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June 2008, Week 5

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From:
LLTI-Editor <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:06:23 -0400
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Dear All

 

Our language learning resources company - www.theswitchboard.eu - is
delighted to announce the launch of Soundbooth - a language lab on a CD.

 

The switchboard has taken the essential features from over ten virtual
language labs and combined them into a low cost language lab for use on any
pc, (a Mac version will be available in the Autumn), at home or in
education, and for any language as it is Unicode compatible.

 

The details of Soundbooth can be found on our web site,
<http://www.theswitchboard.eu/> www.theswitchboard.eu, but the following
gives a summary of its main features.

 

*	In a central window a simple html web page can contain graphics,
text, drop down boxes, radio buttons, check boxes, scrolling text entry
boxes and hyperlinks to other files or web pages. 
*	Audio tracks linked to the course content allow the students to
listen to recordings.  Using Audacity, recording pauses can be inserted at
any point into the original track, allowing students to record themselves.
The audio recording is shown below the central window with a time track and
either green or red bands indicating the listening and recording sections.
*	Audio input and output level sliders allow sound levels to be
altered by the student.
*	Simple media player buttons allow the student to either listen to
the original, record themselves or listen to the combined recording.
Re-recording of even one small section can be done at any time and will be
incorporated into the total recording.  The cursor on the audio track allows
a student to jump around the track.
*	All recordings by the student are saved as mp3 files and can be
emailed or put on to mp3 players for assessment by staff.
*	When a student has entered text, selected drop down items or ticked
radio buttons or check boxes the whole page is saved in the student's folder
as an interactive web page.  If this is a folder to which staff have access
any such work can be assessed. 
*	All saved work has a file name structure that identifies the
student, the lesson and the item.
*	When a student returns to an item all their original recording and
text entries etc. are reloaded and can be modified as required.
*	Lessons can be created with up to 36 items in each lesson, an item
being a combination of a web page with audio as required.   Lessons can be
stored in any location, on a stand-alone pc or on a network.  Different
languages can be stored in different locations
*	New lessons are installed by simply dropping the new 'named' lesson
folder into the master lessons folder.   This allows lessons to be provided
at specific times e.g. for assessment.
*	To avoid any network overload a 'temp' file of the lesson is loaded
into the student's folder when initially selected and is deleted on exiting
the program.
*	A WYSIWYG html editor is available to speed up the compilation of
items and it will remove unwanted code from original copied material e.g.
Word documents to give clean simple web pages.
*	All lessons can be encrypted if desired, with the included
encryption engine, so the originals cannot be changed accidentally or
deliberately.

 

Pricing.

We set out with the intention of creating some software with excellent audio
quality that supported the four language skills and was available at an
accessible price for all ages and levels.

 

For IALLT members we are able to provide a copy of the software,
personalised to the institution, to be used for any language, and to be
freely copied for students to use at home, for a cost of $2 per student
studying foreign languages at the institution, with a minimum cost of $4000.


 

As the creation of lessons may take some time we are happy to accept a
declaration of the number of students using the software at the end of the
academic year following a minimum purchase. This may help your budgeting.
Updates and email support will be free for the first year and thereafter any
updates can be purchased for $1000 for the year if required.  The WYSIWYG
editor is included in the above cost.

 

Resources

As it is very easy to add resources we are in the process of establishing a
shared resource bank for all languages and all purchasers will be invited to
join on an annual subscription basis

 

Demonstration copy

We are happy to send out copies of the software but to make life easier we
have created an ftp location for IALLT where the program can be downloaded.
The JRE runtime which is required is included in the installation.  The user
documentation can also be downloaded.

 

 <ftp://ftp.theswitchboard.eu/> ftp.theswitchboard.eu     username:
[log in to unmask]          password:  IALLT

 

Regards

Kate Hammond

 

 

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Language Learning Technology (http://iallt.org/), and The Consortium for
Language Teaching and Learning (http://www.languageconsortium.org/).
Join IALLT at http://iallt.org.
Otmar Foelsche, LLTI-Editor ([log in to unmask])
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