google | Thomas' Work Space

A first look at the Google Dictionary extension for Chrome

2014/03/06 plagwitz Leave a comment

We
1. 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),
2. 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
1. that is convenient (as quickly accessed like glosses) for reading activities in many languages (Q: is the privileged word sense displayed here intelligently chosen?)
2. while (for some languages more than for others) providing access to additional word senses, usage examples and historical background information
Interface 1: Tooltip,
1. for English with audio
2. for other languages without audio (even though audio pronunciation may be available in Google translate for that language):
3. convenient access (I have been loving the tooltip interface since Google toolbar days)
4. limited, but useful information,
  1. 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:
  2. including pronunciation (not IPA, but audio)
5. Interface 2 (“more”)
  1. For English, a click on “more” leads to the Google “define”search operator (the related etymology search operator has been reviewed here before):
  2. Interface 3: unfold the search results by clicking on the down arrow at the bottom to access additional information: =
    1. additional word sense entries
    2. historical:
      1. etymology
      2. frequency data
    3. translation/dictionary entry:
      1. for our learners of languages other than English, the translation appears right in the tool tip, see above;
      2. 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.
6. 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
  1. more limiting than “define”: While you are given multiple word senses for
    1. Spanish:
    2. and to a lesser extent, for
      1. Arabic:
      2. Hindi:
  2. for many languages the results are much more limiting:
    1. Even if you look up German or French, you revert back to the (pedagogically terrible) single word-sense original “translation” interface )
    2. For East Asian languages, you get Roman alphabet transcriptions
      1. e.g. Chinese with Pinyin:
      2. e.g. Japanese:
Still no per-user tracking? Here it would make sense for the user.

Categories: Arabic, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Dictionaries, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Reading, Russian, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, Spanish, Swahili, websites, Yoruba Tags: glossing, google, google-dictionary, google-translate

Google etymology feature

2014/01/11 plagwitz Leave a comment

Etymology information has been added to Google end of August, still need to review this more closely (other languages supported?), but for now:
Type “etymology” followed by the English word to get the Etymology (and unfold the arrow below to get additional dictionary information, including historical frequency)
Of course this feature cannot replace a historical legal dictionary, but I what I was looking for was the juxtaposition with “freeman” in English feudal history, which I would have liked to find a reference here to also
Etymology does not seem to be supported if I type “Etymology Schmetterling” (or “Etymologie Schmetterling”), the feature does not come up. It does if I type “etymology butterfly", however: Is this right?! The next thing which is missing (and this reminds me too much of how our students use Google translate) is the admission of that these explanations are theories which are contentious, and should be debated:

Categories: Dictionaries, e-languages, English, mental-notes Tags: etymology, google

LRC offers generating audio files from your foreign language texts

2013/03/01 plagwitz 2 comments

Would you like to expose your student to L2 listening materials beyond the audio learning materials that come with your textbook?
1. Materials customized to the learning needs of your classes? From current affairs maybe?
2. Would you prefer no to send them to internet audio that may be difficult and time consuming to integrate?
3. Do you lack the time to record speaking cues, oral exam questions or reading models yourself?
4. Do you need audio files that you and your students can rewind/fast forward/replay, edit and record into with voice insert?
5. And would you prefer using audio in your classes that comes with aligned text, whether that audio that has been transcribed or vice versa, to create glossaries, captions, multimedia assignments?
The LRC now offers generating audio files from your foreign language texts in many languages.
1. The service is based on the quality voices of Google Translate text-to-speech (better (simpler) than its actual translation portion, let alone its naïve use).
2. Unlike Google translate, the service persists longer than 100 character texts to audio files (mp3) that (and the underlying digital text) we can work with further, in your syllabus, the LMS and the digital audio lab.
3. Technical background and samples.
4. Languages that are available in good quality: See links under this post; other languages: please test with me..
To request an audio file generation for your class, send the following information to the LRC
1. regular reading/listening materials: plain digital text should do;
2. SANAKO oral exam cues: please enter the text in this MS-Word table and add information in the additional columns for exam customization.

Categories: announcements, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, English, French, German, Italian, Listening, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Spanish Tags: audio, google, oral-exams, text-to-speech

How to find clip art for learning material creation with Google’s Advanced Image Search

2012/12/18 plagwitz Leave a comment

Once you made it to http://images.google.com, click on the “options” button in the upper right and choose “Advanced search”:

One of the useful options for learning material creation is restricting search to “clip art”, like in the screenshot below:

The results in many cases are more different – and useful – than in this example:

So give it a try, and also let us know in the comments what other advanced image search options you like to use in your learning material creation.

Categories: Pictures, service-is-documenting, service-is-learning-materials-creation, websites Tags: google, pictures

Google-Translate for phonetization?

2012/07/03 plagwitz Leave a comment

Google-Translate also offers some phonetic transliterations. You may have noticed this when attempting (remember, though, that it is for a reason that they link to “professional translation” services, and also invite anybody to amend the machine translation offered) to translate from English into other languages,
However, if you type or paste non-Romanized text into the source textbox, you also get the option button “read phonetically” (meaning transliterate to phonetic symbols or phonetize).
Limited use in the LRC: Few languages are supported.

Only languages written in non-roman letters are offered. E.g. French or German are not deemed difficult enough (I know a few that would beg to differ ).
Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew are also not supported (root cause: right-to-left? Strangely these right-to-left-languages work in the TBA:Google transliterate IME which attempts to do roughly the opposite of phonetization):
Leaves: Chinese, Greek, Hindi, Japanese, Russian. However, note finally that not a standard phonetic alphabet is being used either for these transcriptions.