iPod Usage Summer 2008

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Resource Sites
Reflet
Beginning Mandarin Chinese
Golosa
Al-Kitaab
Nakama
Beyond the Basics
New Text for Modern a China

As we expected, many more Language School students have their own iPods this summer. The French School now uses Reflets for their 1st year student and so we have made the audio for this textbook available for students to download to their iPods.  A growing number of our language media resources can now be downloaded and used on iPods and other mobile devices.

Our objective is to make language learning resources accessible to a variety of platforms enabling students to study from websites or download media files and study in media players such as iTunes and Windows Media Player or on mobile devices such as iPods.

Jin Zhang of the Chinese School will be having her 3rd year students produce their own podcasts again this summer.  As well, 1st year students in the Chinese and French School will be given audio recording assignments.  The workflow for completing audio recording assignments is still a bit cumbersome but students seem to be managing.  Here too, we are opting for providing support and documentation for multiple technologies.  Students can check out from our library circulation desk USB microphones, headsets with boom mic, iTalk voice recorders for iPods or Olympus digital voice recorders.  For courses with audio recording assignments, we have included instructions on the course site.

iPods Resources for Summer 2007

Resource Sites
French in Action
Beginning Mandarin Chinese
Golosa
Al-Kitaab

We are in the process of reformatting many of our language learning resources so that they can be played on mobile media devices such as iPods.  These resources are available for download (see: Curricular Resources links) from various Segue sites.

If you don’t have an iPod, you can access the material from website directly or download media onto a lab computer.  Some resources are also available to download onto your own computer. 

For instructions on how to download media files and how to transfer these files to your computer’s media player (such as iTunes) or iPod, see: Adding audio to your iPod

iPods for 2nd Language Acquisition 2006

In the summer of 2006 Library and Information Services (LIS) in collaboration with the Language Schools continued the iPod pilot program that was initiated in the summer of 2005 to explore the efficacy of iPods as tools for second language acquisition.  iPods with iTalk voice recorders were given to students and faculty in selected programs of study and more existing curricular material was modified for iPod delivery.

iPods with iTalk voice recorders were given to students and faculty in selected programs of study in the French and Chinese Schools. In addition, some iPods were reserved for the Russian School. Students and faculty were encouraged to use their own iPods if they had them.

Chinese School
The Chinese School has an excellent collection of curricular material that accompanies their first year textbook, Beginning Mandarin Chinese.  This material was reformatted in 2005 for use on iPods.  The collection consists of about 3000 audio files, very granular in nature, with each file representing a single vocabulary item or line of dialogue.  All of these files have full metadata accessible from StudyDB, our system for delivering lexical databases for less commonly taught languages including Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic. Given the challenge faced by first year Chinese students to learn an entirely new way of representing words, that of pictographs, ideographs and semantic-phonetic compounds, as well as developing a ear for 5 tonal variations, these students need to spend a large amount of time listening to Chinese in a systematic way.
To prepare these files for use on iPods in 2005 we extracted the metadata from the StudyDB lexical database and embedded it in the individual audio files.  Based on feedback from students, we reformatted these audio files in the following ways:

  1. Extended length of short audio files:
    The audio files for individual vocabulary items were very short making it difficult to control playback.  Thus we increased the length of these files by adding silence to the end of the file so that students would have time to pause the playback
  2. Added repetition to vocabulary audio files:
    Vocabulary audio files were also extended by adding repetitions of the vocabulary item separated by silence.  This allowed students to hear the item, repeat it, hear is again and repeat again.  Each vocabulary item was repeated 3x.
  3. Multiple representations of vocabulary items included in the metadata:
    While vocabulary items are playing, students can see how these items are represented in English translation, in Pinyin transliteration, in Simplified and in Traditional characters.  These representations were put into the title field of the audio file and in the original formatting created in 2005, four versions of the audio files were included for study, each version showing a single representation of the item.  These were reformatted in 2006 so that any given version had at least 2 representations of the item.  Thus we had a version in which both the English and Pinyin transliteration were displayed; another version in which both Pinyin and Simplified characters were displayed; a version in which Simplified and English were displayed together; and a final version that included both Traditional and Simplified.  Combining there representation provided a richer context for these audio files and allowed students to compare representations while listening.

The French School has used the popular French in Action textbook series for a number of years.  Middlebury College has a license to make the audio material for this series available for download to their students.  The publisher, CPB Annenberg, has even compiled this material into a website that institutions can use on their own servers.  Descriptions of each audio track were taken from the website and embedded in the audio files themselves so that this metadata could be used by students to search and browse the material on their iPods.  Thus students could access this material from the website and/or from their iPods.

The French School was also interested in using iPod in their graduate French phonetics program.  Material from their phonetic paradigm database was reformatted for use on iPods, extracting metadata from this database and embedding it in the individual audio files.  Just as with the French in Action material, the phonetics audio resources were available on a website as well as on iPods.

Editing Audio files for iPods

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We have completed editing our audio files for use on iPods.  Here is what we have done:

1. Extended the playtime of short audio files
We have extended the playtime of short audio files such as vocabulary items from 1-2 seconds to at least 5 seconds.  We have extended these by a) adding 2 seconds of silences to the end of the file and b) repeating the audio + silence a total of 3x for vocabulary items and 2x for audio of dialogues or phrases.  By extending the audio in general and by added silence to the end of the audio files, students will have more time to pause when listening and more time is spent on each item.  If the pace is too slow, students can allows click the forward/next button to go to the next track…

2.  Repeated audio with silence between repetitions
As noted above, when extending files we have repeated the audio 2-3 times (3x for very short audio and 2x for longer audio).  Between each repetition of the audio is silence that is approximately as long as the audio portion itself.  This allows students to hear the language, repeat what they have heard, hear it again, and repeat again and so on.

