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Protected: Native speaker recordings for Voilà vocabulary

2013/09/12 Enter your password to view comments.

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Equipment circulation training with NINERMAIL meeting requests for Film studies students Fall 2013

Click to view screencast:.

Click to view handout.

Making computerized vocabulary quizzes for use in the LRC from Prof. Koralova’s Friendly Russian textbook

You can browse on the Group room PC to this folder with the

source files (read acces), you just need to look at the Word versions:  S:\COAS\LCS\LRC\sanako\student\friendly-russian-docx-student-copy

 

In the source files, new  vocabulary that the students have to learn, appears  in 2 forms

1.       Either under the heading “new words”, mostly with English meaning in a sparate column

2.       Or in the running text, colored in red (and with no entirely obvious English translation  for me who I do not speak Russian, but likely for you).

 

The target file is here  (in most browsers other than Internet Explorer 64-bit, you should be able to open this in EXCEL for easier editing).

 

We need Russian and English in 2 columns. The computer program we are going to feed these flash cards into is quite simple in its automatic evaluation. That’s why we need to enable students to guess exactly the Russian from the English flash card side (and vice versa). Hence we may need to simplify the entries in both.

 

To give a few examples: 

          Complicated lists of variants (inflected forms, similar phrases etc.) need to be broken up into separate rows

          linguistic metadata (like gender “fem.”– but maybe not articles: “la maison – das Haus” -, irregular verb) in a separate column, per language.

 

I included an example (from chapter 4, section 6) what I think the end result is supposed to look like:

 

Source example:

ти́хо (adv.) – quiet(ly); тишина́ (n.) – stillness; quiet
никогда́ – never;  ти́хо, как никогда́ – quiet as never (before); когда́ – when
В чём де́ло? – idiom: What’s the matter?
ах да – oh yes
матч – match; game
почти́ – almost
ка́ждый – each; every
ме́сяц – month
всё в поря́дке  (idiom)– everything is OK (lit.: everything is in order)
что ещё на́до? – what else (does one) need?

Target example:

russian

metadata

english

metadata2

Ти́хо

quiet

тишина́

stillness

тишина́

quiet

никогда́

never

ти́хо, как никогда́

quiet as never before

когда́

when

В чём де́ло?

What’s the matter?

ах да

oh yes

матч

match

матч

game

почти́

almost

ка́ждый

each

ка́ждый

every

ме́сяц

month

всё в поря́дке

everything is OK

что ещё на́до?

what else does one need?

 

Hint: the easiest way to get the vocabulary charts Russian – English from Word into 2 columns in Excel:  CTRL+H, “find:” space-space, “Replace”:^t (for tab), then copy/pasting the result makes 2 columns for Russian/English.

 

Our Sanako Study 1200 tutor is “not responding” or crashes

  1. Update: We have been advised to
    1. change the Windows Color Scheme to Basic (especially removing the desktop background on both client and teacher) and
      1. set the Tutor / Preferences / to “Slow WLAN
      2. possibly update the video driver on the teacher station, using Windows Update or, preferably, the manufacturer’s version
      3. try to replicate the problem, but keep the Sanako logs.
    2. Now we are trying to replicate he issue without the teacher station frozen, so that we have access to the logs.
  2. 2 hard crashes during one class
    1. The first one
      1. on “Autoscanning” (cycling screensharing connections to student PC’s)
      2. image
      3. The first one took me by surprise, the computer hung completely,  I could not bring up process manager nor taskkill the tutor, had to power cycle, at considerable interruption to the the class.
      4. However, here I got some problem details from windows: image
  3. The 2nd one
    1. also occurred during “Autoscanning”. image
    2. This time, however, not the Autoscan itself brought the  system down, but only when I tried to resize the autoscan window by dragging and dropping the border (video-intensive?).
    3. I got a performance notification from Windows (not legible here, but something to the amount of “your computer is dangerously slow”): image
    4. I managed to task kill the tutor: image
    5. I got some more diagnostics help from Windows which notified me that my “Windows Color scheme” had to be downgraded to “Basic”: 358
  4. Dell Optiplex 760 (B6CCLK1)
    1. 4GB,
    2. graphics chip: Y103D    Card, Graphics, 256, Loop, OUGA6; original driver Video: AMD Radeon HD3450 256M, v.8.593 WHQL Vista, A05 with DUP (101 MB)
    3. dual screen (1024*768 secondary, 1920*1080 primary – I remember having hard hangs on this system when attempting to drag Autoscan Windows of Sanako Stuy 1200 Tutor ver. 5.2 across 2 dual screens of the same size on Windows XP )
    4. Win 7 (64bit).
  5. No eventvwr or Sanako log data since PC was frozen…

