Articles from TOETOE Technology forOpen English Toying with Open E-

resources (ˈtɔɪtɔɪ)Re-using Oxford OpenSpires content in podcastcorpora2013-03-26 08:03:58 admin

OpenSpires OER project at the University of Oxford

This is the seventh post in a blog series based on the the TOETOEInternational project with the University of Oxford, the UK Higher EducationAcademy (HEA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

Do-It-Yourself CorporaStandard industry tools in corpus linguistics for doing translation,summarisation, extraction of information, and the formatting of data for analysisin linguistic software programs were generally what was needed before onecould get started with building a corpus. It is safe to say that language teachersand many researchers who do not have a background in computer science willnever have the time or the interest in these processes. This is why simpleinterface designs like those in the FLAX language project that have beendesigned for the non-expert corpus user, namely language teachers andlearners, are enabling teaching practitioners to be part of the languagecollections building process.

Stable open source software (OSS) has been designed to enable non-corpusspecialists to build their own language collections consisting of text and audio-visual content that benefit from powerful text analysis tools and resources in

FLAX. These collections can be hosted directly on the FLAX website under theregistered users section or the OSS can be hosted on the users’ preferredwebsite or content management system. A Moodle version of the FLAX toolshas also been developed and new tools and interactive games are currently inthe beta development stage for stable release later this year in 2013.

This post from the TOETOE International project includes links to two trainingvideos for building do-it-yourself (DIY) podcast corpora as can be seen below. These demonstrate new OSS tools and interfaces from FLAX for developinginteractive open language collections, based on creative commons resourcesfrom the Oxford OpenSpires project and a TED Talk given by Oxfordacademic, Ian Goldin. These training videos and others in the FLAX seriesfrom this project will be promoted via Russell Stannard’s Teacher TrainingVideos (TTV) site to reach wider international audiences including those whodo not have access to YouTube. Further plans for the re-use of resourceoutputs from this project include the translation of the FLAX training videos intoChinese, Vietnamese, and Portuguese. And, later in 2013, the FLAX projectwill be releasing further OSS for enabling teachers to build more interaction intothe development of DIY open language collections.

FLAX Do-It-Yourself (DIY) PodcastCorpora with Oxford OER part one

Learn how to build powerful open language collections through this training videodemonstration. Featuring audio and video podcast corpora using the FLAX Language tools andopen educational resources (OER) from the OpenSpires project at the University of Oxford andTED Talks.

FLAX Do-It-Yourself (DIY) PodcastCorpora with Oxford OER part two

Continue to learn how to make powerful open language collections and how to buildinteractivity into those collections with a wide variety of automated interactive languagelearning tasks through this demonstration training video. Featuring audio and video podcastcorpora, using the FLAX Language tools and open educational resources (OER) from theOpenSpires project at the University of Oxford and TED Talks.

It is anticipated that these open tools and resources will provide simple andreplicable pathways for other higher education institutions to develop languagesupport collections around their own OER podcasts for wider uptake andaccessibility with international audiences. The training videos demonstrate howa variety of activities have also been built into the FLAX OSS for enablingteachers to manipulate texts within the collections to create language-learninginteraction with the open podcast content. The following slideshow from the2013 eLearning Symposium with the Centre for Languages, Linguistics, andArea Studies (LLAS) at the University of Southampton shows the interactivitythat can be built into the DIY corpora with FLAX. It also highlights how corpus-based resources and Data-Driven Learning did not feature at the recentBALEAP Professional Issues Meeting on Blending EAP with Technology atSouthampton in the A-Z of Technology in EAP that was later compiled by theevent organisers. This points to a lack of awareness around corpus-basedresources in EAP where there have been no studies conducted on the userinterface designs of most concordancing software for usability in mainstreamlanguage education as well as highlighting the lack of comprehensive researchon technology in EAP.

FLAX Weaving with Oxford Open Educational Resources: Open Practices forEnglish Language Teaching from Alannah Fitzgerald

TED (Ideas worth Spreading) encourages the re-use of their creative commonscontent for non-commercial educational purposes and many stakeholders haveengaged in the re-use of TED Talks and YouTube with the TED-Edprogramme. However, adding value to an open resource can also result in thedecision by ELT materials developers to create a paywall around the supportresource as can be seen below in the English Attack language learningsoftware interface for TED Talks, free movie trailers etc. Perhaps this sayssomething about the industry of ELT which views OER as yet more resourcesto make money from – high quality accessible resources no less that havebeen expressly released for sharing and the promotion of understanding…

The English Attack pay-for version of re-use with TED Talk

Creative Commons content

The Re-using Oxford OpenSpires content in podcast corpora by Alannah Fitzgerald,unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution 3.0 Unported License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of thislicense may be available at www.alannahfitzgerald.org.