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MS Universal Language Input Tool offers correction and transliteration on any web page

2011/11/10 Leave a comment

Using the UIME, you can “type any language with any keyboard on any web page, using only the Roman characters present on every keyboard.”

ms-universal-Language-Input-Tool

And you can install your favorite input language in your web browser, like so:

ms-uime-add-japanese-ie8 ms-uime-add-japanese-ie8-test

Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Arabic, Beginner, e-languages, English, French, Greek (modern), Intermediate, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, software, websites, Writing Tags: ,

How a teacher creates and grades a Moodle streaming video assignment.

2011/11/02 Leave a comment
  1. Click button: “Turn editing on”, from the “add an activity dropdown, choose: “video”, like so:  dropwdown-activity
  2. Edit your assignment, like so: kaltura-submission-notification0
    1. using the following options (or else expect problems)
      1. Due date: not DISABLED (is the default)
      2. Prevent late submissions: YES (is not the default)
      3. Allow resubmitting: NO (is the default)
  3. after you post your assignment and your students took it, like so,
  4. and if you turned notifications (not recommended; rather grade the assignment well after the deadline, or else expect problems) on (if you get already enough email, remember you can turn notifications off, rather send a deadline to the assignments which the students can see in their calendar, and until they get used to it, tell them there will be more video assignments, best: make it a routine and leave  2 for extra credit could be enough to get everybody to catch), you will get an email like this: kaltura-submission-notification
  5. where you click either on the  link (1) to go to the assignment, then click through to the submissions (3) kaltura-submission-notification1
  6. or on (2) to go directly to the grade book:   kaltura-submission-notification2
  7. where you are best advised to click on the button: “grade” to view the  video submission, , or else you might run into this bug.
  8. In the grading window,  kaltura-submission-notification4play the video, add helpful comments, if any, add final Grade and click “save and next” (but click “next” if no video submitted yet and you grade before the submission deadline. Better: do not grade before the submission deadline).
  9. If video seems unwilling to play (frozen frame), drag the play cursor forward on the timeline underneath the video. kaltura-timeline-drag-me  If this does not unfreeze the video, let the timeline run to the end (both workarounds have helped  with Kaltura issues we encountered here).
Categories: all-languages, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, lms, Speaking, step-by-step-guides Tags: , , ,

Moodle Streaming Video Recording Assignment Glitch 2

2011/11/02 Leave a comment
  1. environment: win xp sp3, firefox 3.6
  2. If you view the Moodle video assignment from the grade book table, inline, in Firefox 3.6, how do you close the popup window?
  3. kaltura-teacher-bug1
  4. no hovering around revelaed a close control to us, escape did not help eithe, nor the brwoser back button.
  5. workarounds:
    1. copy the url from the address bar, open a new tab, paste the url, close the old tab
    2. do not view the video in the grade book overview chart, but after opening the individual submission form the grade button.
    3. try a differnet browser than firefox. on the mac, safari solved a similar problem with firefox and kaltura. 
Categories: audience-is-teachers, Glitches&Errors, lms, websites Tags: , ,

MS-Engkoo glossing of Chinese newspaper text

2011/10/28 Leave a comment
  1. Learners of Mandarin can increase not only their cross-cultural knowledge, when using the English versions of two of the biggest Chinese newspapers: “China Daily has adopted Engkoo’s “hover translation” feature—hover your cursor over an English word or phrase and get an inline Chinese translation— on its China-facing website” and the People’s Daily, the largest official newspaper in China, uses the same feature in its English website”
  2. Make sure you are on the right version (English version for Chinese user) of the site (china daily versionare the choices you want to see on top) and “Enable Bing Dictionary”in lower right corner: china daily engkoo enable_thumb[1]
  3. Then hover: china daily engkoo example_thumb[1].
Categories: Advanced, Beginner, e-languages, Intermediate, Mandarin, Media, Reading, Vocabulary, websites Tags: , , , ,

ECAR National Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2011 Report released

2011/10/28 Leave a comment
  1. The Educause ECAR for 2011 Lists among its top actionable survey results: “Nail the basics. Help faculty and administrators support students’ use of core productivity software for academic work.
  2. Not a language learning specific result , but a reminder also for the LRC to prioritize:
    1. LRC posts on “productivity software”,
    2. and most of our students’ “academic work” lives online in Moodle.
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, office-software, software, websites Tags: , , , , ,

Chinese newspapers

2011/10/28 Leave a comment
  1. China Daily is the largest Chinese newspaper available in English. It has a variety of versions: here is the version for the US, for cross-cultural learning, while the English version for speakers of Chinese is valuable both for learners of Mandarin and English.
  2. The government-run newspaper People’s Daily has an English version, also with language learner glossing.
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Beginner, English, Intermediate, Mandarin, Media, Near-Native, Reading, websites Tags:

MS-Bing Dictionary for Chinese learners of English–and vice versa?

2011/10/28 Leave a comment
  1. Link: http://dict.bing.com.cn/?ulang=EN-US&tlang=ZH-CN#%3Ahome, powered by Engkoo:
  2. This looks like a pretty evolved learning tool: It has instant suggestions that include usage information and translations.engkoo-bing-china-dictionary-learn
  3. Rich results that include contextual, parallel web-as-corpus matches in text and text-to-speech (that, on spot-checking, seems barely noticeably computer-generated). engkoo-bing-dictionary
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Beginner, corpora, Dictionaries, English, Intermediate, Listening, Mandarin, Reading, Vocabulary, websites Tags: ,

How to use the online Portuguese pronunciation help to generate phonetic alphabet transcriptions and text-to-speech

2011/10/20 1 comment
  1. Go to http://www.co.it.pt/~labfala/g2p/
  2. Write or  paste your text into the textbox:“Grafemas”
  3. Choose your preferred phonetic alphabet (IPA, SAMPA) and other options.
  4. Press button: “Converter” to see results.
  5. Press button: “Sintetizar” to hear results.
  6. Like so:
  7. demo-portuguese-Conversor-de-Grafemas-para-Fonemas
  8. Or click here to view a demo (requires Windows Media Player) with audio (download requires Windows Media Player). Our example was:
    1. Input: Tudo bem? É o jeitinho brasileiro. Oí, árbitro! Cadê o penalty? Não, não posso faze-lo.
    2. Output: tˈudu bɐ̃ĩ ˈɛ u ʒɐitˈiɲu bɾɐzilˈɐiɾu oˈi ˈaɾbitɾu kɐdˈe u pˈenalti nˈɐ̃ũ nˈɐ̃ũ pˈɔsu fˈazɘlu
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, e-languages, Intermediate, learning-materials, Listening, Portuguese, Screencasts, service-is-training, Speaking, training, websites Tags: , , ,