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Archive for the ‘Greek (ancient)’ Category

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: image

Continue with Einzelmotive (singular motifs) (gets you back into an English interface also – the field-specific explanation on the right certainly helps): image

There is auto-search completion/suggestion, however, it seems to work only for German, and very eclectic: image

2011-07-08_BILD0047b Stitch (5000x3941)

Beats having to plaster your surroundings with photos for making your own panoramas. Smiley

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):quizlet-speller-german

Or step-by-step:

imageUnfortunately, the AI seems limited to only 1-1 L1-L2 relationships (which precludes how vocabulary seems to be learnt best: in phrasal contexts):

image

Feedback on “wrong” user input is color red, aural and visual presentation of the correct form: image

Then the application re-prompts for user input and allows user correction:

image

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…)

imageimage

Mix-and-match is called Scatter:

image

Here is the activity overview: image

 

Wait, there is more: image

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)):

image

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.image

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:

View album

View album

View album

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. image (Icelandic is suitable since it is not used for other purposes much).  In the LRC, you must wait until we upgrade to Windows7.

LRC learning resources Moodle metacourses: Our list

2013/01/18 1 comment

UPDATE: The LRC Metacourses are being rolled over to MOODLE2. Metacourses having only an OldID are currently still unavailable in Moodle2. And the student enrollment needs to be updated manually until the end of add/drop. On the upside, teachers do not need to make course available to students anymore. The LRC can do this (Metacourses for languages saying #Ref are waiting to be rolled over, tell me if you need them)..

The following LRC Moodle metacourses for teaching materials are available to LCS and ELTI  (including LRC-Resource  with training materials for using language learning technology in and outside of the LRC, as well as for independent study languages).

The naming scheme follows the course abbreviations taught in the departments that the LRC supports:

These courses appear in the Training branch of the Moodle-courses tree-menu on the left (for all study programs you teach in):

moodle-tree-resource-courses_thumb

The metacourse for a language (or field of study)  is accessible to all students studying this language during the term of their study.

How to switch the input language in Respondus Lockdown browser, e.g. to Arabic

  1. Short answer:
    1. Right-click the Language bar on the taskbar and choose “Restore the  Language bar”, like so:
    2. language-bar-restore
    3. This makes the language bar a floating toolbar on top of the screen, like here: image. This floating toolbar you can still access when in Lockdown browser.
    4. The language bar can be temperamental, you may need to bring it up again, try switching back and forth between input fields.
  2. Long Answer:
    1. 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.
    2. 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 )
    3. 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).
    4. Workaround: See above.

How the LRC supports Second Language Acquisition (all 4 skills) and testing using computers, and provides requisite documentation and training

Table of contents for 2 screencasts of a presentation, left screen slides/no audio, right screen/speaker audio – best viewed side-by-side.

Time in LRC-report-speaker

Time in LRC-report-slides

Topic

Subtopic

0:00

Overview of LRC activities

0:00

0:40

SLA reading

0:02

1:10

SLA writing

1:00

high-stakes quiz screencast: http://goo.gl/AaGrK

3:40

Movie caption exercise generation using NLP

5:45

2:35

SLA listening

Text-to-speech Deskbot

7:15

4:00

example of time-stretched audio

10:00

10:10

SLA speaking

Moodle Kaltura for webcam recordings homework assignments

12:30

Sanako oral exams

15:00

Example of oral exam material

16:40

15:45

Classroom management systems

27:15

Outlook: LRC as proficiency assessment/testing center, outreach/service to high schools

16:40

Example of oral proficiency exam

28:30

Needed additions: video streaming to students, video recordings from students

30:10

Question period

30:10

LRC media repositories

33:30

Infrastructure work:

Year1:Ghost+imaging

33:35

Year2:LRC calendars (room reservation, equipment circulation, staff timetabling)

34:25

Outlook: things that need to be fixed in LRC calendars

39:25

39:45

19:45

LRC Blog

39:45

Querying tags and categories

45:00

tags, categories, RSS feeds displayed in internet explorer tag display,

55:20

Using tags/categories searches of the LRC blog in training teachers and students

57:25

Q:TOEFL, AP exams and other oral proficiency assessment –

58:45

Webcape placement exams and other written exam in the LRC

59:30

Q:Concurrent exam scheduling

Sanako has no scheduling system to allow a limited number of users to take an exam simultaneously (but it prevents users beyond the licensing seats to use the Sanako, including for exams), Scheduling plug-ins seem to be available for Moodle.

61:40

Outlook: Need more licenses for the Sanako to match the UNCC class size

Links to computer assisted language learning tools

Collections of online dictionaries

  1. 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.
  2. http://linguistlist.org/sp/GetWRListings.cfm?WRAbbrev=Dict
  3. http://lexicall.widged.com/repository/listing.php?category=words