| |
1. A Gift from David – a New Arts Project!
David Fay, the ELO, would like to launch a new project on ‘language studies through American art’. A group of future material developers will be working on it under the guidance of an EFL Fellow, Natasha Frank. Twelve grantees – members of this group - will have a unique chance to participate in a 4-week IV Program in the U.S. This group will be working on modifying the ready-made teachers’ guide for an ELF audience; here is a new online resource: http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/ It is a fabulous resource - a wonderful visual portal to American culture.
2. A Few Gifts from Fellows and Speakers
Those who have already joined http://www.elt-russia.ning.com could participate in the first Forum that was moderated by the ELT Specialist Gail Weinstein. This was the first in the series of Forums; the next Forum will be moderated by an EFL Fellow John Silver. Please check the site for announcements. You could become an active player in an association, correspond with association members around Russia, or communicate with other teachers who share a particular interest, such as ESP, teaching young learners, or assessment through this site. The site was created and it is moderated by an EFL Fellow Todd Vidamour.
3. A gift from Michael Krauss and Natasha Fomenko.
Nominate Your Candidates for “Exploring Web 2.0” Course before January 10th!
Michael Krauss ELO-supported online course “Exploring Web 2.0” with EL Specialist Michael Krauss on February 1-18. The goal of this course is to familiarize the participants with the new interactive Web 2.0 resources, such as blogs, wikis and social sites (Facebook, Flickr, etc.) so that they can build a new site or enhance an existing site for the association. Participants should be familiar with the basics of the web (browsers and search engines). They should also:
Have consistent access to a computer with a good Internet connection.
- Have consistent access to a computer running Windows XP, Windows Vista, MacOS v10.3 or above, or a recent version of Linux.
- Have the capability of recording voice either via an internal microphone (most laptops have this) or by way of an external microphone.
- Have a set of headphones. (Instructor will provide suggestions for purchase of microphones and/or headsets for those who need them.)
- Be able to dedicate one to two hours per weekday to cover tasks
- Commit to helping the teachers’ association build a website
If you are interested in having a member of your association participate in the course, please nominate the member by providing:
1. Name, Institution, Title
2. Contact information (mailing address, email, phone)
3. Brief explanation of why you think this person is right for the course (maximum 50 words)
4. Brief description of what the TA representative will do after completing the course (maximum 100 words)
The deadline for applying is January 10. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to write to Natalia Fomenko at fomenkonv@state.gov.
4. A Gift from ELO
English Language Office together with Associations and REPETITOR Multimedia have created a DVD-ROM “A Visual Guide to Building Teachers’ Associations”. The “visual” aspect of the Guide consists of film clips, Power Point files, and photos and gives you a “visual” feel for the work of teachers’ associations in Russia. As the famous Russian proverb puts it, “It is better to see one time than to hear 100 times.” The 12 films of the DVD-Roms will allow you to listen to the Ambassador’s Speech at the opening of the last NATE Conference, to “be present” at workshops of outstanding Specialists and Fellows, to listen to plenary presentations of renown Russian specialist. Texts and additional documents supplement the visuals and provide a background or additional detail. The Guide’s goals are to showcase the history and current activities of teachers’ associations, highlight the range of support mechanisms available to all associations, and provide step-by-step instructions for those who wish to join an association or establish an association in a city or region that does not yet have an association. The DVD-Roms will be distributed for free at various ELT events.
