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. 
A first look at the Google Dictionary extension for Chrome
- We
- have not pre-installed in the LRC (for that the extension would need to be more manageable by the teacher during face-to-face classes, which include exams),
- but can (with some reservations) recommend the Google Dictionary extension (even though it is only available for Chrome). Here is why:
- Google dictionary extension provides an interface to Google define and translate
- that is convenient (as quickly accessed like glosses) for reading activities in many languages (Q: is the privileged word sense displayed here intelligently chosen?)
- while (for some languages more than for others) providing access to additional word senses, usage examples and historical background information
- Interface 1: Tooltip,
- for English with audio
- for other languages without audio (even though audio pronunciation may be available in Google translate for that language):
- convenient access (I have been loving the tooltip interface since Google toolbar days)
- limited, but useful information,
- a word sense – not that this is still not contextually intelligent (Cannot blame them here!) and hence more than one word sense should be offered (here I must blame them: Boo!!): E.g. here “arch” should at show more than the most common word sense:
- including pronunciation (not IPA, but audio)
- a word sense – not that this is still not contextually intelligent (Cannot blame them here!) and hence more than one word sense should be offered (here I must blame them: Boo!!): E.g. here “arch” should at show more than the most common word sense:
- Interface 2 (“more”)
- For English, a click on “more” leads to the Google “define”search operator (the related etymology search operator has been reviewed here before):
- Interface 3: unfold the search results by clicking on the down arrow at the bottom to access additional information:
=
- additional word sense entries
- historical:
- etymology
- frequency data
- translation/dictionary entry:
- for our learners of languages other than English, the translation appears right in the tool tip, see above;
- for our ESL learners, this seems a few too many steps for accessing this information, although a monolingual dictionary is useful in many instances also.
- For English, a click on “more” leads to the Google “define”search operator (the related etymology search operator has been reviewed here before):
- For languages other than English, a click on more leads to Google translate, which (should get its own article, but for what it is worth) can be
- more limiting than “define”: While you are given multiple word senses for
- Spanish:
- and to a lesser extent, for
- Arabic:
- Hindi:
- Arabic:
- Spanish:
- for many languages the results are much more limiting:
- Even if you look up German or French, you revert back to the (pedagogically terrible) single word-sense original “translation” interface )
- For East Asian languages, you get Roman alphabet transcriptions
- e.g. Chinese with Pinyin:
- e.g. Japanese:
- e.g. Chinese with Pinyin:
- Even if you look up German or French, you revert back to the (pedagogically terrible) single word-sense original “translation” interface )
- more limiting than “define”: While you are given multiple word senses for
- for English with audio
- Still no per-user tracking? Here it would make sense for the user.
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: 
Wait, there is more: 
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.
Protected: How to configure the LangLabEmailer for your school, and share back
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.
LRC learning resources Moodle metacourses: Our list
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):
The metacourse for a language (or field of study) is accessible to all students studying this language during the term of their study.
How students can record their picture or photo presentations with PowerPoint 2010
- The screencast shows the necessary steps:
- inserting a photo album,
- presenting while recording the presentation with narration
- saving as a show (.ppsx) – make sure you have ribbon:”Slide show”/ “Play narrations” checked:
- to prepare an assignment for a Moodle single-file-upload (How a student takes a Moodle Simple file upload assignment).
Ipatrainer.com community provides free phonetic transcription tables with sounds and exercises
- This is looking good, but …
- There seem to be some coding issues, I am getting server errors 500 after registering.
- The site is advertisement-based.
- There is no content beyond the IPA sound which would put these bare basics in phonetics into language learning context and practice.
- Site Contains:
- tables for teaching your language – complete with phonetic symbols and sound samples
- and exercises for your students (e.g. Memory games, Identifying characters
, places, 
and sounds.
- tables for teaching your language – complete with phonetic symbols and sound samples
- You can
- Create your own, after free registration,
- or assign one of the ones from many other teachers.
- Most popular ones are listed here: http://www.ipatrainer.com/user/site/?language=, and if the use numbers are accurate, there must be really some serious IPA learning going on here…
- I see no way to browse other tables without having the username of the teacher who created and assigned it.
- There is also a phonetic writer.
- And a user forum, in its infancy.
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Other ways to find help
If you cannot find it here, look there: 5,500 Language-Learning Links and Programs for learning or teaching 150 languages
Shortcuts:Our Lists, Our Maps, LRC Staff Moodle Site,LRC Project Moodle Site, 49erexpress, UNCC Moodle, Student Recordings: s:claslcslrcsanakostudent
Learning usage samples: Sanako oral exam, Kaltura webcam presentation, Dictation with speech recognition, Sanako written exam, Chinese and Japanese interactive stroke-order practice
Test the Sanako Installer, Webbrowser Popup Konfigurator for XP, or Windows7, faster LRC TeacherPC Log-in Let MS facilitate diacritics writing by installing for you US-International keyboard layout
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