Our Maya Writing Workshop at the College of the Atlantic went wonderfully well. Forty students downloaded the Ancient Maya App, then enjoyed reading several simple glyph blocks. We demonstrated it takes only 20 minutes to learn the basics of Mayan writing and how to use the app. That is a big deal. Thanks to our incredible host Professor Karla Peña. Below are some more details about the Workshop and some small things we could have done better.
The Workshop made reading glyph blocks with the app look easy. In the real world, the app works for glyph blocks with phonetic glyphs, less well for mixed phonetic/logographic blocks. It is limited by a small dictionary (only 600 entries). The automated dictionary lookup does not yet deal with verb conjugation so it often fails. I should have included contact info like AncientMayaApp@gmail.com on a slide or handout.
We also identified problems with the app on a few phones. These problems were user interface widgets not displaying properly. A Samsung phone running Android 13 and UI 5.1 did not display the Read filter widget and an iPhone 13 mini didn’t display a text message on the Write page. I’ll investigate these issues and make a new release.
Finally, a couple photos from the Workshop:
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