With the launch of V3, we got one message loud and clear: the ideal lesson graphic is not a random stock photo. Fair enough. It’s not that we’re stock photo aficionados; in this case using stock photos was the best way to get the graphics all done for the crossover to V3. We couldn’t use the old ones because of the different format and style.

OK, so we know what the ideal lesson graphic is not. But what makes it good? The resounding message we got in user feedback was that the graphics should have Chinese characters in them or at least some sort of Chinese style.

With this in mind, we’ve been experimenting with the style of the lesson graphic. Take a look at the following examples:

Newbie - Requesting a Glass of Water

Newbie - Mosquitoes

Media - 盗款买彩

Upper Intermediate - Chinese Onomatopoeia

Elementary - Ordering Xiaolongbao

Newbie - Colors Song

Intermediate - A Dad Gives Advice to a Broken-Hearted Son

Upper Intermediate - The Glory of Labor

What elements work best for you? Some of the questions I’m asking are:

• How important is a relevant image to the users?
• Do users like colorful graphics?
• How prominent or subtle should the Chinese characters be?
• Should we include pinyin in the graphic? (If so, then just for Newbie and Elementary?)
• Do you like to learn from the lesson graphics, or are they best used mainly as decoration?

Thanks for taking the time to give this some thought. As always, we value your feedback.

-John

We’re doing this to simplify things. I will blog at the new url and both SpanishSense and ChinesePod will link to it. My posts there will concern the broader issues - learning, web 2.0, linguistics, etc. For Chinese-specific items, I’ll post in the ‘Connect’ section, rather than the blog.

There shouldn’t be any disruption for you. All previous posts/comments will be moved to the new url, so if you have old threads or duiscussions here, you won’t lose them. From your perspective, the experience should be more or less the same as before.

The ‘ChinesePod Weblog’ link at the bottom of the page (throughout the site) will take you directly. There’ll also be an automatic re-direct for those of you who may have bookmarked this blog.

Hope that doesn’t cause any hassle. See you at Praxis!

Ken Carroll

Ken Carroll

Here’s something we haven’t talked about for a while: Why we’re all learning Chinese.

There are lots of new people entering the community since V3. I’m seeing some new ideas and attitudes - particularly in the ‘Connect’ section. Some people arrive here on a mission: they were already determined to learn Mandarin before we ever met them; others are just visiting when they try it out and get hooked on the language. Either way, it’s not always clear what motivates our community to want to take up the study of Chinese, to proceed with it and eventually succeed with it.

Are your motivations mainly practical? Mainly for reasons of personal development? A strategic move for the future? Something your boss told you to do?

(I’ve mentioned the newcomers to ChinesePod above, but of course I definitely want to hear fom the stalwarts, too!)

Ken Carroll

1. 500 ChinesePod podcast lessons of all levels, spanning our entire history
2. An index of all lessons, as well as a separate index to help you match the old names to the new names
3. Filenames follow the new naming system, which makes them a snap to sort by level

To download a torrent file, you need a BitTorrent client. (I personally prefer BitComet, but Azureus is supposed to be pretty good as well.)

After your BitTorrent client is installed, your system should recognize the torrent filetype. Click on the link below and open the file with your BitTorrent client. That will get the download started.

ChinesePod 500 Lesson Torrent (3.1 GB)

Enjoy!

Ken Carroll

Scott Jamison has an interesting post on the difference between information and knowledge:

My conclusion: Knowledge = information + experience.

As an example: If you described a certain person to me, you could tell me their name, how tall they were, what they look like, etc. I have information. When I meet the person, I can experience them, and talk to them, and smell them, and understand what makes them tick. I have knowledge.

Another example (from last night’s dinner): Getting and passing along information is much easier now than it was 400 years ago. But is learning a language any easier? Not really. There’s more information available, but the learning process isn’t any easier. Holding a book on Spanish is having information. Speaking fluently is having knowledge.

One more example: A recipe for making a cheesecake is information. Being able to apply that information and turn it into a nice dessert? That’s knowledge.

For me, information is the stuff that sits in books and on the net. (Note that information has context, so it’s not the same as data.) Knowledge is what we have in our heads.

As instructional designers, the question that concerns us is transference. Merely providing content and hoping the learning happens would be a dereliction of our design duties. Jenny could put all the knowledge she has on a certain language item into a podcast, for example, but her ‘knowledge’ doesn’t become your ‘knowledge’ without some form of transfer. Until you internalize it, it’s just information.

But what makes the transfer happen?Scott Jamison make s a valid distinction and I think he’s on to the right idea with the notion of experience, but it falls a bit short. I’d like to hear your ideas. How do you internalize the learning content to convert it from information to knowledge? How does the transfer happen for you?

Ken Carroll

* works with Mozilla Firefox (versions 1.5 - 2.x)
* replaces simplified characters with traditional ones on the dialogue/expansion/vocabulary pages
* adds traditional character support to vocabulary lists/games/etc.
* replaces the link to the simplified PDF with the link to the traditional PDF

Things it won’t do:

* work with other browsers (without tweaking - see below)
* alter content you already have in your vocabulary list
* change Chinese text posted in comments, introductions, titles, ID3 tags, etc.

If you’re a Firefox user (downloadable here), you can grab the plugin by visiting this page. Installation is pretty easy. You need to (1) add Chinesepod to your list of plugin sources, (2) click on the link provided to install the plugin, and (3) restart your browser. The process identical to that for any other browser plugin.

Using another browser? This plugin is compiled from this Greasemonkey script. There are reasonably complete ports of Greasemonkey available for Opera and Safari. Feel free to let us know if you get the script working on unsupported browsers or come up with any cool variants or hacks.

On a closing note, it’s worth mentioning that traditional support is still in beta. This means that there may be errors here and there with word conversions, especially in the older PDF files. One issue I’m aware of is the handling of the word 甚麼 in some of the older PDF files. The academic team is  making corrections of this sort on an ongoing basis and this particular issue will be resolved shortly. If you find any other errors in your explorations please drop a line.

You can find ChinesePod Labs at http://chinesepod.com/labs.

So, let us know want you want.

All of which has put us in such a generous mood we’ve decided to offer a special promo.

So there you have it - The Spring Promotion. Sign up for a 12 month premium subscription before April 30th, and we’ll give you a 13th month completely free!