Web Based Application for Learning Sinhala Language

Abstract

With the evolving use of technological interferences in education, e-learning systems contribute massively in educational delivery in the modern world. This project is a platform for Sinhala language education based on e-Learning and crowd-sourcing concepts. When it comes to large collection of data or services crowd-sourcing is a commonly used concept. In order to get input from people from different talents and capabilities it was decided to use the crowd-sourcing concept to the system. This will add more variety to the lessons so that it will fit most of the targeted audience. This project is designed to teach Sinhala language for children under the age of 10 years. But this can be used by any person who is willing to learn the Sinhala language from the beginning. For the kids’ parents are allowed to pick the lessons based on the content, comments, instructor, and etc. More importantly, they can select the lessons according to their choice. For example, If the kids really hate to study then Parents can pick the lessons presented in an artistic way and see if the kids are interested. If not, they can change it to cartoons and see if they like it. The requirements have been gathered from a well-known pre-school in the Matara city- Sakura Montessori and pre-school. They are targeting to enhance the Sinhala speaking and reading skills of the kids. In this specific pre-school each year there are few kids who were born and brought up out of the country and moved back recently. These kids are not familiar with the Sinhala language. Sinhala Learning application can be introduced to them and monitor the progress closely with the help of the teachers of the pre-school. This system is named as “අකුරු මිතුරු” and it provides a single platform to educators, parents and child to communicate through the internet. Qualified educators can register to the system and upload the lesson. One objective of this system is to provide a way to earn extra income to those who are willing to contribute the lessons. Specially university students can do this as a part time activity. Since the Parents are able to be involved with this system, they can also guide the child through “අකුරු මිතුරු”. The system was implemented using Laravel framework and WAMP server (PHP, mySQL) technology and has been successfully implemented. Since the system was designed web based, it can be easily implemented. This system will be improved further to address the issues and requests of the customers and the service providers(teachers).