Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: Language

  • Tool #9: Delicious

    Originally called del.icio.us, you can find this web site at delicious.com.

    Delicious web site for tokyokevin
    Delicious web site for tokyokevin

    Using Delicious has several advantages over regular bookmarks (or favorites). First, the sites you save are saved to the delicious computer, so you can access from any computer. Once you save a bookmark, you can give it many different tags (for example, my web site here might have 3 ro 4 tags, such as teaching, learning, language, tokyo, kevinryan, japan, computers, and women.  I can then search b any of these terms to find the web page I want.

    By far the most important, though, is that you can share your bookmarks and tags with other people. You can find other people that are interested in the same kinds of things you are, and look at their bookmarks.

    I often get all my students in my computer literacy class to sign up for delicious, and we make a small group to share bookmarks. When we do a research project, we can help each other find interesting sites. They are shared immediately and automatically. Very simple, very powerful.

  • Tool #8: Tagging

    Tagging is a simple concept with great power. Tags are similar to bookmarks (or favorites, in Internet Exporer), but they are also so much more. Tags are central to the new social media and web pages in the last few years.

    Tags are labels. You can put as many tags on a web page as you like. That way, when you search for information, you can get different lists of web pages depending on the key words (tags) that you use.

    Email, for example, in Google (called Gmail) is not put into folders to organize. You tag the emails you are interested in, sometimes with 3 or 4 tags, and then you put all your emails into one folder. It is easy to find simply by searching for tags. Tomorrow, I will show you a specific web site that does tags.

  • Tool #7: Visuwords

    Rikai is a great dictionary for translation, but translating dictionaries should only be used if there is not enough time or context to figure out the meaning of a word. Ideally, you should go to an English-only dictionary and use the bilingual dictionary only as a last resort.

    So get your students away from bilingual dictionaries by using an online English-only dictionary. Not one with just text, but one with graphic representations of meaning. I’m talking about Visuwords.

    Visuwords header
    Visuwords header

    Enter a word into the box, and a whole sematic web appears below. The connections are coded and you can move them around, get definitions by hovering over the words with the mouse, and use it in many different ways. People remember vocabulary by connecting a word to other words. Trying to remember words in a list is one of the worst ways to learn new words, second only to flash cards. Lists and flash cards help you to forget words. Using words in sentences and linking them to other words is the way to build a vocabulary. This tool works like your brain does.

  • Tools Overview online

    As a kind of table of contents, I’ve published a spreadsheet of all the tools so far, and a few ideas into the future. I’ll update this as I post each day, so you can revisit any time and get the most up to date information there.

    Or you could just read them here as I put them up. Get that RSS (Tool #4) so you don’t miss any.

  • Tool #6: Portable Storage

    typical usb memory stick
    typical usb memory stick

    During the course of a typical work day, I might use up to 6 different computers, 2 at home and 4 at work. Keeping one set of information constantly updated, and always coordinated between computers is very important. Grades and attendance, for example.

    I use a system where I carry a USB memory stick (also called a thumb drive) with all my important data. I always save the newest version to the memory stick when I edit and save a document.  Every 3 or four days, when I save to the memory stick, I then copy everything on the stick to the computers I am using. That means I have 6 backups, but the files I use are on the memory stick.

    portable hard diskYou can buy a memory stick now for very cheap. I bought a 2 gigabyte stick 3 years ago for 20,000 yen. Yesterday I bought a 16 GB stick for 4,000 yen. Most people would never use more than 1 GB. But if you start using audio or video files, the sticks can fill up fast. If that is the case, try a portable hard drive. They now cost less than 10,000 yen, and give you 120-320 GB and more. This is a great way to back up your laptop, or carry it instead of the laptop when you visit friends with computers.

    A quick note on terminology in English. Memory is usually a computer chip used by the computer to run software faster. It usually stays in the computer. Storage is used for files and data that you save for using later. So when I am typing something in a word program, I am using the computer’s memory. When I save the document, I am using it’s storage. So the name memory stick should really be storage stick. But it’s not.