all-languages | Thomas' Work Space

How to conduct an easy oral exam with Sanako Study-1200 (Model imitation/Question Response) – Part I: The exam administrator’s perspective

2011/05/04 plagwitz Leave a comment

This 7-minute screencast explains how to operate the Study-1200 software interface to administer an oral exam, using as audio source the teacher, providing cues live:

0:00: from selecting the activity and program source,
1:50: over start and use of the autoscan screen control feature to monitor both audio and screen of the examined students
3:45: to ending the exam and automatic collection of the exam files.

For an implementation during an actual class-wide oral exam, see Part II of the Study-1200 oral exam.

Categories: all-languages, assessments, e-languages, Interpreting Tags: model-imitation, oral-exams, sanako-study-1200, screen-control-autoscan

Protected: How to conduct an easy oral exam with Sanako1200 (Model imitation/Question Response) – Part II: Implementation/instruction of examined students

2011/05/04 plagwitz Enter your password to view comments.

Webswami, a Moodle-compatible language learning platform for self access (homework, asynchronous distance learning)

2011/04/21 plagwitz 3 comments

What about improving language learning through technology during homework activities?

“The greatest strength of WebSwami lies in the seamless support it provides for doing audio/visual-based tutorial activities within an existing course management system, thus allowing anywhere/anytime access for lesson designers, instructors, and students alike. Its student record keeping system, in particular the integration [duplication] of a grade book with direct access to student responses and the support it provides for multimedia response feedback, far surpasses what is available in any other virtual learning environment. Most important, it manages all of this through well established, reliable, web browser and Flash software coupled with ubiquitous, inexpensive web camera hardware.” (review by Jack Burston for CALICO (pay-link, ask me for access); see also also the freely accessible review by İlhan İnçay).

Authoring and managing authored materials is not an easy task, but gives more flexibility than using textbook provided materials. WebSwami promises the possibility of exchanging learning materials through a materials bank.

View a recording of a recent WebSwami Online Demo.

Categories: all-languages, e-languages, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools Tags: moodle, webswami

Foreign Language Character Input on Windows XP in the LRC

2011/04/14 plagwitz 1 comment

The LRC offers the following foreign language characters writing support:

American English	us international	not needed	us-int
Arabic	Google;MS;MS-maren;fontboard	maybe later, now osk	demo
British English	us international	not needed	us-int
Dutch	us international	not needed	us-int
Farsi	Google;MS	maybe later, now osk	demo
French	us international	not needed	us-int
German	us international	not needed	us-int
Greek	Google;MS	maybe later, now osk	demo
Italian	us international	not needed	us-int
Japanese	MS	not needed
Korean	MS	maybe later, now osk	demo
Mandarin	MS;pinyinput	not needed	pinyin
Portuguese (Brazilian)	us international	not needed	us-int
Russian	Google;MS	maybe later, now osk	demo
Spanish	us international	not needed	us-int

The support is best accessed from the “international toolbar”, like so:

You can also use the windows on-screen keyboard to input non-Western characters on a computer that has not the corresponding keyboard overlay stickers. In the small-group workspaces, which have writing pads, you can also use the MS-Handwriting IME for East-Asian languages.

How to: Send email with non-western (e.g. Japanese) characters in Outlook Web Access (e.g. 2003, e.g. from Safari)

2011/04/01 plagwitz Leave a comment

If your emails with Japanese sent from Safari arrive with unreadable characters (squares or question marks, meaning the recipient’s computer cannot decode how to display the character your computer sent), you may have set your browser to the wrong characterr encoding.
However, the encoding Unicode (e.g. UTF-8) can handle both western and .
Simply go to Safari (similarly in other browsers)/ Preferences / Appearances / Default Encoding and change to UTF-8, like so:
This has been tested to work already from/to OWA 2003.
However, for your reference, here a matrix of imminent upgrades of email clients on your computer and the corresponding university server software:

When?	Your office computer		recommended?	Any computer (travel, home)	University server
When?	mac	pc		Any computer (travel, home)	University server
soon	Outlook 2011	Outlook 2010	is better than	Outlook web access 2010	Exchange 2010
recommended?	is better than	is better than		is better than	is better than
now	Entourage (limited support for Exchange)	Outlook 2007	is better than	Outlook web access 2003	Exchange 2003

Categories: Arabic, e-infrastructure, Farsi, Glitches&Errors, Greek (modern), Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian

Calendaring: How students can view the LRC schedules

2011/02/24 plagwitz 1 comment

As of Fall 2011, this is obsolete. View instead the new and improved procedure.
Calendars you can subscribe to:

Ind.Instr.Spanish	webcal://calendars.office.microsoft.com/pubcalstorage/6d826ffz2216669/COED_434-Tutoring-Spanish_Calendar.ics
Tutors French	webcal://calendars.office.microsoft.com/pubcalstorage/6d826ffz2216669/COED_434-Tutoring-French_Calendar(1).ics
Tutors Russian	webcal://calendars.office.microsoft.com/pubcalstorage/6d826ffz2216669/COED-434-Tutoring-Russian-2_Calendar.ics
Tutors Portuguese	webcal://calendars.office.microsoft.com/pubcalstorage/m8qcbqfz1289583/COED-434-Tutoring-Portuguese_Calendar.ics
Tutors Japanese	webcal://calendars.office.microsoft.com/pubcalstorage/m8qcbqfz1289583/COED-434-Tutoring-Japanese_Calendar.ics
Lab Assistants	webcal://calendars.office.microsoft.com/pubcalstorage/6d826ffz2216669/COED_434-Lab_Assistants_Calendar.ics
Director Free/Busy	webcal://calendars.office.microsoft.com/pubcalstorage/m8qcbqfz1289583/Plagwitz_Thomas_Calendar.ics

How?
“You can subscribe to published calendars if you use a program that supports the WebCal protocol, such as Outlook, Windows Live Calendar, Google Calendar, or Apple iCal” (MS-Office online Help), as well as Yahoo Calendar.