3. Chinese Vocabulary Metadata
We have improved the Chinese vocabulary metadata.  Last summer, each audio file had 4 versions , one in which the track title was in English, one where it was in Pinyin transliteration, another with Simplifed characters and a version with Traditional characters.  Students would study each version in succession.

Since the display of the Chinese or Pinyin transliteration of most vocabulary items takes so little space (most Chinese vocabulary items are only 1 to 2 syllables which can be represented by 1 to 2 Chinese characters or 2 to 8 Latin characters), we have opted to include in the track name metadata for each of the 4 versions of metadata, at least 2 representations of the vocabulary item.  For example for the English version of vocabulary item (i.e. the version in which the track title is displayed in English), we have choosen to include both the Pinyin transliteration as well as the English in the track title.  For the Pinyin version, we display both the Pinyin and the Simplified characters.  For the Simplified character version, we display the simplified Chinese characters and the English and for the Traditional character version, we display the Traditional and Simplified characters.

Chinese Audio Material

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April 25, 2006

The Chinese School was part of last summer’s iPod Initiative (see: BMC To Go).  We took thousands of audio files we had created over the years and embedded metadata into them from the lexical database we developed to organize these files.  Many of these audio files were very short, representing a single vocabulary item, and as such were difficult to control the playback of, primarily because the iPod would play the next audio track before students had a chance to stop and pause the current track….

This year we would like to increase the length of these files so that  students can better control their playback.  We have done some research and found that the best way to do this is to have each audio file repeat a vocabulary item 3x with space between each repetition during which students can repeat what they hear.  Ideally the space between repetitions of the vocabulary are approximately the same amount of time as it takes to say the item, thus creating a smooth transition between hearing and producing.

We have found the 1200 original files (in mov format) and have converted these to wave format.   Now all that needs to be done is:

  1. Open each file in an audio editing program (such as Audacity)
  2. Add silence to the end of the file
  3. Copy the entire file and paste to the end of itself 2x
  4. Save the file

How long will this take?  I have done some testing and figure with practice one could eventual edit 2-3 files per minute.  Thus 1200 files would take one person 10 hours…  For documentation on how to do this, see:
Editing Audio > Chinese

French Audio Material

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April 21, 2006

We have just created new sites for French in Action and Phonétique Progressive.  These sites will eventually contain all the media students need for the courses that use these text books.  Each audio file will be accessible from the site for playback.

Students in courses that use French in Action and Phonétique Progressive will also receive iPods with this material preloaded onto them.  These students will also be expected to use these iPods for various communicative tasks which they will need to record and upload to their class website.

For students who own their own iPods, there will be links where they can download a zip file of all the audio files.  Students with video iPods will also be able to download and view the video clips on their iPod

iPod Orientations

June 16, 2005

Alex Chapin (with the help of Duncan Sanford, Iskandar Aminov and Pascal Maharjan) did 3 iPod orientation sessions to students in the Chinese and Russian Schools.  For the Russian School iPod orientations, he focussed on how to connect iPods to computers, how to update playlists and how to add new audio files to the iPod.  It was pointed out later that it would have been good to have also shown people how to use the iPod itself. 

Thus for the Chinese School orientation, Alex began with showing students how to use iPods, how to navigate to audio tracks by artist and by playlist and how to rate audio tracks on the iPod.  Following this, he discussed how to use iTunes in general and how to create smart playlists.  Since there were more students than workstations at this orientation, only a few students actually connected their iPods to computers.

Placement Testing

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June 12, 2005
This weekend the Chinese and Russian School completed their placement testing. Both schools encouraged their students to take placement tests before they arrived at Middlebury and about half their students did this. The rest of their students took the placement tests at Middlebury.

The Chinese and Russian School will analyze test results this weekend and place students in levels of study appropriate to their current proficiency in these languages. We will then get a list of all students in levels that are part of the iPod Pilot program and give this to the library circulation desk.

Alex Chapin has scheduled meetings next week in the Wilson Media Lab with students and faculty that are in iPod Pilot program. We hope these students and faculty will pick up their iPods before this iPod orientation meeting. Alex will essentially introduce them to the iPod and walk them through the documentation on this site.

On hand will be Duncan Sanford, Iskandar Aminov, and Pascal Maharjan, students working in the Wilson Media Lab who helped set up the iPods.

iPod Distribution

June 22, 2005

70 iPods have now been distributed to Language School faculty, staff and students as follows:
Chinese School – 34
Russian School – 34

We have not yet distributed iPods to Level IV Russian students as originally planned because the Russian School enrolment numbers were higher than anticipated.  As well, we are working with the Level IV instructor to prepare her material for iPod delivery. 

For the most part the distribution of iPods was relatively smooth.  The primary challenge for the Circulation Desk was creating records of the loan for students who had not yet received their college ID cards.  In these instances, a photo ID was used to verify a student’s identity.

All LS students and faculty who received iPods signed a User Agreement that was modeled on the College’s laptop user agreement.  In addition, LS students and faculty signed a Metadata Release Form that stated they would agree to let us use metadata that we plan to extract from the iPods and aggregate for research purposes. 

Updating iPods

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We are trying to weigh pros and cons of strict limitations of iPod updating vs more flexible approach.

If a student has their own computer, would be good if they used that, they would probably use iPod in a more comprehensive way. As well, they would be more likely to use iTunes to study as well, which offers a more display options than are available with the iPod…
There is the danger though that they will delete the contents of their iPod, but if the files are available for download, they should be able to get on their own…

If we insist that iPods only be updated in the Wilson Media Lab, then we may reduce the number of times students decide to do updates. This means they will not use the iPod as comprehensively, smart playlists or studylists will not update (requires connecting to iTunes)…