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Downloadable Lesson Index

Published by John Pasden April 24th, 2007 in Version 3. 24 Comments

John here. Some of you have asked for a list of the lessons in the system. It shouldn’t be surprising that I, as academic director, possess such a list. I’ve been pretty busy fixing all the issues with old lessons while simultaneously producing new content, but I have put together some spreadsheets for our users.

The first spreadsheet contains all the names of the ChinesePod lessons online, through today. It also has their ID numbers (which relates mainly to the filenames associated with the lessons). You can download that lesson here:

ChinesePod-Lesson-List.xls (Excel file) | ChinesePod-Lesson-List.csv (CSV file)

The second spreadsheet contains the new names and the old names of all the lessons that have been renamed in V3. It ends at March 30, 2007.

ChinesePod-Old-Titles.xls (Excel file) | ChinesePod-Old-Titles.csv (CSV file)

We hope this helps those of you that are trying to reorganize your files. A torrent file for downloading lessons en masse is also on the way, but we need to first make sure that all the audio is as close to flawless as possible. We’re not there yet, but we’re working hard to get there.

-John

Reading Chinese

Published by chinesepod April 23rd, 2007 in Learning Chinese. 6 Comments

Dave Lancashire sent me a set of questions today. Essentially, he wanted to know if I felt:

1. confusion with similar-looking Chinese characters;
2. difficulty in understanding that the same Chinese characters can have different pronunciation and meaning;
3. difficulty in understanding that the meaning of a Chinese character may depend on its context;
4. inability to comprehend that different Chinese characters may have the same pronunciation but different tones or the same pronunciation and tone but different meanings;
5. reversal problems with writing Chinese characters, i.e. difficulty in reading Chinese radicals vertically or horizontally; and
6. problems with the proper sequences of strokes in writing Chinese characters.

When I replied that kind of did have these problems (with the exception of number 3) he explained it to me. Huh? I think this is one for the Big Brain.

Ken Carroll

Pragmatist or visionary?

Published by chinesepod April 19th, 2007 in About ChinesePod. 57 Comments

Visionary

I think there’s a continuum that describes ChinesePod learners, an axis that stretches from the visionary at one end, to the pragmatist, at the other. No individual is 100% visionary, or 100% pragmatic. Instead, we all tend to fall somewhere along the line. (This type, of classification was first used by Geoffrey A Moore, in his excellent Crossing the Chasm.)

The visionaries tend to be, well, visionary. They look for breakthrough products, with new and radical ways to do things. They like to be the first to discover stuff - new tools, such as ChinesePod, for example. They like the big picture and they have a strong orientation towards the future. They have a high tolerance for big, sweeping discussions, but may get bored with mundane details. They are more willing to put up with bugs in the system as long as that system is blazing new trails and feeding off their need for new and different.

The pragmatists tend to have a more present-day orientation. They’re not so influenced by grandiose ideas and their yardstick tends to be ‘industry standards’ and comparisons to what they know, rather than ’state of the art’, or maverick products. Pragmatists prefer steady and incremental change to radical change. They’re more willing to wait for a new feature for months, because they have a low tolerance for bugs. They tend to be detail oriented.

This is ultimately an individual orientation, but I think culture may have an influence. Americans, for example, tend to be a bit more inclined towards the visionary, while Germans, lean towards the pragmatic. (I think the Chinese are generally more pragmatically oriented.)

We have a healthy mix of both types here, but the early days of ChinesePod were more likely to appeal to the visionaries.

Actually, I’m not even sure that this stuff belongs on a continuum, but I think it might be a revealing talking point. Let’s hear from you. Which one are you? Where do you fall on the line?

Ken Carroll

Personal Feed Options

Published by chinesepod April 18th, 2007 in Version 3. 24 Comments

One of my favorite new features of the new site is the personal feed. Subscribing to your own custom feed of Chinese lessons is a simple 4 step process.

feed1

Step #1 - Select which levels of future lessons you would like to receive. These subscriptions are designed to replace the various level feeds in v2. You can also have your scheduled lessons included as well.

Step #2 - Select one of three file types. The episodes in the public feed are currently encoded at 64 kbps. Basic, Premium and Practice subscribers can get access to higher quality audio (128kbps version) or lower quality, smaller file size audio if they prefer.

Step #3 - Brand new to version 3 is the option to have an additional file also included in your RSS feed. These options include: (a) simplified PDF, (b) traditional PDF, and (c) dialogue-only audio file. Add in whichever you prefer.

Step #4 - Copy the feed to a podcast aggregator, such as iTunes, where you can go to ‘Advanced - Subscribe to Podcast’ and paste your own personal link.

Feed2

Or if you prefer, subscribe in Google Reader:

Feed3

We hope this increases the convenience of consuming the daily lessons.

Hank.

