SSi - state of play, December 2016

Fair suck of the sav, mate

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Okey-dokes, glad some of you are interested - if I forget at the start of any month, do feel free to say ā€˜Oi, whatā€™s the monthly state of play?!ā€™ā€¦ :wink:

@robbruce - yeah, I was kind of braced for thatā€¦:wink:

@helenlindsay - great idea - and it will be interested to hear what people think of having something where at least some of the vocab can be picked out from this threadā€¦ :slight_smile:

@mikeellwood - I think committing to providing bilingual text for reading exercise is a slightly larger commitment than I was really looking for, to be honest! Iā€™ve got some ideas about how we can help with reading that Iā€™m looking forward to having time to implement, but theyā€™ll be a bit more structured than ā€˜snippets here and thereā€™ā€¦ :slight_smile:

@philipnewton - I want to delete dates as soon as I make the mistake of typing themā€¦:wink: Theyā€™re all aspirational, as I hope is clearā€¦:wink:

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I think the monthly report is a great idea and Iā€™m delighted that Manx Levels 3 and 4 are coming soon and also delighted to be joining such a great community.

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And a very warm welcome to the forum, Reuben! :slight_smile:

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Of course :slight_smile:

I still appreciate it.

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Oh, hey, Iā€™m interested in this too! Iā€™m from Naples :smiley:

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Wow, languages and hufen iĆ¢ ā€¦ whatā€™s not to like? :slight_smile:

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The mad thing about Neapolitan is that under certain grammatical circumstances (negatives, for example), the beginnings of words change. Whoā€™d have thought such a crazy thing could exist? :wink:

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Oh, okay, okay, Iā€™m hookedā€¦

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Wow, @aran, that is a pretty impressive progress report. Hugely exciting! :slight_smile:

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Cheers, Andy! Itā€™s actually very valuable to put it down in writing for us too - I tend to get caught up in a daily/weekly whirl of worrying about ā€˜not having finished [x], not paying a salary to Iestynā€™ etc etc - but a pause and a look at what has been done can be quite encouragingā€¦ :slight_smile:

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Just like going back to do an earlier lesson/challenge can show you just how far you have come, and be quite encouraging!

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One thought I had that this seems an appropriate place to air: had you considered making SSIbot open source? It seems to me that most of your competitors already have their own preferred teaching methods, but it would be really useful for people teaching themselves a language you donā€™t currently cover. Also, the open source community tends to be pretty good at finding flaws with software and sending their own fixes, which may help make Ifanā€™s job a little easier. Obviously, there are reasons both for and against doing so and ultimately it remains your decision, but it just seemed something worth considering if you hadnā€™t already.

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Hi Hector - thank you very much for that - yes, the whole overall arc of open-source is something weā€™ve thought a lot about. Youā€™re certainly right that weā€™re not on the radar of any of the big players at the moment - and yet if we published the entire map of exactly what weā€™re trying to do with the SSiBorg (which I think is what weā€™d need to do for successful open-sourcing), it would be a matter of weeks for a large company to provide a copy of what we do, if we ever did get any momentum.

Iā€™m a huge fan of open-source, and Iā€™d love to see a world in which people shared all their ideas freely and openly - and I know that there are people whoā€™ve managed to do that, and still fund their projects and lives successfully - but for us, it just still seems an enormously risky and complicated step at this stage.

We will keep on thinking about it, though, because it certainly has lots of attractive elements.

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Hi @Aran. Yes, I think itā€™s a great idea. I wouldnā€™t want you to feel you need to spend too long on it though.

I also like the News section on the phone/MP3 app, updating us on the availability of recent additions.

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My slightly haphazard on/off ability to remember about the news section is a large part of why Iā€™m thinking a monthly overview might run a bit more smoothlyā€¦:wink: But thank you, yes, Iā€™ll try to keep it from swallowing too much time - definitely appreciate the feedback thereā€¦ :slight_smile:

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This must be iDevices not Android, right?

@tatjana, my phone uses Android. However, now you mention it, I canā€™t seem to find the News section on it. I thought it was one of the menu options. Perhaps itā€™s on the main PC website?

As I recall it is on this forum, special category here, but, as @aran says, there was not published anything for quite amount of time - well not so big amount of time anyway - 28th October was the last news announcing that "News: L2 southern 25 publishedā€¦ :slight_smile: ".

However I understand why Aran posted this particular thread in here (in General/Questions). News category is closed for comments what is the only thing right if staff wants to maintain it as News (only) category. :slight_smile:

So, you might have this particular category in mind when talking about News features. :slight_smile:

Hwyl!
:slight_smile:

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Levels 1 and 2 are excellent, canā€™t wait level 3. I think the state oflay report is a great idea. Thank you all at SSi foryour dedication and hard work.

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