I’ve finally stopped procrastination, and my paper for ICALT 2005 is underway. I have most of my data gathered for results processing, so that’s no problem… but the paper itself isn’t separating from my brain very easily. I’ve managed to procrastinate on a fine array of things today.
Semi-related mind-dump: I really like this quote from SRI’s 1998 paper Calibration Of Machine Scores For Pronunciation Grading (pdf):
The ability to accept speech input allows developers oflanguage learning software to move beyond traditional reading and listening comprehension activities toexercises requiring active speech production such as reading aloud, oral multiple-choice exercises, and opendialogs within limited domains. In an ideal system, the computer may provide feedback on lexical, syntactic,and acoustic aspects of language use.
Two desirable features of speech-enabled computer-based language-learning applications are the ability to recognize accented or mispronounced speech producedby language learners, and the ability to provide meaningful feedback on pronunciation quality.
Someday I’d like to build a clock made from old-school nixie tubes. There’s something warm, reassuringly retro about these things. Like the comforting clicks of old keyboards when you juxtapose them with the cold feedbacklessness of touchscreen inputs. Slick and streamlined makes for professional and productive user interfaces, I’ll grant you… but there’s something soothing about these dinosaurs–soothing like the smell of old oil, sawdust, and electronics in your grandpa’s garage…
Anyways…
I’ll need to cultivate some quality electronics-hacking-skillz before I can attempt something like this.
Why is the world filled with so many things to learn?
Google image search for nixie clocks.
Looks like my blacklist plugin for wordpress had been overly-zealous about deleting comments left on Sardonick. I had accidentally enabled a (to me, misleading at configuration time, though not as much in retrospect) option that said “Delete comments which are already held for moderation “. This had the unintended consequence of deleting every new comment that came in.
Whoops! Fixed. And please don’t take unintentionally deleted comments personally.
Have not been completely satisfied with Farook’s blacklist, though it’s obvious I need something, as I usually get at least 10-20 spam comments a day…
Was driving around Santa Monica last night with Mindy, trying to find an Indonesian restaurant that had been recommended to us, when hunger wins out and we finally decide to broaden our palates for the night. Good thing, too–we ended up at a small Damascan joint called Sham. Full of ambiance and good food. Grilled/stewed eggplant with tomato, bell pepper, and rich spice… Slow roasted lamb that was as tender as chicken. The obligatory yogurt-cucumber-mint salad. Getting hungry again as I think about it.
All of my TactLang-related studies came to nothing, though, as I didn’t dare utter a “shukran” or “marhaba” as I talked to the waiter–why am I comfortable talking in Spanish or Chinese, but not Arabic? I need to be more daring.
Oh, and Bassam emails me out of the blue tonight, too (even before he heard about our dinner last night), recommending we try Mandaloun in Glendale.
Life feels fractal. Why all this middle-eastern food and culture and friends all of a sudden in this past half-year? Was it really around me all this much in the past, or am I just more aware of it now that I’m researching Arabic language pedagogy? Strange…
a recent mefi post suggests a wonderful google query.
This basically finds webcams that (un)intentionally publically broadcast on the internets.
It’s so weird to see slices of everyday life from remote corners of the world…
It’s so weird, how the internet mixes the public and the private. And what is it like for the new generation, that has grown up with the net like we grew up with calculators and Apple ][s?
a cup of hot oolong on the table in front of me. yellowish candlelight nearby and bluish rainlight outside. bossa nova strumming nearby and patternless noise of water drops outside. and my mind a thousand miles away, buried in the poetry of this Borges book, La Moneda De Hierro.
but, then, blogging about it does draw me out of the moment, doesn’t it? there’s some unspoken boundary between observer and participant, the one who experiences and the one who reminisces, that we cross when we decide to write about things.
oh well, i’ll forget about it. and get back to finding, or losing, this moment in time.
Neat: our Tactical Language project was featured on slashdot this morning.
The main link in the article pointed to a journal paper written by Ravi Purushotma, documenting his vision of customizing The Sims to teach German. From reading his paper (and his updates to the paper), it is unclear if this Sims system is more vapor-/concept-ware or an actual implemented system, but it looks interesting. I’m not sure how pedagogically effective it could be, though. The Sims certainly a good motivator that will encourage learners to use the software, but is the vocabulary that the learner is exposed to going to be useful beyond the game environment?
This is one thing that working on TactLang has really impressed upon me: the user does not have an infinite amount of time, especially not to spend on any language teaching program that you might want to develop. If we’re trying to give the learner basic language functionality through a scant 80 hours of teaching, we’d better be very intentional about what we do/don’t include in our curriculum, and very confident that our AI-driven pedagogical feedback is as effective as possible.
And, as an aside: also mentioned in the article is a link to MIT’s SCILL, which focuses on computer aided language pedagogy for Mandarin Chinese. I saw these guys back in Venice at the InSTIL conference last summertime–very promising stuff they have. We were originally thinking of focusing on Chinese as a target language for TactLang, but speech recognition over a tonal language was a headache we didn’t want to worry about =p.
I read John’s essay on Structured Procrastination a while ago, and while I thought I understood it at the time, I didn’t understand what it meant for me until this morning.
Over the last two weeks of relaxing, I barely touched that ever-growing stack of links in my *toread box on delicious. This is all stuff I wanted to read, but set aside for more perusal when I had more time. This vacation was, theoretically, the perfect time to do this. But I didn’t.
Now, on my second day back to school/work/research, and I’m hitting the *toread list again. Funny how that happens.
The tricky question will be “now that I know this about myself, how can I take advantage of it?”. Hmmm, deep thought ensues…
