Thursday, November 6, 2008

Alelo Gets Voice of America Contract

Los Angeles-based Alelo, the USC spinout which is developing "serious" games to teach languages and cultures, has scored a contract with the Voice of America. Alelo said Wednesday afternoon that its wholly owned subsidiary, Alelo TLT LLC, has been contracted to develop an interactive, Web-based learning portal for learners of English as a second language. Financial impact of the win was not disclosed. Alelo said the contract calls for using automated speech recognition and artifical intelligence to help people learning English to practice their conversational skills. The win opens a new market for Alelo, whose existing systems have been used for preparing the military for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. The firm's systems use a "first person shooter" video game engine adapted to instead teach cultural nuances and language skills in spoken conversation. The firm's software has so far been applied to Chinese, Iraqi, Pashto, and Dari.