Edinburgh Napier University

  The overall vision of the Spellakit project is to significantly enhance learner experience and outcomes in English language spelling through an innovative ICT based approach focused on a kinesthetic modelling of strategic spelling skills. Due to its mixed origins, English has highly variable spelling rules, making it difficult to master in comparison to many other languages. English speaking children lag behind their European counterparts in achieving spelling competency and this also impacts other areas of literacy. With a growing global market of over 27.5 million primary age English speaking learners, Spellakit has the potential to provide a best in class contemporary solution for a perennial problem as well as providing opportunities for development in other areas such as specific remedial tools, English as Second Language, other languages including indigenous languages and multi-mode learning resources in general. The project's innovative kinesthetic modelling process is based on contemporary teaching practice that focuses on strategic rather than rote and theoretical learning, and utilises capabilities offered by developments in ICT including touchscreen and other user interface developments, deep and wide data gathering and presentation, gamification and mulit-platform functionality.
 
The initial development objective of the Spell-a-kit project is to establish the functionality of the kinesthetic modelling process which is key to the underlying methodology of the product.