Please join us at this spring meeting as we discuss one of the more complex issues of language lab administration: student workers. Speakers will address issues of recruiting, paying, training and motivating student staff and will delve into such topics as tracking student performance, dealing with problem workers and providing ongoing professional development for your student staff members.

Hopefully we will all learn something about building and maintaining support for our personnel needs. There will be many stories to share, case studies to examine, live subjects to study and expert advice to hear.

Many thanks to everyone at Dartmouth College for hosting a fabulous pre-meeting workshop and dinner and then hosting the Fall ‘99 NERALLD Meeting! Otmar Foelsche, Inge Brown, Susan Bibeau, Mehmet Iyigun, Alex Iliev, Brian Gray, Barry Scherr and Elizabeth Chamberlain were some of the people who made it all possible.

Just when you thought it was safe to be yourself at a regional meeting…AHA! Blackmail photos can be accessed at: http://www.marlboro.edu/~neralld/dartmouth.10.99/photos.html … or follow the links from “Photo Album” at the homepage. Send large, cash payments to Brian Gray to have incriminating photos removed from the website. JUST KIDDING! Thanks for the great pictures, Brian!

Bruce’s pix from the 10/14 dinner are also in the vicinity of the others. Compare technologies—Brian’s photos were shot on a digital camera; Bruce’s were shot on celluloid and digitized by the developers.

Overview of the day submitted by Lisa A. Frumkes, of the Mellon Tri-College Project (Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore Colleges). Thanks Lisa!

Bruce Parkhurst introduced our hosts, Otmar Foelsche and Inge Brown. Thursday, they had presented a variety of pre-conference workshops on issues pertaining to the creation, use and delivery of digitized audio and video materials and then hosted a dinner at Foelsche’s home. First time NERALLD attendees introduced themselves and then she conducted an impromptu survey to discover how many left-handers belong to the group.

Bruce also relayed greetings from IALL President Read Gilgen. See the IALL Updates page at the end of this newsletter for further information. She also reminded attendees that her second term as NERALLD’s president will expire next Fall and asked us to think about a successor.

Dartmouth College Mandel Family Professor of Russian and Associate Dean of Faculty/Humanities Barry Scherr welcomed the group. Scherr spent a lot of time in language labs as an undergraduate and said that the field has become much more complicated and interesting since then and then praised the work Inge and Otmar have done.

Otmar Foelsche introduced Elizabeth Chamberlain of Dartmouth’s Spanish and Portuguese department, who spoke on her use of technology (particularly digitized audio and video). The materials have been made available to students in their dorms as well as in the classroom and during test time so that they can reinforce the textbook materials.

The fact that students complete homework exercises and are tested directly on the audio and video materials has prompted them to use the materials in the way they were intended, instead of just going through the motions of studying them.

Chamberlain said that she and her colleagues need help understanding how to use technology as an integral part of their courses. She reads the Foreign Language Annals to get ideas and then approaches the technical support people about ways to support what she has in mind. She has been intrigued by the possibilities of using authentic Internet materials to help her students develop keypal relationships.

She also wants to ensure, however, that the new materials are not just another assignment that students have to complete, but instead provide a variety of activities that help students engage in real communication.

Chamberlain also presented an online dictionary called Trans-Linc, which provides a contextualized and situational information structure that should help students pay attention to detail in the dictionary entries. Trans-Linc Professional is available for several languages and provides help with both grammatical information and idiomatic expressions. It does not, however, provide audio.

Finally, she recommended a book entitled, “Untangling the Web: Nonce’s Guide to Language & Culture on the Internet” by Carl. S. Blyth (ISBN: 1-893022-50-1). Nonce’s web site has more information. It has information on listservs, web surfing and communicating online for language instructors unfamiliar with technology.

Following Chamberlain's departure to class, the group enjoyed a short break before Foelsche spoke again. He noted that Chamberlain is the first Dartmouth language professor to become interested in language pedagogy and then noted how carefully and observantly she has been working. For him and his staff, it has also meant learning to work with her in a thoughtful manner that addresses her needs.

Otmar Foelsche, the main speaker of the day, began his presentation on the efforts of the Language Resource Center to make all materials available to students in digital format.

Foelsche then returned to discussing how to deliver audio and video over the web. Because Dartmouth began providing materials digitally some years ago, all of them were originally encoded in MPEG format, which seemed most appropriate at the time. Now that QuickTime 4 can accommodate the streaming of audio (although not video) files, however, all of the audio has been converted.

He discussed the technical aspects of transitioning the audio to the new delivery formats in detail. He also showed how students could easily navigate through audio files to hear any portion they choose. Aliases to the files can in most cases be sent to students via email so that they do not need to navigate the web to access them. The files are playable with Media Player on PCs and MoviePlayer (part of the QuickTime download) on Macs.

The video files are still delivered as MPEGs that do not stream. (Many—or all—of the files must be downloaded from the server before they can be played.) The Dartmouth LRC, however, is currently experimenting with converting the video to QuickTime as well as using the Sorenson compression routines to later being able to stream them. The quality of the experimental samples is fantastic, although the conversion process is quite time consuming. Sample files are available at http://hermes.dartmouth.edu/qts.html.

A survey conducted last year found that students like to use the server-based materials, especially because they can use them whenever they choose, such as during late at night or early in the morning.

The main topic of discussion at the business meeting was the location and topic of the NERALLD spring 2000 meeting. In addition to student staffing, the meeting topics proposed included:

The conference agreed on student staffing as the topic for the meeting. Both technical and non-technical questions will be addressed, including the roles of students.

