Federal University of Pampa

(Universidade Federal do Pampa)

Cristian Cechinel

Unipampa

Unipampa is part of a Brazilian government initiative focused on the expansion of public education over the country.

It was created in 2006 (only 4 years old). The University has a multi campus structure

functioning in 10 distinct cities of Rio Grande do Sul State, in the extreme south of Brazil

The central campus is located in the city of Bagé

Bagé, Caçapava do Sul, Dom Pedrito, Jaguarão, Santana do

Livramento, Uruguaiana, São Gabriel, São Borja, Itaqui , and Alegrete.

Unipampa

This region is economically deficient, with few industries and climate problems.

Most of the students who enter Unipampa belong to this region and have several deficiencies in their educational background

Unipampa

Programmes offered in Bagé

Computer Engineering, Production Engineering, Food Engineering, Chemistry Engineering, Renewal Energies Engineering, English, Spanish, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics.

Codewitz Network

Since 2007 we are member of the Codewitz Network.

However, despite the excellent quality of its materials, we have not been able to use them with our students, due to the fact they are in English.

Codewitz Network

90% of the first year students at Unipampa do not understand English

When the students finally acquire a desirable level of English understanding they are already in the middle of the course, and they are no longer interested in basic concepts of computer programming

Work idea

Adapting Learning Objects already stored in the CMB so that textual translation can be automatically made.

Developing a methodology so that future LOs developed under the scope of the project take into account future adaptation to other locales and countries.

Work idea Such idea works under the concept of

Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (L10n).

Internationalization deals with the idea of developing an application that can be used in different languages, date, time, currency, etc, i.e., the process of generalizing the product. [4]

Localization is “the process of taking educational resources developed for one context and adapting them for other contexts” [1]

Work idea

“Proper internationalization facilitates localization”

Internationalization should be part of the earliest design stages of the LO, so that localization

would be possible without rewriting the program's source code.

Work idea

Figure 1. Tasks of Localization (Extracted from [3])

Method

To study the source code of some of the LOs stored on the CMB, and to develop a standard methodology to communicate Codewitz LOs with outside textual information.

To evaluate which are the most important tasks of Localization for the case of LOs focused on Programming topics (other than Language).

Method

Selecting Codewitz LOs in order to adapt them to be used in languages other than English.

Translating the Codewitz LOs textual information into Portuguese and Spanish.

Effectively adapt (localize) the selected LOs regarding language and other required aspects.

Example One possible solution for the case of language

Internationalization is the use of the GNU gettext [2]. It makes an encapsulation of the strings and it calls the ones the user will visualize.

.po file containing the translation to Spanish

printf(gettext("My name is %s.") % myname) ;

# : src/name.c:36 msgid "My name is %s." msgstr “Mi nombre es %s."

Another example

Learning Objects from RIVED

References

[1]wiki.oercommons.org/mediawiki/index.php/What_is_Localization%3F

[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/gettext.html

[3] Valentina Dagiene & Inga Zilinskiene. Localization of Learning Objects in Mathematics.

[4] ACOM1075 Multilingual Computing 2004-05, Semester 2. Localisation and Internationalisation

Other useful links and referenceshttp://ecolore.leeds.ac.uk/ - provides shareable resources to support

eContent localisation and computer-assisted translation (CAT) training

http://opencontent.org/presentations/bcnet07 -

Openness, Localization, and the Future of Learning Objects. Lecture given by David Wiley.

http://oedb.org/blogs/wideopen/2007/framework-for-understanding-localization/ - Framework for understanding localization

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Intl/IntlIntro/Java Internationalization: An Overview