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Introducing Àsà from Genii Games

PRESS RELEASE

Asa_logo05 September, 2013. Lagos, Nigeria. Once upon a time, when the phrase ‘Once Upon A Time’ meant story time — stories of discovery, values, morals, discipline, love, happiness, etiquette …a way of life.

 I wish I could say Once Upon A Time in this technology-driven generation, where globalization is subconsciously eroding our once treasured rich indigenous cultures. I wish this phrase still had the same tenacity to hold children spellbound, their eyes glued to the storyteller or the storybook.

Day after day, as the digital age rolls by, I keep wondering if technology will pay for this or somehow, if it would find a way to bring back story time. Or has it?

What if it has in the new Àsà!

Àsà (meaning culture in Yoruba) is a brand that includes a collection of mobile applications that run on Smartphones (iPhones, Samsung S Series etc) and tablets (iPads, Samsung Galaxy Tabs, BlackBerry Playbook etc). These apps come enhanced with features as games, colourful illustrations, voice, sound and animation, all packaged within cultural contexts to appeal to kids aged 2-12 years.

TMQ_iconOnce upon this time, children would sit again around the digital story teller to hear the same old folktales once told and retold by our forefathers. Or, in Àsà’s Language Series, follow the cultural evangelists on their journeys to get kids acquainted with our rich languages.

Àsà’s audience has gone beyond the 12 year olds — parents are in love with this digital storyteller, young adults don’t mind being told stories or taught languages in a new exciting, colourful way. Who would?

Here are some Àsà testimonies from parents:
“Thanks. Yes I got the Yoruba101 app for my son and daughter. They absolutely love it”. – Nigeria Customer

“My daughter is doing well! She loves playing the word games & is forever nodding her head to the background music of the app” – UK Customer

“My daughter and I have just read ‘The Lazy Chicken’ app; nice story”!

“Wow! This is one of the best things to happen to my iPad… Heard of this story (Oluronbi) since my childhood but it’s the first time I’ll be listening to the story for real in more than 30 yrs. I so love this, Thank you!” – US Customer

And that’s not all…

OLURONBI_iconÀsà’s Oluronbi  iPad app has been given an impressive review by a foremost book review site, Kirkus Reviews.
“The illustrations are cleanly drawn, depicting Nigerian figures in brightly patterned dress and village settings. They are brightened up both by a chorus that sings a song to the Iroko Spirit in one scene but can be heard in the background throughout and by a particularly lively, accented narrator”.

–          Excerpts, Kirkus

So far, Àsà has in its growing collection of apps the following Android, BlackBerry and iOS apps:

·         Yoruba101

An interactive Yoruba language teaching app, Yoruba101 involves a virtual recreation of a classroom complete with a cultural teacher (Oluko Àsà) who takes the kids through topics like Alphabets, Words and Sentence formations. It also includes games to help the kids test their acquired knowledge. It features animations, colourful illustrations, voice, sound and text.

Download Yoruba101 now to your iPAD; iPHONE; ANDROID phones/ tablets; BLACKBERRY Z10/Playbook

·         Igbo101

IGBO_01An interactive Igbo language teaching app, Igbo101 involves a virtual recreation of a classroom complete with a cultural teacher (Onye nkuzi Àsà) who takes the kids through topics like Alphabets, Words and Sentence formations. It also includes games to help the kids test their acquired knowledge. Other features include animations, colourful illustrations, voice, sound and text.

Download Igbo101 now to your iPAD; iPHONE; ANDROID phones/ tablets

·         aHausa

aHausa is an interactive Hausa language teaching app. Modules taught include Alphabets, Numbers, Body Parts, Animals and Greetings. It uses a combination of sounds, voice, text, colorful graphics and animation to get the user acquainted with the language.

Download aHausa now to your ANDROID phones/ tablets, BLACKBERRY Z10

·         Oluronbi

Oluronbi is a popular West-African folktale about a pretty young lady that has everything going for her except a child. With her sadness about to be broken, thanks to the kind-hearted Iroko Spirit, Oluronbi’s desperation and attitude are put to test. This is a story of trust and attitude with cultural and moral lessons for its audience. The app has features as different reading modes, games, interactive elements for cultural tips and the popular folksong etc.

Download Oluronbi now to your iPAD; iPHONE; ANDROID phones/ tablets; BLACKBERRY Z10/Playbook

·         The Lazy Chicken

The lazy chicken is a story that teaches kids against laziness, chronicling the events that led to why Chickens are used for sacrificial offerings in some African cultures. Its features include different reading modes, games and interactive cultural tips.

Download The Lazy Chicken now to your iPAD; iPHONE; ANDROID phones/ tablets; BLACKBERRY Z10/Playbook

·        The Monkeys’ Quest

TMQ_01This folk-tale takes readers through a story involving monkeys and how they came about their look. It includes folk-songs, games amongst other features.

