Archive
Arachne, online database for archaeology
“ARACHNE is the free [account creation required] object database of DAI and the Institut of Classical Archaeology in Cologne. It provides more than 1 Million images of finds, architecture and excavations with meta information as well as digitised historical literature” (http://www.ariadne-infrastructure.eu/Services/Online-Services: Find more information and help on this page). Example of Advanced Search start choice page:
Continue with Einzelmotive (singular motifs) (gets you back into an English interface also – the field-specific explanation on the right certainly helps):
There is auto-search completion/suggestion, however, it seems to work only for German, and very eclectic:
Beats having to plaster your surroundings with photos for making your own panoramas.
Quizlet.com for Vocabulary learning practice
Neallt 2014 is featuring a presentation on “Using Quizlet.com to generate and share vocabulary activities” (William Price, University of Pittsburgh). I cannot attend, but the program inspired me to hold my own sneak preview:
Quizlet.com is yet another site that provides a variety of flashcard and quiz activities for a given wordlist. A nice example is the “Speller”activity – which proves a text-to-speech generated aural cue for dictation (not included in this video):
Or step-by-step:
Unfortunately, the AI seems limited to only 1-1 L1-L2 relationships (which precludes how vocabulary seems to be learnt best: in phrasal contexts):
Feedback on “wrong” user input is color red, aural and visual presentation of the correct form:
Then the application re-prompts for user input and allows user correction:
This is a “Test activity. Foreign language character input seems easy (but does beg the question since the inputs appear only when they are needed…)
Mix-and-match is called Scatter:
Here is the activity overview:
Quizlet supports many dozen languages, including non-western, including ancient, not differentiating between modern and ancient Greek, but the browsing capabilities – admittedly a hard task – are somewhat flat (search and language)):
And boasts 20 million sets (as of today – many consisting of 2 terms or few more). As so often, usefulness for class instruction hinges on the availability of textbook-aligned vocabulary lists. However, if you have them with your textbooks, Quizlet makes it automatic to generate uploaded materials into exercises.
However, as said, you may not like how much you have to dumb it down.
Cheatsheet for typing phonetic symbols with the IPA Keyboard Layout on Windows 7 – the ultimate training…
…using animated .gifs. Slower? Compact: 0.25sec, 0.5sec, 0.75sec, 1sec, 1.5sec, 2sec, 3sec, 4sec, 5sec, 6sec, 7sec, 8sec, 9sec, 10sec.
This is taken straight from the great documentation of this great Phonetic symbols Windows keyboard layout by SILS international, but needed a bit of massaging to support hands-free lookup via display on one screen of your dual screen system, while you learn or demo the keyboard to the class). Users without dual screen (including students) are better off with the slideshow below in which they can stop the images on any page:
The IPA MSKLC can produce both regular Roman characters and transcriptions with phonetic symbols by employing certain “dead keys” that can be combined with regular keys. Just and like our default LRC keyboard us-international .
Your first must select the keyboard like so. (Icelandic is suitable since it is not used for other purposes much). In the LRC, you must wait until we upgrade to Windows7.
How to switch the input language in Respondus Lockdown browser, e.g. to Arabic
- Short answer:
- Right-click the Language bar on the taskbar and choose “Restore the Language bar”, like so:
- This makes the language bar a floating toolbar on top of the screen, like here:
. This floating toolbar you can still access when in Lockdown browser.
- The language bar can be temperamental, you may need to bring it up again, try switching back and forth between input fields.
- Long Answer:
- Respondus Lockdown browser blocks many functionalities, including the shortcut combination to change input languages (usually LEFT ALT + SHIFT) and access to the Language bar on the task bar.
- This is not an issue when your quiz is in a western language and you have US- international keyboard layout configured as your default (which lets you type most Western diacritics without need for keys blocked by Respondus Lockdown browser )
- It is an issue with e.g. Arabic. You cannot even temporarily set Arabic to your default input language before starting lockdown browser, since then you cannot log in (with MS Maren IME, you can override the Arabic default to enter your username in western characters, but not the password. Respondus Lockdown Browser is built on Internet Explorer, but it does not share the cookies, so being logged into your LMS in Internet Explorer does not carry over to your Lockdown Browser session).
- Workaround: See above.
Collections of online dictionaries
- Here you can haz dictionaries. And if you use them in the Language Resource Center, you even have the chance to run into someone who can show you how to use them well.
- http://linguistlist.org/sp/GetWRListings.cfm?WRAbbrev=Dict
- http://lexicall.widged.com/repository/listing.php?category=words