How to set up your computer to access ASCM URLS with Adobe Digital Edition for DRM-protected eBooks

  1. I downloaded the Adobe digital Edition from here: http://www.adobe.com/products/digital-editions/download.html
  2. I installed the downloaded Adobe  Digital edition like so:
  3. clip_image001
  4. clip_image002
  5. clip_image003
  6. I can now run the Adobe Digital Edition program:
  7. However, File / open / paste url won’t work.
  8. clip_image004
  9. Also, if I download the ASCM file, Windows still does not know which application to open ASCM file with
  10. clip_image005
  11. I CAN HOWEVER DOWNLOAD AN ASCM FILE AND DRAG drop this into an open digital edition window, to get this at least
  12. clip_image006
  13. I went  down the "authorize your computer" route:
  14. clip_image007
  15. clip_image008
  16. clip_image009
  17. clip_image010
  18. Here is my first example (from the Adobe samples website):
  19. clip_image011
  20. From now on, I can simply click on adobe digital edition links  with ASCM files.
  21. When getting the download dialogue, I can skip saving and click "open":
  22. clip_image012
  23. clip_image013
  24. clip_image014
  25. Note: you are consuming a license if you open te ebook with your account.

Creating site-specifically useful learning content for the Sanako Study 1200 vocabulary testing

  1. The usefulness of the Sanako Study 1200 new (from ver 6) vocabulary test activity hinges on the availability of site-specific vocabulary lists.
  2. Sanako UK
    1. seems aware of this and publishes vocabulary collections for textbooks and assessments commonly used in UK secondary education.
    2. Sanako favors using the built-in format and saving it on the network share that is required  for the Sanako study 1200.
    3. Vocabulary tests are organized and can be discovered and browsed by file name only.
  3. TBA: How could something similar be done in a US HE context? One would need:
    1. establish which textbooks are (and will remain) in use?
    2. are they e-books or would the material need digitization?
    3. is the chapter vocabulary easily accessible as a list? Appendix glossaries encompass usually much more than the vocabulary required to study, so testing on these would quickly become frustrating
    4. how best to reformat the materials (from turning into a table to handling linguistic metadata) for easy use with the Sanako vocabulary test?
    5. how best to publish the  material?
      1. to make it manageable for the updaters: crowdsourcing? copyright issuew?
      2. to make it easily selectable for the teacher: filter by integrated linguistic and course metadata?
    6. Last not least: How to do all this economically? Taking into consideration teacher preference, enrollment, preexisting materials…?
      1. cost lowered if tabular lists of vocabulary already exists
      2. benefit is lowered if online flash card applications already exist.

First steps with the Sanako Study 1200 vocabulary test activity

  1. Click to watch an example below of the new (in version 6, we are now on 7) activity:”Vocabulary Test” which allows you to administer during a face-top-face-class just exactly what its name says –
  2. with these benefits:
    1. needing no paper,
    2. digital contents
      1. “can” and reuse past tests with ease
      2. TBA: can you swap target and source language?
    3. blending automated and teacher feedback:
      1. the example I give below is based on what the teacher gave me: single words and very short idiomatic expression.
      2. You can use longer phrases (I prefer teaching and studying vocabulary in context), but then it become increasingly unlikely that the automated feedback is accurate (The automated feedback is limited to exact, up to case-insensitive string matching – now distance metrics).
      3. You can override the automated feedback before sending the results back to the student. This is somewhat practical, since the submitting is fast and not all students will finish at the same time, and if you provided students with the follow up activity after submission, The teacher overriding the feedback gets unpractical in large classes, so it is recommended restricting the test to short source/target language pairs. Also be clear about or minimize punctuation and, if required, the format of other metalinguistic information  (gender, plural forms etc).
  3. Issues:
    1. not communicative, how can this be used or fitted in with other activities to make best use of a fully computerized face-to-face teaching environment?
    2. simplistic autocorrecting algorithm (case-insensitive, otherwise exact, right or wrong, my way or the highway” string matching)
    3. no tracking, no memory, personalization only via the other built-in Sanako personalization features (groups – to be left to the teacher to handle)
    4. no learning content – at least no vocabulary learning materials usable out of the box for us (TBA).

Protected: LRC Clinic designs a remedial package for Germ1202 using MyLanguageLab

2013/09/04 Enter your password to view comments.

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