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Free German online proofing tool by Duden

2013/12/09 Leave a comment
  1. Don’t have MS-Word Proofing Tools, and can’t come to the LRC which has proofing tools for German and many other languages installed?
  2. Try Duden’s (= authoritative German dictionary publisher, and nowadays much more) free (up to 800 characters at a time; a time-limited (=30 days add-in for MS-Word is also available)  Online version:image
  3. Use it wisely: Learning is not cheating. But please consult your teacher whether this is legitimate help. 
  4. Now how’s the quality? Drop us a comment below.
Categories: audience-is-students, German, websites, Writing Tags:

Exam integrity considerations during mock and proctored written exams in the LRC

2013/11/17 Leave a comment

The easiest way to hold a mock or proctor a written exam in the LRC is provide the students a printout of the exam. For larger classes preparing, and under some circumstances (writing impediment due to injury), providing the MS-Word file on a computer to the student would seem a more convenient solution.

However, the LRC prides itself in the large collection of MS-Office proofing tools it has installed and preconfigured – accessing which from within MS-Word could be construed as cheating during a writing exam. As a matter of fact, since MS-Word auto-detects language, under-waving of misspelled words and incorrect Grammar provides unsolicited and unavoidable extra help.

MS-Office proofing tools could be turned off by using a special MS-word template as the basis for the exam. Easier and quicker is using the SANAKO which can not only block internet access of the examined students, but also block use of entire applications like MS-Word.

Instead of in MS-Word, your students could write their responses in an application that is not part of the proofing tools infrastructure, like Notepad. Western language diacritics can easily be written  in any application on LRC PCs thanks to US-International keyboard layout, and non-Western characters even easier than on paper.

For full security, the best environment for exams we can offer remains Respondus lockdown browser, integrated with Moodle, but this requires converting the exam to into a Moodle quiz (which Respondus has tools to facilitate).  In certain cases, it might be easiest to create a “dummy” quiz with one long text input field, which your students could type everything in, without having access to any other resources (internet, proofing tools, chat, what not…). However, this quiz still would have to be  in your Moodle course so that your students can access access, and their results get put into your gradebook.

Outside of Moodle – if you do not want to go down the Respondus-path – , you can rely on the SANAKO homework collection feature and my langlabemailer to receive the results.

Categories: audience-is-teachers, English, French, lms, office-software, Writing Tags: , , , , , ,

How to compare two MS-Word documents for plagiarism detection

2013/11/14 2 comments
  1. You could start with the document properties
    1. some  students leave even the author and editing time in. However, author does not prove any wrong doing, a student may have borrowed a laptop, including its MS-word installation, to author a document and submit it
    2. It may  actually be more of an indicator of something illicit if document properties are empty.
    3. Students have likely used the “Document inspector”:
      1. (1): File / (2) Info, (3) view the properties (this document looks like it had its privacy information removed), you can use (4) to view even more. image
      2. to remove all privacy relevant information, like so: (5) unfold “check for issues”, (6) “inspect document””,
      3. in the window: “document inspector”, click image, you will be given the option to “remove all”personal information: image
    4. However, removing personal information can be perfectly legitimate, unless something else was assigned. And it does not help plagiarizers cover their tracks anyway, for…
  2. …there is the more substantial “compare” documents feature which (even though it was developed for the legal profession, as blackline) tracks what really counts: content changes.
    1. Access it form the ribbon’s “review” tab: image
    2. point the tool to your 2 documents: image
    3. make your life easier by selecting on the “review” tab to view only content changes  (formatting comparisons is noise for plagiarism detection): image
    4. You get a handy (here blurred, but still demonstrating the amount of similarity (=black), compared with changes (= blue),  between the 2 documents ) overview of (from the left)
      1. list of changes
      2. view of changes in a merged document (which you can save)
      3. original document
      4. secondary (likely plagiarized) document: compare documents-blurred
      5. The feature is nice, but only moderately intelligent (see the first match, I would obviously not count that as substantially different) and best used with discretion, to make it easier for a teacher to decide how likely it is that these similarities are accidental.
      6. In this instance, even if the teacher questions are not counted, it seems obvious that only minor alterations were made to the original document and many responses, including quite lengthy sentences, are entirely the same.
      7. While this *is* an instructional use, you can find happier instructional uses of MS-Word’s reviewing/tracking changes feature here.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-learning, office-software, service-is-assessing, Writing Tags: , , , , ,

Dead key behavior could be more intuitive in MS US-International keyboard layout…

2013/11/04 Leave a comment

…from a good source on writing international characters on the MS platform. After having to explain around dead key behavior hundreds of times, I’d definitely sign the proposed petition to make it more intuitive (= temporarily revive the dead, show something!). The suggestion in the comments to move more languages to full-blown IME’s seems also interesting.

