This is the first of a series of posts about who might use the Ancient Maya App. Let’s start with by talking about students. Mostly this post envisions these students as school kids in the Yucatan, but it also applies to anthropology and archeology university students.
There are several steps needed to read and write in a language. You need to understand the general conventions of the writing system. For example, this English post is written in phonetic alphabetic characters left to right with spaces between words, ample punctuation and proceeds down a page. You memorize the individual written glyphs and their meaning. For English this is the alphabet. This is difficult and takes a lot of practice. So much practice that schools spread it over a couple years. This practice starts with picture books, then chapter books and finally “regular” books. This practice includes countless writing exercises where students write about themselves, their summer vacation, book reports about assigned reading and other topics familiar to them.
As students start to become proficient in reading and writing their world changes. They can take notes in a math or history class. They can slip messages to their friends in class. They can create Mother’s Day cards with a handwritten inscription. They can take a short grocery list to the store and not forget any items. This is how the very important written system becomes deeply integrated into their lives.
People in the Yucatan are doing tremendous work teaching kids the ancient Mayan writing system. This initial introduction is critical but, as discussed above, really learning a written language takes practice. Lots of practice. How are these students going to integrate repeated expose to the ancient writing over an extended period of time into their lives? One way is to repurpose the extended curriculum used teach Mayan scholars in universities to younger students. But, if we are really scaling up the teaching of the ancient writing system maybe we can develop tools that make learning more efficient and that integrate skill practice into the students lives. We allow students that mastered arithmetic to use calculators to use calculators in Physics courses. We allow students that learned to write to use computers and word processors to prepare their term papers. Are there students that could use a custom tool to help learn and practice the ancient writing system?
We want the Ancient Maya App to be this tool. We want to collaborate with teachers to define new app features and help create curriculum material to support instruction. Currently, students can practice reading and writing glyph blocks simply by texting one another. They can use it to generate a message for a Mother’s Day card or read a grocery list. A free app can integrate the ancient writing system with people’s existing, ubiquitous communication device. It allows the ancient glyphs to move beyond the carvings and pottery into everyday lives.