One of the things the technical team has been focusing on over the last few weeks is making the website easier to use. This includes cleaning up the design and improving navigation.
1. Level Pages. Every one needs a place to call home. This includes our lesson pods. Every level - Newbie through Advanced, now has their very own home page. You can access the Level Pages by using the side navigation bar inside the Lesson Archive. Level pages include the following features:
- A description of the level, including the host of the show and the fomat of the podcast audio lessons. We have also created a unique graphic for each level as a visual reference.
- The 5 freshest (recently published) lesson pods
- The level specific podcast RSS feed
- The weekly ChinesePod Poll (The questions we ask are usually put forward by Ken)
- Quick links to the 20 newest lessons and discussion comments (bottom right)
2. Pinyin Chart. This new Learning Center feature is designed to help you improve your spoken Chinese by giving you a reference to compare and contrast, incuding all of the initials and finals used in spoken Mandarin (there are around 1000 recordings inside).
Kind Regards,
Matt Park 段伟
Matt
First look this is great. What a surprise !
For me as a dummy user of software which means it is either good because it didn’t confuse me or grrrrr or $%#^$$^& . So great job to your team. You really expanded the “campus” without power/water outages, noise or any other disruption. Its too bad some of the real female geeks and nerds don’t express their love to you. Aunty Sue are you listening??? Matt is a guy, I can’t do it.
In an odd way sooner or later you may want to think about a “campus map” The site will continue to grow and new poddies will come along and even some of us old timers will get lost, so having a map would be great. I know you guys will come up with something great.
And a note to all of us , “land acquisition, construction and quietly opening up the expanded campus and not a single request for additional funds. Think about THAT if you are paying for college ( I just finished the 3rd of my three kids) as well as phone calls from the alumni association during dinner.
Mike in Jubei
Hi Matt,
looks great. It should especially benefit the newbies.
I could imagine something like that for the measure words as well - they still appear a little bit neglected…
Hi Matt, I have just dropped a question in the Forum blog about the ‘Homework’ tool. It is said that it will be released soon. Do you have some more info?
Hey Ya’all,
I’ve been away for a week doing a little touring and detached the internet-IV line that is attached to my wrist. Coming back it’s CNN, new blog, too many unheard lessons…I’m in a daze.
Matt,
So will we get a “Dear Ms. Grammar” tab (level page) as well?
The tech team did good! See, I also need a “Dear Ms. English Grammar” tab.
So where does the Saturday Show fit in this new navigation scheme? Does Aric get his own tab? And if Aric does, will Jenny get her own tab too? Just wondering out loud and causing trouble.
Art
Regarding the Pinyin chart, it still has the incorrect sound for zha first tone. Click on it and it sounds like zhang first tone.
I can’t seem to see the Pinyin chart. When I go to the page, where the chart should be I just get a large, blank, yellow rectangle with gray tabs at the top. I’m using Firefox on a Windows machine and generally don’t have any trouble accessing any other parts of ChinesePod.
Hi Matt,
I’m *already* using Firefox, as I mentioned in my earlier comment, and I’ve never had trouble with flash sites before. However, I re-downloaded the Flash plug-in, and that seemed to fix things.
Hi Matt,
I’m *already* using Firefox, as I mentioned in my original comment, and I’ve never had trouble with flash sites before. However, I re-downloaded the Flash plug-in, and that seemed to solve the problem.
You are moving fast towards a truely complete Chinese service here - rendering additional ressources more and more irrelevant. Just wondering where this could be heading in 5 years with over 2000 lessons covering everything from marital arguments to spaceship navigation at relativistic speed. Maybe then we will have a calligraphy section here, a chengyu-trainer, an introduction into 古文 (gu3wen2), and a library with annotated contemporary and classic Chinese literature…? Mind boggling possibilities.
Speaking of features. How can a list of words easily be imported into the word bank?
Since I use Chinese Pod just to supplement other lessons, as I’m sure many others do, I’d like to import a vocab list for my current lesson into a CP word list. If such lists have already been built, how can this be shared with others?
Also a smart feature would be to have a rating of lessons based on words in a word bank. Lessons from the archive could be recommended to users based on whatever is in (or not in) their word bank. I’m sure this is much easier said than done.
Wow, lots of questions to answer.
“ChinesePod Campus” from Mike.
Answer - I have heard Ken discussing this concept recently. Perhaps the two of you have been in contact? Anyway, my take on the idea goes way beyond navigation, or learning portal. To me it all comes down to time. People only have a finite amount of time in any given day to devote to learning Mandarin. Our challenge is to give Mandarin leaners more reasons to spend that time learning Mandarin with ChinesePod. At the moment that means charasmatic hosts, practical lessons, quality learning materials and a responsive academic team. The future is limited only by our imagination (and the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day).
“More support for Measure Words” from Hening.
Yes. The reference tools in the Learning Center will continue to expand. Detailed grammar instruction, including measure words is on the development schedule. We learned a lot of lessones from building the Grammar Bank, and we think the new resource will be impressive. Now is the time to send us your ideas about Grammar instruction - what you need and how you want it served.
“So what do you mean by homework” from Antonio.
Judging from this weeks ChinesePod poll homework is a four letter word. But that need not be the case. We are envisioning some new interactive assignments that could be used between a ChinesePod Student and a Language Counselor. Steve blogged about Language Counselors and the concept of Guided Learning a few days ago.
“Will WOS (word on the street) and The Saturday Show get a homepage?” from Art
We are not planning on creating Level Pages for our community podcasts and themed lessons (LaoWise, OlymPicks, Baby Talk, etc.). Access to these lesson pods is provided through the ChinesePod homepage and the Lesson Archive topic filter function.
“Trouble viewing the Pinyin Chart” from ldfs
The PinYin chart is coded in flash. Your browser will need flash support in order to use this feature. Try the Firefox browser if you are having difficulty.
Kind Regards,
Matt Park 段伟
AND the time is right now, hooray!
Well done. This place is so quick and easy to use that I don’t think I’ll ever go back to ChineseP… oh, hang on, this IS ChinesePod!
Henning,
regarding the ‘complete Chinese service’, you’ve kind of described the plan as I see it for ChinesePod. I’ll blog about this over the weekend.
Ken Carroll
OK, sorry, it didn’t take me long to want more.
In the lessons archive, I really like the concise way they’re all listed. When I run my eye down the list, I’d like to be able to easily identify which level they are. Right now I can’t do that, because there is no level indication, not in any way that speaks to me.
Would it be hard to add a touch of colour there? I’m thinking either a tiny coloured self-explanatory icon for the level against each title (i.e. not in a language we haven’t learned yet), or any other way of indicating, to the naive running-down-the-list eye, which ones are within my grasp and which will remain on some other planet for me during my next year of study.
Sorry if I’m repeating anything, but I skimmed through and didn’t see anything about where the links to the other saturday shows have gone, I can’t seem to get to them or the lessons previous to the “20 most recent.”