Categories: e-languages, Writing Tags: ,

How can I configure my PC to write in Arabic

2013/10/22 Leave a comment
  1. In Windows past XP, you can just choose – without first installing support for Right-to-left languages – by pressing +R, typing ïntl.cpl”, clicking ”OK”, clicking ”keyboards and languages”and “change keyboard”.
  2. An Arabic keyboard layout that is commonly preferred by Westerners (closer to the phonetic layout of the keyboard) is a separate download: https://thomasplagwitz.com/2013/01/06/imrans-phonetic-keyboard-for-arabic/
  3. A transliterating IME (type on a Western keyboard sounds as you speak, pick suggestions in Arabic letters from a dropdown menu).
    1. Popular choices are Google Input Arabic: http://www.google.com/inputtools/windows/
    2. Microsoft Maren: offers more, also morphological analysis. Transliteration tool is linked at the bottom of this post: https://thomasplagwitz.com/2011/06/09/ms-maren-morph-helps-read-arabic-web-pages/ .
Categories: Arabic, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Writing Tags: , ,

Japanese Language Tools (Proofing, dictionary, furigana) in the LRC MS-Office 2010 installation

2013/09/30 Leave a comment
  1. Even if not showing in MS-Word’s Language selector),
    1. image
    2. clip_image002
  2. Even though there is no Japanese Thesaurus: clip_image003
  3. There are these tools:
    1. In the Research pane, "English Assistance: Japanese"  (in the ribbon / "Review" tab, Proofing section, press the clip_image004 , then  ALT-Click a character to start a lookup: 
    2. clip_image005
    3. a Japanese  Consistency Checker:clip_image006
    4. Furigana:
      1. To enable: clip_image007
      2. Result (in view / Web layout):  clip_image008
      3. Incidentally, my blog has not quite made it into the TOP 5 of MSW-Office help content: clip_image009
  4. In addition, for Office, but also beyond, there are the tools of the MS-Office Input method editor (which include dictionary help when you write): clip_image010
Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Dictionaries, e-languages, Japanese, Listening-Stations, LRCRoomCoed434, office-software, Presenter-Computer, Reading, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, small-group-work-spaces, Student-Computers, Writing Tags: , ,

PC31 still has only limited foreign languages writing support

2013/09/25 Leave a comment

Has the intl. Cpl , tab:administration workaround not been applied

Categories: Glitches&Errors, Writing

Wacom Bamboo Tablet enables Teacher to draw characters for class

2013/09/03 Leave a comment
  1. We set up one of the Wacom Tablets which we have used for Hanzi/Kanji/Hanja  practice in our student group rooms, at the LRC teacher station. Benefit:
    1. drawing characters where typing (including with IMEs) is not a satisfactory option. This includes
      1. IPA
        1. I noticed phonetics teachers making heavy use of the whiteboard and document camera/projector to transcribe.
        2. We tested a Phonetics keyboard, but remembering your keyboard shortcuts has a learning curve;
        3. Besides, the keyboard is currently not user-switchable.
      2. stroke-order demonstration for East-Asian languages.
    2. Unlike the document camera, the Wacom could be set up at the teacher station – no need to move to the other end of the room, and works without need for the video switch we consider replacing.
    3. To use, you can 
      1. e.g. start MS-paint (click start-button, “Run”, type “mspaint”, click “OK”)),
      2. select the “pencil” menu icon to the right of the center here: image ,
      3. remove the pen from pouch on the side of the wacom tablet next to the keyboard,
      4. draw digitally with the pen tip (soft),
      5. select the “eraser”menu icon to the right of the center here: image
      6. turn the pen and rub to digitally erase (or “select all”and press the “del” key), 
      7. finally save the drawing, if you want to reuse it or share it with students (e.g. using the Sanako playlist ).
    4. To change settings, go to the control panel (click start-button, “Run”, type “control”, click “OK”and start the Wacom Bamboo Control Panel Applet,
      1. if you do not like the Wacom tablet input panel being set to represent the entire left screen that is visible to students on the projector.
      2. if you are not right-handed,
      3. etc.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, French, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Speaking, Writing Tags: , ,