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NETSPEAK

Pedagogic tools revisited

NetSpeak takes yet another look at a few tools that facilitate the teaching/learning/training process. Collaborative learning is a significant component of the pedagogic process. It is common knowledge that Net is an excellent place to carry out collaborative tasks. In fact, this column has introduced a host of collaboration tools in the past. Quite often, to accomplish many collaborative tasks efficiently, we need to engage more than one tool. For instance, students doing a group assignment can use the audio conference facility of the Net telephony application Skype to simultaneously interact with teammates. While discussing, the collaborators can edit the report together with a collaborative editing application (like Google Docs).

However, to use a service like ‘Google Documents’ one has to go through mundane steps such as account creation, and logging-in. If you wish to quickly exchange some ideas or collaboratively create a fast 10-minute report, such applications may become a little unwieldy.

One has to hunt for simpler solutions. In this regard, the easy-to-use real-time collaborative editing application Etherpad (http://etherpad. com/) comes in handy.

Etherpad offers you to generate a collaboratively editable on-line document with a single mouse click. After creating the page, you can share it with your teammates by sending them the page link. With this link, your collaborators can join you from anywhere on the Net and start editing the document along with you. The text entered by you (or by any other participant) will appear on other participant’s screen instantaneously. The process is so real-time that each of the keystrokes will be visible to all the participants. Also, as the text colour of each of participants is unique, one can easily identify who typed what.

Once done with the session, the document can be saved as a Word, PDF or HTML file (using the ‘Export’ feature). Now, if you wish to create a password-protected document and host it on a custom site (of the form http;//your-name.etherpad. com), you should opt for the professional edition, which is now free for up to three users.

Classrooms can be made more engaging if the subject can be taught in a conversational style. For instance, if the teacher presents his/her theme in the form of a dialogue between an expert and a novice, students (especially the younger ones) may find it more interesting. In addition, if the teacher can present his/her script as an animated cartoon movie, the pedagogical process can be made more effective. However, the innovative on-line service Xtra normal (http://www. xtranormal. com/) makes this process rather easy. To create a cartoon movie with Xtranormal, you need only the text of the script. A free version of Xtranormal allows you to generate a cartoon film with one or two characters. You can design the scene by choosing actors, the voice (American male/female, Indian male/female and the like), scene background, music and the like. In addition, facilities to set the camera angle and animate characters are also available.

While planning for a training session or study tour the first hurdle is to arrive at a date that suits all the participants. A series of e-mails back and forth, telephone calls, heated discussions — a real challenge for the organizer. This is the context in which the simple online scheduling application Doodle (http://doodle.com/) comes in.

Doodle lets you create an on-line poll, where you can provide all the possible dates. Once the schedule is designed, the service provides you a URL for submitting the poll to the participants. The target group members can access the link and choose the dates convenient to them.

Thanks to the numerous dictionary services, finding the meaning of a word or phrase is not at all an issue in the on-line world. One feature of words in any language is that they evolve over time. Different people use it in different contexts. A dictionary service should be able to take care of this aspect as well. In addition to providing us a word’s traditional meaning and usage examples, the service should provide us examples of the way in which the word is used in a variety of contexts.

In this regard, the dictionary service Wordnik ( http://www.wordnik.com/) outshines other similar applications. In addition to providing the usual dictionary stuff (word’s meaning, synonym, antonym and pronunciation), Wordnik presents usage examples from a variety of sources such as magazines, journals and Twitter (yes, real-time tweets with the word from Twitter).

It is common knowledge that a lot of pesticide is used when growing vegetables/fruits. Though it is a major health hazard, many of us simply ignore this issue. If you wish to know more about the pesticide residues contained in different vegetables, check out ‘What is on my food” (http://www.whatsonmyfood. org/).

Students/teachers of physics need no introduction to the illustrious physicist  

and great teacher Richard Feynman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman). A video recording of a lecture series delivered by Feynman in 1964 is now available at the MicroSoft’s Project Tuva site (http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/).

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