Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: tools

  • I am donating to this wonderful project

    Pronunciation Evaluation
    Project to develop branching readers with pronunciation practice

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Let me count the ways this project is good; good for the world, good for language learners, and good for me. First let me explain what it is. (Or you can go directly to their KickStarter page.)

    Did you ever try one of those “Choose your own adventure” books? No? You read a page or two, then you have a choice. Depending on your choice, you jump to a different page. Read that page, another choice. Another jump. I learned how to use hypertext while developing an online version of a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA). This was all before the World Wide Web. Now, people like Marcos Benavides are using CYOA for readers for language learners.

    This project mixes Choose Your Own Adventure plots with Speech Recognition, to improve pronunciation. Most pronunciation software fails because it is not intrinsically linked to neither a purpose nor an important outcome. Linking the story and plot to your ability to pronounce should provide both. This project looks really, really interesting.

    It is good for the world. This project is Open Source, it will be offered to the world for free when it is finished. Anyone can use it without paying for the software. People will even be able to work on it to improve the tool. I will guess that people will be able to write books for the project. It also means that is will be developed using suggestions from users.

    It is good for language learners because it is based on stories, the mental unit that works best with memory. It mixes oral production (pronunciation) with reading in a way that is both natural and good challenging to language learners.

    There are also a lot of ways that this project is good for me. I have been interested in both CYOA and Speech Recognition, and its application to language learning, main topics of my research in the early 90’s. I learned about it from a journalist from Colorado. One of the promoters is from Barcelona Spain (I used to live there). The developers are from Singapore and India.  A truly international affair. It is also a bit of a geeky endeavor. So much fun just to be a part of it. I just pledged $100.

  • Japan a market so mature it is dying

    A good friend in the business has been long telling me that Japan is a mature market for language learning books, materials and software. The shrinking commercial areas at language conferences attest to this. Now, another indication I came across this morning. Mindsnacks is a new software for language games, with apps for iPads and iPhones. If you will notice below, we have a nice app for learning English as a Second Language (ESL). The interfaces for learning have lots of different interfaces. If you speak Spanish, Korean or Chinese, and many other languages, you have instructions in your language to learn English. The notable exception? Japanese.

    mindsnacks
    Koreans and Chinese can use Mindsnacks easily

  • How to cite a tweet in an academic paper

    Alexis Madrigal over at Atlantic shows us how to cite a tweet from twitter in an academic paper. Go figure.

    Madrigal on citing a tweet
    Alexis Madrigal from Atlantic shows us how to cite a tweet

  • I’m going to Stanford!

    HCI Course outline at Stanford
    HCI Course outline at Stanford

    OK, not really. But I am going to take one class at Stanford. OK, not AT Stanford, but through Stanford. Stanford has generously opened up some of their classes to people outside the university, for study online. It will have the same lectures, the same activities, the same quizzes and tests, and the same interaction as the for-credit students will get. It is free, but does not carry any recognition. For a guy like me, who is a professor, and no longer needs any more recognition, this is pure learning.

    I will be taking the course in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). I am very excited, because it looks like I will be able to freshen my programming skills while applying them to an area of development that will help me create materials for my students, and students outside my classes as well.

    I hope to chronicle my adventure here. I will also keep you up on my other MOOC course, Change11.

  • OpenClass may kill Moodle

    Really excited about the opening of the collaboration between Pearson and Google to make OpenClass, an LMS built for the web. Out this week some time. Part of Google Apps for Education. Will update when I get it.

    This may be a Moodle killer.