Bookmarked vs Scheduled Lessons

Published by chinesepod April 17th, 2007 in Version 3. 12 Comments

A quick comment on the logic here. We got caught up in a bit of the long-term vision of the product here. The Calendar system was originally designed where named calendars would replace named folders in version 2. This would preserve all the functionality in version 2, but add the extra value of the pacing of lessons (by you or a teacher) in a custom personal feed. Faced, with accelerated project deadlines, we were forced to cut some functionality - specifically, multiple named calendars like you would find in Google Calendar. The unintentional result of this was a loss of version 2 functionality and a drop in usability.

While I still believe there is a lot of potential in a calendar system to help navigate and organize lessons (think of the difference between a to do list and a calendar), we have added back a ‘Bookmarked Lessons’ page to make lesson management much easier in the short-term.

We only have a small team of developers here in Shanghai, but we have tried to be very aggressive with our product development. Sometimes the vision of what we hope to achieve gets ahead of us. I would be interested in hearing perspectives on the difference between managing lessons via a list versus a calendar as this is something I would like to develop going forward.

Hank.

Resolving V3 issues

Published by chinesepod April 17th, 2007 in About ChinesePod. 71 Comments

Some feedback on where we are with developments courtesy of Hank. We’ve been listening and trying to respond to you - Eileen alone answered 170 emails yesterday. (Poor thing.)

1. bookmarked lessons
- hurting usability; user saves but doesn’t understand need to schedule lessons
- solution: changed Lesson List to Scheduled Lessons, adding Bookmarked Lesson to help make more obvious

STATUS: will be done today

2. vocab audio
- missing for left-click added words, previously imported vocabulary
- working on a solution (this week?)

3. pinyin chart audio
- weren’t added
- should be added today

STATUS: working on

4. vocab sets
- weren’t added
- should be added today

STATUS: updating Wed

5. vocab management
- no folder called ‘vocab w/o tags’ which made navigation hard
- no erase all button
- instructions are very incomplete

STATUS: updating today and tomorrow

6. personal feed
- no level RSS feeds
- people can customize own feed
- Saturday Show & Word on the Street to be included
- missing level indicator in title

STATUS: updating Wed

and a number of smaller isssues.

- buggy lessons -> updating
- missing practice plan -> updated
- Praxis Pass -> updating Thurs
- comment bugs (not accepting some puncuation) -> updating Wednesday
- missing comments on ChinesePod Extra -> can comment now, but need to import old ones
- cookies set to expire every 24 hours -> fixed
- deleting watchlist users -> fixed Hope that helps.

Things are starting to get smoother. I hope the vision we have for ChinesePod is becoming apparent. I’ve seen a few pretty cynical comments and some harsh words in the last few days, but we haven’t lost the faith. Some may tell you we’re making the changes for selfish, pecuniary reasons, and trashing the best interests of our learners. Don’t believe that. We’re definitely a business and we definitely must approach it as such, but no-one on the team doubts for a second that if we keep your best interests in mind, then that’s the best business strategy of all. Trust me!

Update: The pinyin chart is done - both online and version and downloadable version. (You can save it to your hard drive.) We push on.

Ken Carroll

ChinesePod interviewed on Danwei

Published by Ken Carroll April 15th, 2007 in ChinesePod Media Coverage. 5 Comments

Danwei

I’ve discovered that there is life beyond V3. Here’s an audio interview I did for Danwei’s China businesscast series. They asked me to talk about the ChinesePod business model.

Btw, if you don’t know Danwei, well you should. Great source of information on media-related things in China.

Ken Carroll

V3 Known Issues

Published by John Pasden April 14th, 2007 in Version 3. 61 Comments

We have started a separate page for “known issues.” The issues listed there are not typos or individual lesson issues, but larger site issues. Take a look at it before reporting a bug. We will be updating this page frequently.

Check it out: V3 Known Issues

-John

Discovering V3

Published by chinesepod April 13th, 2007 in About ChinesePod. 148 Comments

As we go through the day you’re welcome to post your ‘discovering V3′ observations.

1. My first insight for you: The Saturday Show can be found here: http://extra.chinesepod.com/

2. A question: “Im having bit of a problem finding my lessons from previous site.  If I look at the lessons in the explore section, it shows individual lessons as bookmarked and scheduled.  But when I click lessons and lesson list it says You currently have 0 lessons to study. Any ideas?”

Short answer: You have to schedule them first.

If you have questions or observations you want to share, please feel free to do so here.

Ken Carroll

Bug hunt

Published by chinesepod April 13th, 2007 in Uncategorized. 114 Comments

With something of this scale, I guess there are bound to be bugs in the new system. It would help if you ChinesePod learners could post any bugs you find here. That’d be a systematic way to deal with them.

We’re not going away. The staff are here over the weekend, too. Let’s get this thing done. Your assitance would be really, really welcome.

Ken Carroll

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Ken Carroll discusses issues concerning learning generally, and learning Mandarin in particular. With technology as the driver, he believes the most effective learning combines elements of collaboration with self-direction. If that seems like a contradiction, then you need to read the blog.