MOALEM: An Assistive Platform for Children with Difficulties in Reading and Writing Arabic

Abstract

Recently, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of children with learning difficulties in the Arab world. Such children require comprehensive care and quick intervention, especially during the early childhood years. In this research work, we aim at developing an assistive platform for children with learning difficulties entitled MOALEM to help them overcome their Arabic learning problems in an innovative manner. The proposed platform would allow such children to read, write, observe, and understand Arabic vocabulary, grammar, and sentences from multimedia elements and facial expression through our haptic device and the talker “Badr.” MOALEM is a complete solution to tackle the problem of learning difficulties in elementary schools and special education centers. It uses new algorithms to automatically understand and extract concepts from standard Arabic text and represent them in images and speech. Teachers can generate adaptive and personalized multimedia-based tutorials to suit the needs of the children. They can also address questions to MOALEM and get multimedia-based responses. Results show the importance of this platform in enhancing the learning skills of children and changing the way to learn Arabic.