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This Project

This MERL project is the first of its kind and was developed to harness the collective knowledge of the Mi’Kmaw and Maliseet Peoples of New Brunswick, which in turn allows the Band Operated Schools to be the recipients of all the communities’ hard work. This project sponsored by the New Brunswick Department of Education and SayITFirst Inc. is an attempt to solve social ills stemming from language loss, not to mention the Heritage lost as languages become endangered. Results to date include a database of over 13,000 words either recorded or logged into a database accessible for all. As well, a partnership with the First Nations Education Initiative Inc. of New Brunswick will see “snuggle” books written in English, the Native language and phonetic representation. These books are written so parents and children can read in their Native language, both written and orally. Recordings on this website will allow non speakers to listen and read the books as practise and cultural relevance. The idea is simply to create tools, used by the education system and communities to reach a level of 20 hours per week for a three year period to achieve an acceptable level of fluency in the Native language. This language initiative comes in different phases. The Ojibwe of the Rainy River District, along with the Rainy River District School Board have demonstrated leadership in joining the project with several newer design goals including the creation of video libraries, avatar based software skits and educational material to be shared amongst language educators.

Phase I

Several concurrent strategies are adopted:

• Ease the number of hours in a day language teachers spend creating content for their classes so this most cherished resource can transfer knowledge on a broader scale
• Increase the access to the vocabulary –written and orally, via this website
• Increase language participation amongst First Nations communities by documenting words via this website. This strategy includes reclaiming “lost and rediscovered” words
• Provide the ability to create modernized technical vocabulary to build standardization and critical mass of language speakers
• Make accessible teaching and learning multimedia tools to engage the learner more and to allow schoolwork to be documented, stored and shared.
• By creating new vocabulary for modern terms, Microsoft Corporation will provide an interface that will reflect and reinforce the use of the new terms in Office 2010 and Windows 7 by allowing a dialogue bubble to appear on the screen in Native languages when hovering the mouse over the technical term.

Phase II (Not Currently Funded)

• Conjugation of verbs added to this site
• Videos created and displayed on this site with 100% language or cultural content: these can be displayed for video homework assignments, just something interesting to each individual and culturally rich material.
• Creation of immersion material collectively by the province for use in Band Operated Schools, Cultural Centres and Youth Centres. Although content will not be total immersion in school, it could be a shared practice amongst Band Operated Schools.