Download The Monkeys’ Quest now to your iPAD; iPHONE; ANDROID phones/ tablets; BLACKBERRY Z10/Playbook

More of Àsà apps can be found on http://www.geniigames.com/apps.html

Going forward, Àsà’s development efforts are geared towards releasing more culturally oriented apps across board to cater for our diverse and rich cultures.

With the new Àsà, brought to you by Genii Games (http://www.geniigames.com), we can confidently say that our age long morals, native tongues, etiquette, fables and other treasured cultural elements will not die.

About Genii Games

Genii Games is a proudly Nigerian company and the parent entity of the Àsà brand. It is a company with a vision to preserve and promote our Rich African Culture using technology. Its mission is to stimulate the interest of kids aged 2-12 years in subjects relating to our indigenous African culture.

Its Àsà brand has been recognized as a tool for the future Nigeria by “The Future Awards”.
Website: http://www.geniigames.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/genii_games

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/geniigames

Introducing Àsà from Genii Games was published on September 9th, 2013, with the tags , , , under the News, technology category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

This Weekend: A Blood Intervention

A couple of years ago, December 4, 2009, precisely, I wrote a blogpost in which I lamented a discriminatory practice in the blood donation system on the American campus where I was working then a visiting scholar. Because I was a Nigerian and for no other reason, I had been turned back from giving blood. Two years later, this time as a Masters student in the same university, I wrote a second report, acknowledging a change I noticed in the policy.

Since that first encounter, through the second one, the availability of blood (and the policies behind blood donation drives around the country) had remained on my mind as an abiding interest. So when, back in Nigeria, I was called into the founding of the One Percent Project and the Ten Thousand Donor project which both aim to make access to safe and healthy blood affordable and available through the means of information technology-driven applications, I jumped into it.

IMG_0178It had been fun, and enlightening, and rewarding. Since the founding of the organization in May 2012, the One Percent Project has helped facilitate the collection of about 754 pints of blood from young professionals from around the country, through the Nigerian National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) who then give it to hospitals where they are needed, thus potentially saving about 2262 lives (since a pint of blood is reputed to be able to save about three human lives).

But that was just the beginning. So, starting from tomorrow June 14, the best tech volunteers, programmers and hackers from around Nigeria are gathering in Yaba and Lekki to collaborate with the One Percent Project to create an app that can make it easier for potential donors to link up with blood donation centres around the country, and especially for patients needing blood to connect with willing donors who have signed up to be called whenever the situation arises.

Tomorrow is also the 2013 World Blood Donor Day

I will be part of the event, tweeting nuggets, pictures, and thoughts via my twitter feed @baroka. At 4pm on Sunday, at the Audax Solutions Office (at Plot 24, Block 113, Adebisi Ogunniyi Crescent, Lekki Phase 1, Lagos‎),  the app, called the LifeBank App, will be publicly launched. There will be bloggers, social media personalities, print media practitioners, and other trustees present. If you can make it, it would be nice to see you there too. It would be nice to introduce you to the advances this new generation of Nigerian youths are making to make the future much better than the present.

The LifeApp Facebook page has been set up, as well as a twitter page. Conversations on the hackaton and the app launch will be on twitter under the hashtags #hack4health and #LifeBank and on the LifeBank App blog.

This Weekend: A Blood Intervention was published on June 13th, 2013, with the tags , , , , , under the Fun, News, technology category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Re: Translating Twitter

I have been told that a backlog of more popularly requested languages will make it harder to get Yoruba to the top of the line in the Twitter Translation Lab as fast as I’d earlier thought.

Anyone still interested in translating the social media platform should make requests directly to the Translation Lab here: http://t.co/DL7VvVrM.

Re: Translating Twitter was published on January 18th, 2013, with the tags , , under the Fun, Linguistics, technology category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

CFP: CICLing 2013 – NLP – Greece – Springer LNCS

CICLing 2013

14th International Conference on
Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics

Samos, Greece

March 24-30, 2013

Springer LNCS

www.CICLing.org/2013

TOPICS:
All topics related with computational
linguistics, natural language processing,
human language technologies, information
retrieval, etc.

PUBLICATION:
LNCS – Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science;
poster session: special issue of a journal

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Sophia Ananiadou, Walter Daelemans,
Roberto Navigli, Michael Thelwall

CULTURAL PROGRAM:
Three days of cultural activities:
tours to Ephesus, Samos, and nearby islands

AWARDS:
Best paper, best student paper,
best presentation, best poster, best software

SUBMISSION DEADLINES:
November 30: registration of tentative abstract,
December 7: full text of registered papers

See complete CFP and contact on www.CICLing.org/2013

This message is sent in good faith of its usefulness for you
as an NLP researcher. If this is an error, kindly let me know.

Alexander Gelbukh
www.Gelbukh.com

CFP: CICLing 2013 – NLP – Greece – Springer LNCS was published on October 18th, 2012, with the tags , , , under the Linguistics, technology category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.