5.A Gift from Google and Stefan Mizha (Special Gift for Translators)
Google Language Tools
This is a real gift from Google. If you have been following the “net buzz”, you may have already noticed that over the last couple of years Google has introduced many new features that are to make Google services, like Gmail and YouTube, “more human.” What it means is that in addition to improving Google’s intrinsic mechanisms like search algorithms, software code and other stuff we don’t usually notice and take for granted, Google staff are trying to provide the users with tangible goodies: document sharing, mailbox organization tools, calendars, task tracking, chat that are to help people get more organized and improve group collaboration. You can review Google’s new features here http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about_whatsnew.html. An innovation that has really dazzled me is the Google’s linguistic tools. People who work with languages are usually skeptical about automatic translations. So was I. Until two weeks ago, when we had an important visitor in town. This person was going to visit a Russian counterpart and we urgently needed that counterpart’s biography. The information was scarce and I had to compile the bio from a number of Russian sources, what left me with almost no time to translate the document into English. Desperate, I decided, what the heck!... and fed the text to the “Google translate” feature, at http://translate.google.com/ . I wasn’t hoping for much – the bio bristled with government organization names and function titles that are usually a pest to translate even for a human.
Imagine my amazement when the output turned out to be an almost perfect text!What happened? Have I missed something? After some searching around I stumbled upon the following explanation at Gigaom.com :
“Google has been investing significant resources in a multi-year effort to develop its statistical machine translation technology. Statistical MT works by comparing large numbers of parallel texts that have been translated between languages and from these learns which words and phrases usually map to others — similar to the way humans acquire language. The problem with statistical MT is that it requires a large number of directly translated sentences. These are hard to find, and because of this SMT systems use sources like the proceedings from the European Parliament, United Nations, etc. Which are fine if you’re writing in bureaucrat-speak, but aren’t so great for other texts. Google Translation Center is a straightforward and very clever way to gather a large corpus of parallel texts to train its machine translation systems. Part machine translator and part translation memory (a sort of search engine for translation that helps translators to recall translations), GTC will help translators by providing a free, global translation memory, and in turn drive costs down by reducing the amount of work needed to complete a text. It will help Google by providing an excellent source of high quality parallel texts that can be fed back into the statistical translation systems.”
So, that’s what’s been going on! Google has been sucking in all those parallel texts in various languages and is now using them to find a better translation. Although it is technically automated translation, it relies on translations made or edited by humans, hence a much better translation quality. Professional translators can go one step further – use Google’s Translator Toolkit. Google’s Translator Toolkit allows users to translate texts, create, upload and share your own glossaries and Translation Memories with the community, thus constantly improving the quality of translation. Translation Memory software costs hundreds dollars and much more if it comes along with ready glossaries and text databases. All of this now available to everyone for free from Google! To access Google’s translator toolkit, go to http://translate.google.com/toolkit. You can take a video tour of the Translator Toolkit feature here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7W2NJFdoIg
Here are the links to get you going in the Google world:
Google Translate http://translate.google.com/
Translator Toolkit http://translate.google.com/toolkit
Latest News from Google: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about_whatsnew.html
Google Services List: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/
Happy Holidays! (And don’t be shy to click on those “Help” links.)
Another productivity tool for you: Instapaper.com
This is a bookmarking service that allows you to save links for reading later by clicking on the “Read Later” link that you will be guided to install on your browser toolbar. No password is required, all you need to input is your e-mail address to get to your bookmarks page. As with any bookmarking service, you will be able to access your saved links from any computer, PDA or communicator that has Internet access. But what makes Instapaper really different from other bookmarking services is that Instapaper will let you reformat the content of your bookmarked pages into a printable newspaper-like document or a file to download to your portable eBook reader.
6.A Gift from Exchanges Office – A New Round of TEA Program
Secondary school teachers with a full time teaching position who haven’t been to the U.S. are invited to participate in a new Round of Teaching Excellence and Achievement (TEA) Program. The selection process for 2010-2011 will start after holidays, please check the Embassy site http://moscow.usembassy.gov/elo.html as well as http://www.eltrussia.ru. We encourage you to look at the application form early because it involves providing a number of materials including essays and a lesson plan. If you have any questions, please direct them to USGExchanges@gmail.com or call the Embassy at (495) 728- 50-00, ext 4925 (Nataliya Sirchenko)
|
×èòàéòå â ðàçäåëå "Umbrella Newsletter # 41":
| |
| |
|
|
