Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: Language

  • Tool #24: Sparknotes Summaries

    help for native speakers
    help for native speakers

    Sparknotes is a site designed to help high school and university native speakers of English in their studies. Many professors look down on such sites as being a kind of cheating, but for non-native speakers it is an invaluable reference in how to do summaries. You can look up pretty much anthing, but they specialize in literature. They have complete chapter-by-chapter summaries of the most popular books in high school. They even have some audio versions you can download and listen to on your mp3  player, and text versions for your iPod or phone. This is where books start turning into bits.

  • Tool #23: Zotero, for the researcher

    Save and organize research
    Save and organize research

    Research is always part of a student and teacher’s life in a university, in any language. Zotero makes collecting research on the web a lot easier. This Firefox plugin (they have a new MS Word plugin too) helps you collect your research, organize it and keep it ready for use at any time. Just hit the Zotero button in the corner of your browser, up pops a small window, you can collect the link, the entire page, or parts of the page, as you like.

    Zotero really shines when you need to make a bibliography. You can go to Amazon, or any other site with standard references, and Zotero will collect all the bibliographic data for that book, magazine or web page. Select all the ones you want, set a format for your bibliography (MLA, APA or others) and it automatically creates the bibliography.

    They are working on a Japanese version, and the next version will also make all your data available across the web. I do research on about 4 different computers and this will be a godsend.

  • Tool #22: Zoho Office and more

    Zoho Offline too
    Zoho Offline too

    Zoho is a suite of office software that you can use online, or you can download onto your computer and use offline, and then synch with your online content. So you get the best of both worlds. Speaking of both worlds, you can get Zoho in Japanese too. With about 20 diffferent applications (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database, email, planner, chat wiki, notebook), you can’t go wrong. Especially since it’s all free.

  • Tool #21: Google Docs

    Google Docs Home
    Google Docs Home

    After you sign up for an account at Google (free), you can do all kinds of things. You have a free word processor and spreadsheet and presentation software, all online, without downloading anything. It is saved automatically so you can’t lose anything and you can access it anywhere you can access the Internet.

    My favorite trick is to work with 3 or 4 students on one paragraph together in a classroom, and project the document on the screen. I invite the students to join me, and start a paragraph. They add sentences and correct each other at the same time, and Google updates it every 5 seconds or so. My students are usually right there in the class, but they could be anywhere in the world.  Many online schools use this to tutor students in writing, with teachers half way around the world from the students.

  • Tool #20: Open Office

    Open Office is the best example of Open Source Software
    Open Office is the best example of Open Source Software

    Open Office does almost everything that Microsoft Office does, and is free. It is probably the best example of Open Source software. This software was created by dedicated volunteers. The support for the software is better than you can get at Microsoft, in most cases. Open Office comes in Japanese too, as well as many other languages. More and more companies, governments and organizations are using this software, because it does everything they need it to.