Understand my world: An interactive app for children learning arabic vocabulary

Abstract

COVID-19 imposed a new paradigm in education especially in elementary schools. Children are no longer able to go regularly to schools as normal. They should then rely mainly on themselves to learn and acquire knowledge. The Understand My World app is a new technological solution that allows children to learn new Arabic vocabularies interactively and independently using their smart phones or tablets (i.e., iPad, iPhone). They can use the devices' camera and microphone to explore the world, understand spoken words, and read written language properly. Images captured by the camera are recognized, labeled, and defined in both speech and writing. Children can also speak into their device to record their speech and listen to it. They can address questions and receive answers. The app then presents the dictated words in both spoken and written form. Using the required Internet connection, the interface automatically provides exceedingly accurate image and speech recognition, all while preserving the participants' anonymity. We use two AI platforms namely Clarifai and Houndify. The application is designed to be intuitive and seamless to use, which makes it very attractive to children to learn through multimedia.