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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.
German Frame Semantic Online Lexicon
“The German Frame-based Dictionary is an attempt to apply the linguistic theory of Frame Semantics to the language classroom”, and is “based on the German FrameNet at the University of Texas at Austin, a digital archive of how German words are used in real life contexts”. How to Use the German Frame-based Dictionary.
Example Frame pagE:
The Frames available are limited, but instructive samples which can help the naïve user with dictionary use: 
There are also some Arbeitsblätter, but only a few: 
(On the occasion of Charles Fillmore’s death).
Here is how the LRC could use an engraver to deter theft of equipment
If MS-Exchange room mailbox does not auto-decline, but forwards conflicting requests
- This room should auto-decline conflicting requests, but forwards them:
- If you log in as the room and look under Options / See more options / Settings / Resource:
- You see that 433d has it wrong here:
- 434 has it set correctly:
Change onedrive to skydrive to embed your MS-Office online files in WordPress
- A while ago, Microsoft was successfully sued by Sky to change the name of SkyDrive. Recently MS did that, but it looks like somebody has not gotten the memo yet, again:
- Originally suggested embed code from SkyDrive: https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=0025C841818181C2&resid=25C841818181C2%21666&authkey=ANeXAUnGHDfEqTQ&em=2
- Fail on WordPress.com:
- Change to:
- Sort of works on WordPress.com (but width and hieght parameters are being ignored):
Firefox Java AddOn settings on learning lab PCs
- FireFox should not be allowed to update automatically:
- teacher
- student:
after restart: 
- change in:
- or:
- or in prefs.js and user.js
- change in:
- v. 26 disables Java by default which we need for online textbook components
- what dos v27 do which is now being automatically downloaded and installed
- teacher
- Java within Firefox
- should not be allowed to update automatically
- especially not for Java (7.51 breaks our online textbook components)
- but it has not updated to 7.51
- is this b/o the Deployment Toolkit also being deactivated? Not sure: “By blocking the Java DT plug-in, the Java version detection mechanism is disabled. Therefore, when a user tries to launch a Java applet or application, that requires a specific Java version other than the active Java version on a user’s system, it will fail.”
- Manually checking for updates leads to this:
- how to prevent automatic update of java?
- Manually checking for updates leads to this:
- should not be set to “ask” every time (on frozen computers), plus: users miss the notification that asks them to enable it
- teacher
- student:
- to just freeze java temporarily on a version known working , setting about:config/
- extensions.blocklist.enabled / false seems to radical
- teacher
- should not be allowed to update automatically
The Films on Demand subscription of Atkins library
- Benefits:
- provides access to over ten thousand streaming videos.
- including world languages:
- Remaining Problems:
- 741 titles for World languages is not a lot (additional materials may be applicable to language learning, but I do not see the most commonly requested foreign language films used in the department which we are currently trying to rescue across the demise of VHS). Any particular silo of information is not comprehensive (given the power of the network effect, YouTube wins hands-down most if the times),
- any content is difficult to integrate into a language skill curriculum,
- any added interface restrictions may make it more difficult, not more stable,
- not unlike YouTube, files you may have used, even linked, can get removed.
- the website seems to be available only on campus – even if you are logged into your campus account (university VPN will likely help, and not, given that it has video throughput issues).
Google new maps’ photo tour slideshow viewer
<Grumble> If these internet companies invent anything else, I won’t get out much anymore.</Grumble> (I have always loved “travelling on a map” too much already
).
This is not your grandparents’ photos feature in Google maps anymore. The new photo tour automatically (I must assume? Based on GIS data included in the photo, image recognition to cluster motifs?) intelligently tags the map includes highlights of well-known sights, and it seems to automatically group similar shots/motifs, providing the feel of an in-depth exploration, even presence. And the occasional grandparents in the foreground remind us, that this remains a crowd-sourced project…
Now how to plan a better intercultural map exploration class with this…
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