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News from the Language Resource Center November 24, 1999
Electronic Classroom, Video/Audio server, Dual Track audio recorders Due to funding provided by Dean Brown and the Department of Information Technology, a new electronic classroom (complete with 21computer terminals), an audio/video server, and eleven dual-track audio recorders were purchased for the LRC this past summer. The old audio lab, which was no longer functioning properly, has been dismantled. As our newly-installed equipment is now fully operational, we would like to invite you to attend a demonstration session on Friday, January 14, from 11: 00 AM -12: 00 PM. The favor of a reply is requested, as light refreshments will be served. For those unable to attend, please feel free to stop by and request a demonstration or to schedule a special session with me. Thanks to Michael Bradley’s expertise (LRC System Analyst) we have now completed the digitization of the Destinos series and installed the files on the new video server. Students can now view all 52 episodes on the LRC computers. This material is not accessible outside of the LRC but we hope to be able to extend this service to the classrooms and residential colleges in the near future. During the spring semester, we plan to complete the digitization of all audiotapes as well as the collection of films on reserve. This new audio/video digital format allows students to navigate with greater ease between video/audio files, web exercises, CD-ROM dictionaries, and Word Processors. The few students who have been testing our new system have had enthusiastic responses and were very eager to disseminate this information to the rest of the campus. Our film collection is also growing and now includes a number of DVD titles. Because of their lower cost and easier accessibility to various language tracks, we are now purchasing DVDs instead of videotapes. In order to facilitate the viewing of DVDs in the classroom, we have purchased several DVD players that may be checked out for classroom use. We have also communicated with those in charge of the podiums to inform them of our needs. Should you travel abroad, feel free to purchase DVDs from various countries as you will be able to play them on our region free DVD players. You can browse and search our film collection at the following address: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lrc/collections.html Our latest arrival is « Le Petit Robert » CD-ROM which can be used in conjunction with « Système-D », and « Word 97 » with Proofing Tools (French spell check, grammar check, and thesaurus). Similar tools are also available to students of Spanish, German and Italian. « Diccionario de la Lengua Española » is the Spanish dictionary available on CD-ROM. Students who are native speakers of Spanish represent the largest number of users of this dictionary as they prefer to work with monolingual dictionaries. All these tools are particularly helpful to third and fourth year language students who write papers for their literature courses. NJ Star Communicator is our latest acquisition for Chinese and Japanese. It allows users to input Chinese or Japanese characters in a Word Processor, web editor, web browser, or electronic mail. For German, « CyberBuch » is the most recent software available. It would be best incorporated to second year German language courses. It allows the user to listen to text, watch a videoclip reflecting the context of the story, search vocabulary explanations in English or German, and complete exercises. The equivalent program in Spanish,"Ciberteca" was used successfully this semester in Jane Verm’s Spanish 201. In addition, we have just purchased three new CD-ROMs for Spanish: Museo del Prado, Velasquez, and Cervantes. They will be posted on the software list as soon as they are accessible on our network. Please visit our web site frequently as we are adding programs regularly: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lrc/collections/software.html If you would like to request that we purchase any material, please fill out the form on our web page. It is important that we receive a written request so that it can be posted on our database for accountability purpose. http://polyglot.rice.edu/yantosca/requests/mediareq.html If you plan to require or recommend that students use any of the software programs in the LRC, we ask that you please schedule an orientation with your class so that we can show students how to use the programs. Because the computers are in a networked environment, access to any programs is usually more complex than from individual computer stations. Moreover, students will feel more comfortable using the LRC if they have already visited the Center. It also allows us to give students an introduction to all relevant software programs available in the LRC. In addition, faculty members are welcome to schedule their class several times during the course of the semester if they wish to work together with students on a particular program. For exemple, they might work on developing writing skills while students work individually on a computer using all the writing tools available. Students can also write Chinese or Russian poems or essays which they might share once posted on the LRC web server. Please see our web page to make reservations: http://polyglot.rice.edu/yantosca/reservations/logreserve.html As in previous semesters, Inge Dibella and I will be offering two workshops to assist faculty members with development of web pages for teaching. Thursday 12/9/99; 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM "Teach Foreign Language or Literature on the Web" Non Roman characters supported. No previous experience required for workshop. For beginners. Please fill out form below. Friday 12/10/99; 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM "Create Interactive Web Exercises for your Language and/or Literature class" Non roman characters supported. Previous experience with web page design required. We will introduce two new programs; Matchmaking from Swarthmore and ExTemplate created here by the LRC staff. Please fill out form below. Reservation for Projection Room Due to the installation of the new electronic classroom, we have had to move the projection room to Rayzor 105. It is now available for reservations Monday-Thursday 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM, Saturday 11:00 – 4:00 PM, and Sunday 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM. Reservations can be made at the same address as orientations. Before making your reservation, please call to ask for your password, and verify the length of the movie you are scheduling in order to allow sufficient amount of time for the viewing. Currently, we have a Web Attendance Database, which allows students to log in time, assignment completed, and grade received (software, video, or audio). Both students and faculty have access to this database to look up student records. The use of this system is required by 40% of our faculty members. For accountability and funding purposes, we plan to implement a mandatory login for all students. It will allow us to track the usage of our facility and servers. For this purpose, we will design a new database, which will be better suited for everyone. Until then, you are welcome to use our Attendance system at the following address: http://polyglot.rice.edu/yantosca/attendance/proflogin.html We are happy to welcome our new coordinator Henny Halliburton. Henny is from Chile and has lived in the Houston area for many years. Her background is in language education and marketing and she has a good amount of budgeting experience. In addition to her budget and copyright permission responsibilities, she handles all your requests, so don’t hesitate to contact her if you have any questions. Michael Bradley who has been our System Analyst for the past seven months will be leaving us for private ventures at the end of December. We thank him for all his dedication and outstanding deployment of the three servers and workstations. In order to allow our student assistants time to prepare for their examinations, we will offer an abbreviated schedule during final exams. Final Exams Thursday 12/9 - Monday 12/20 Monday - Thursday 10:00 AM - 7:00 PM Friday 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM Saturday 12:00 PM - 3:00 PM Sunday 4:00 - 7:00 PM CLOSED Tuesday 12/21/99 - Sunday 1/2/00 Limited schedule 1/3- 1/17 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM Closed weekends Regular schedule will resume on 1/18/00 ------------------------------------------ Please Return form below via e-mail to bartlett@rice.edu Name: ---------------------------- I am planning to attend: ----- workshop # 1 for beginners Thursday 12/9/99 – 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM ---- workshop # 2 for more advanced users 12/10/99 – 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM ----- demonstration session Friday, 1/14/00 – 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM ----- I prefer to use an Apple computer ---- I prefer to use a Windows workstation Thank you
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