Robert F Achgill

Mother Tongue literacy researcher - His Hands Reader
1576273230 V2 Photo CFP 105

Robert F Achgill

Mother Tongue literacy researcher - His Hands Reader

Biography

I have lived in Russia 12 years, Bulgaria 6 months, Estonia 6 months, Israel 6 years, Jordan 6 months during the time I have developed this hobby literacy project… and have visited a host of other countries.
I am a Mechanical Engineer by training. I have worked 7 years in Chemical plant design and problem solving. I worked 5 years leading a project to put all the engineering data from the 18 contractors for the Space Shuttle into a common database for better management decision making.

This all prepared me for this.
I can speak what I am passionate about…what I have spent a lot of time researching.

His Hands Reader mother tongue literacy – Helping Hearing and Deaf learn to read across all 7,000 languages this year

A volunteer enabled crowd sourcing to help children learn to read using an Android. The Quad-lingual curriculum (MT, local business and English languages with hand sign assist) develops a 1742 word vocabulary while “accidentally” teaching all Hearing children hand signs so the rural Deaf can be included in access to language and literacy through the mentoring of their older sibling.

The His Hands Reader leverages the Law of interchangeable Parts to vastly super scale up production of mother tongue literacy curriculum to all 7,000+ languages in one year. The zero budget project relies on language inputs from MT crowd source volunteers using special apps to catalog and collect their translations into the common meaning level lexicon.
A Quad-lingual MT curriculum unique to each learner is distributed via a peer to peer network that is designed to work best and affordably in poor internet conditions and minimize data usage. The curriculum (MT, local business and English languages with hand sign assist) helps the student develop fluency in a 1742 word vocabulary while “accidentally” teaching all Hearing children hand signs so they in turn can mentor their deaf younger sibling through the critical age for language development and latter literacy using the same curriculum.

The volunteer model has been proven viable because the data collection tools and systematic use of the common meaning level lexicon reduce the task of adding a language or hand signs to just 30 hours using the volunteer’s own phone.

The use of interlinear hand sign assist offers a added boost for the kinesthetic learner.

Countries like China who have 20 million deaf persons but only 35K seats in schools for the Deaf can extend to include all Deaf. The need is even far greater in emerging countries.

Provides girls the option for access to continued literacy and foreign language development on days when they wish to study at home.

Governments can include education to minority language speakers when teachers are not available that speak those languages.

Parents can have peace of mind that their child is learning all three of their most important languages.

And the world M&E report shows where distribution is lacking.