will be posted at www.TechBridgeWorld.org/Interactive2010. The Braille Writing Tutor project remains a vibrant and exciting effort among TechBridgeWorld students, faculty and staff and our partners. I have attached a few quotes to share with you from this summer's work in Chittagong, Bangladesh to illustrate the importance of this project and how you have contributed to its long-term success. We are happy to address any questions you may have about the project and hope you are as excited as we are about this open source release of this important technology! Sincerely, --Sarah, on behalf of the TechBridgeWorld Team Sarah M. Belousov TechBridgeWorld Project Manager Join the power of 100@100 http://www.TechBridgeWorld.org/100at100 * * * * * Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue Newell-Simon Hall 2104 Pittsburgh, PA 15213 www.TechBridgeWorld.org Office Tel: +1 412.268.7147