Is Windows Live Calendar available to everyone with a Windows Live ID?

Yes, the Windows Live Calendar is available to all Windows Live ID accounts. To learn more about setting up and maintaining your calendar, open Windows Live Calendar Help. (Microsoft Live Services for Moodle User FAQ)

Windows Live ID = UNCC Live@edu ID

Using the “webcal://”-links (to be posted also on the LRC website), students will be able to view live LRC schedules from live@edu (and many other applications that support the iCalendar format, like listed on

http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2007/08/08/publishing-a-calendar-using-office-online.aspx or here):

Application	Publisher
Chandler (PIM)	Open Source Applications Foundation
Evolution	Novell & GNOME
Facebook.com	Facebook.com
Google Calendar	Google
iCal and iCal Server	Apple Computer
Kontact	The Kontact Team
Lotus Notes	IBM
Microsoft Entourage	Microsoft
Microsoft Exchange	Microsoft
Microsoft Outlook	Microsoft
Windows Calendar	Microsoft
Sun Java Calendar Server	Sun
Zimbra Collaboration Suite	Zimbra

How to set this up, taken from the Windows Live help:
Sign into Windows live (or later live@edu) with your Windows live (or later live@edu) ID.
On the toolbar, go to Calendar.
Click Subscribe.
Select Subscribe to a public calendar, and then, in the Calendar URL box, paste the “webcal://” link from the LRC website for the tutoring hours or other LRC schedule that you want to keep an eye on. You begin the link either with “webcal:” or “http:”. Note, however, that trying to subscribe to “webcalS” will result in this error:
In the Calendar name box, type a name for the calendar.
Next to Color, select a color for the calendar.
Click Subscribe to calendar, and then click Done. Result:
This calendar will be live, i.e. every subscriber will see any updates the LRC makes (like for late-breaking changes and cancellations of tutoring hours). Note however, that synchronization is not instantaneous. Give it up to 30 minutes, under normal circumstances.

Categories: e-infrastructure, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish Tags: live@edu, LRC-website, scheduling, tutoring

Chinese: Character Input: Stroke order: How to learn

2011/02/21 plagwitz 1 comment

Chinese characters are written in a stroke order (which differs for traditional, simplified, and Kanji). This convention is useful for memorizing characters, but also aids handwriting recognition software, and can be used for looking up Chinese characters.

Some free tools that aid in learning stroke order during SLA:

The tool I remember from supporting my first Chinese program a long time ago in Iowa where also Ted Yao’s Integrated Chinese (Cheng & Tsui) was used, is the Bihua project which lets you search by number of strokes, and displays stroke order animation in the results by means of QuickTime videos. Note that links to the corresponding chapters of Integrated Chinese are included in the results:

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/azi/page1.htm has animated GIFs to teach the stroke order.

http://lost-theory.org/ocrat/chargif/ is also based on animated gif, but the animation is a bit easier to follow since the current stroke gets highlighted, and you can search for characters.

There is some more animated gif material as overview in wikimedia: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:CJK_stroke_order

If you teach simplified, this Taiwanese education ministry website will be of no use to you: http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/home.do , but maybe the Hong Kong version for primary education is of use for your students, esp since it is partially in bilingual English: http://www.edbchinese.hk/lexlist_en/index.htm

Practice memorization with Google pinyin IME which allows you to look up characters by strokes: “This allows you to input Chinese characters not only by using pinyin but also by using strokes if you do not know how a character is pronounced. First, press “u” to enter the stroke mode. Then use “h” for heng, the horizontal stroke, “s” for shu, the vertical stroke, “p” for pie, the left falling stroke, “n” for na, right falling stroke, “z” for zhe, the turning stroke, and “d” for dian, the dot, to input a Chinese character according to its stroke order. Among these strokes, “n” and “d” are the interchangeable. For example, if you want to input 火, then you press “u” first, and then press “dppn” or “ nppn.” A character often appears before you finish keying in all the strokes. For examples, 煅 appears when you key in “udppdps” without the need to input all the strokes.”

Some non-free tools include the Chinese Character Stroke Order Animator and eStroke (singe license expensive, price comes down to about $35 per seat for a 30 seat site license which may be a good size for a language center)

Animated Gifs and other video-based teaching tools may be a bit to non-interactive, and also too fast (but could be slowed down). Even better would be a pen- or touch-enabled software that allows the learner to practice the stroke, following guiding lines. Unfortunately, pocketChinese which would fit the bill ((on Java enabled phones) seems to not have been updated in almost 3 years.

Categories: e-languages, Mandarin Tags: charinput, software, stroke-order

Swift-TX subtitling with Windows XP Japanese IME

2010/11/24 plagwitz Leave a comment

In order to get Swift to work with Japanese , you have to set the font in the swift preferences:

This computer worked –

meaning: IME showing up here.

”Input mode” must be set to Hiragana, not “direct input” which (if I recall correctly think) we did in XP/ control panel/ “regional and language settings”.