TTS Update #3: ACP has engaged an Android developer to undertake the task of modernizing CMU's Flite Engine, an open-source software that necessitates library updates and correct compilation. The Flite Engine holds immense importance in the project as it serves as the platform for playing the newly-crafted synthetic voices. Subsequently, these synthesized voices will be integrated into the Flite Engine. ACP's plan is to ultimately distribute Flite via the Google Play Store for global accessibility. Simultaneously, the development of an informative website, featuring online text- to-speech (TTS) tools, is in progress, complemented by the execution of a comprehensive marketing and communications strategy. (September 2023)

TTS Update #2: The team has dedicated efforts to defining over 2000 utterances which will be used to create the Haitian Creole synthetic voices. The utterances cover the basic Creole vocabulary and language specific to primary-grade education. These utterances were sourced from a variety of materials, including news articles, books, journals, the Bible, and pre-existing datasets. Originally, we had intended to record these utterances at a local university in Haiti. However, due to the ongoing violence, the COVID-19 pandemic, and travel restrictions imposed by the US Department of State, ACP made the decision to engage a professional recording studio in Haiti. The recordings were conducted across two sessions, featuring two distinct voice actors to account for both male and female voices. The subsequent editing, cutting, and exporting of these recordings were carried out by the selected professional recording studio, with ACP conducting a comprehensive review to ensure quality. Following the initial TTS capability development, ACP opted for a second recording session, primarily to enhance voice clarity and to accommodate the use of questions, which require a specific tonality at the end of sentences. We have successfully developed two enhanced TTS voices, encompassing both male and female options, which are now fully operational. (August 2022)

TTS Update #1: ACP's collaboration with CMU remains ongoing, with a focus on further enhancing number and name recognition capabilities. During this phase, we established an Oracle Cloud platform housing the necessary tools and a database for storing recorded utterances, which were then processed to generate synthetic voices.  (October 2021)

ACP was just awarded a Technical Assistance contract by the World Bank Group (WBG) to conduct research Technology for Teaching (T4T) landscape review of teacher professional development programs in Haiti which are focused on teaching educators how to use technology in the classroom. ACP has partnered with Quisqueya University (UniQ) who will be conducting field research to collect current information. (Nov 2021)

ACP is pleased to announce the start of a new initiative in to develop open source Text-to-Speech (TTS) capabilities for under resourced languages. We are working in partnership with the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Language Technology Institute (LTI). Our first target language is Haitian Creole of course, but we are building the infrastructure to expand the capabilities to other countries. We have begun the task of compiling the corpus of words which the new TTS voices will support. (May 2021) 

The complete series of EDUQUAT Mathematics applications are being released without any license restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic by the EDUQUAT Organization. They are available on both Google Play and in Apple iTunes.  Since the release over 1500 copies of the apps have been downloaded in Haiti as well as many other Francophone countries around the globe. (May 2020)

The complete series of EDUQUAT Mathematics applications are being released without any license restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic by the EDUQUAT Organization. They are available on both Google Play and in Apple iTunes.  Since the release over 1500 copies of the apps have been downloaded in Haiti as well as many other Francophone countries around the globe. (May 2020)