Nina Garrett (Yale) offered to give a short presentation on using student employment in the lab as a way to raise student consciousness about how this work can translate into a career.

AJ West (BU) was volunteered to present a case study: lab student starts a new life as a full timer

Ruth Trometer (MIT) suggested that student input at this meeting might be useful and thought that participants should consider bringing student employees to the gathering.

Carolyn Fidelman (Regis) will host this conference at Regis College, date to be determined.

If you would like to participate in the program, especially if you have “best practices” to share, please contact any of the folks above.

After the business meeting, Otmar discussed the tools they are using to digitize audio and video (see Addendum for additional comments by Otmar). For audio, they have used SoundEdit for the digitizing, SoundConverter for the compression and QuickTime Pro for final conversion to “hinted” QuickTime format. (It was also mentioned that Media Cleaner can do steps 2 and 3 in one step and allows batch jobs as well.) A speaker of the language (an intermediate-level student will often do) identifies the breaks in the materials so that they can be broken into useful chunks rather than provided as one long file.

Video was originally digitized into MPEG format using a Butane board and accompanying software. Since the audio and video are digitized separately, they must be reassembled later. They have been using a Mason edit board for trimming off the extraneous leading and trailing digitized materials, but do not do edits in the middle. If they were starting from scratch today, Otmar said that they would probably bypass the MPEG stage entirely in favor of using Sorenson.

The group was subsequently invited to tour the Language Resource Center facility in Bartlett.

Notes on Otmar’s presentation: submitted by David Kanig, Brown University (thanks David!!!) (also see Addendum for additional comments by Otmar)

File serving for both Macs and PCs. Until ’98 Dartmouth was a Mac campus and could be fully connected by Apple Share. Dartmouth’s new policy of supporting PCs gave rise to multi-platform problems, which have been solved by introducing “shared services” on NT servers and on AppleShare servers, which are accessible by Macs and PCs. This necessitated “cleaning up” all file names.

One problem for dual platform service: no QuickTime MPG player for Windows—was solved by QuickTime 4.0 Player’s and MediaPlayer’s capability to run “raw” MPG.

QuickTime Hinted Files can be played by QuickTime on Macs and by Media Player on PCs and can be served simultaneously to several users.

File serving delivery to client machines involves a lot of communication and verification: client asks for file, server confirms existence of file and queries client if ready to receive, client acknowledges, server sends a chunk of data and asks if received ok, client responds yes—please send next chunk, or no—please resend, and so on.

Streaming technology is in the future. Files will be played in broadcast mode, involving little verification as data is pushed through the pipe. With audio/video, dropping a little data is acceptable.

Apple OS X servers are built for streaming and are already being used at Dartmouth for audio files. However, video streaming is not ready. Mac users can share files in the old manner of Apple Share.

Internet Explorer 4.5 is better than Navigator for receiving streaming data.

Copyright restrictions are ensured for digitized media by domain protection. Within the domain, materials are reasonably well protected from recording. Though users can save files as QT movies in real time streaming protocol (RTSP) they are actually downloading only an address pointer, thus not violating copyright.

Using such aliases (which can be e-mailed) for instant access, Mac users avoid browsers, zones and URLs. A similar capability needs to be developed for PC double-clickers.

Usage patterns. The direction of the Language Lab at Dartmouth is 24/7 digital service. Peak hours are 1:00 a.m., when students begin to study, 6:00 a.m., when students panic before exams, and Sunday morning, when there’s nothing else to do.

Digitizing video into MPG1 format, 1/4 screen, 30 frames/sec for file serving is easy: signal from VCR into computer is converted into separate audio and video files that the user mixes. The resulting unified file is served (not streamed) to Macs or PCs. Current cost would be about $2,000 for a G4 Mac, OS X server software and a monitor.

Butane Hardware, purchased several years ago for $5,000, was previously used for video digitizing. A line from a VCR fed though an MPG board into a computer, where accompanying software was used to set variables such as data rate and window size and to start and stop recording. The resulting video and audio files were combined in a multiplexing operation (taking as much time as playing the tape) to yield an .mpg file ready for QT player or Media Player. Finally, a Mason Edit Board and accompanying software would be used to clip garbage from the front and end of the file.

Personnel required for video digitizing. While someone is needed to set up a server, digitizing can be accomplished with minimal training and labor. There is no full time techie at Dartmouth’s lab. Someone starts the tape, walks away until the end of the film, returns to start the combination process, leaves again and returns to store the file.

Disk space for audio files at Dartmouth amounts to 10 GB. A G4 comes with a 24 GB disk and can support a school’s entire operation; a good solution for a small institution. And with two SCSI external disks, a single G4 can be used to serve video.

Disk space for video: generally 300-400 MB/hr. A 1 GB drive is minimum. Backing up data onto CDs is good. Dartmouth's entire video library is on CDs in a small bookcase.

Broad bandwidth is needed for video. Dartmouth was entirely rewired two years ago. An optimal set-up for video streaming is 100 base-T switched service.

Plan for the future: migrate from MPG encoding. Wouldn’t go with it again if starting over. Dartmouth is experimenting with Sorenson encoding in a QT container. Advantage: better quality, good edge definition. Drawback: slow to compress. One minute of playing time requires 30-35 min. of production time. Workaround: use an “Ice Board,” dedicated hardware, available for about $8,000, requiring 6 minutes of production time for 1 minute of play. Even with slow production rate, Sorenson is better than MPG. Expect better, less costly technology in years to come.

Q: are digitized files available from jacks on campus or must the machines be hardwired?

A: Wherever the bandwidth is 171 KB/sec (100 base-T). A bandwidth of 24 KB/sec is ok, but not appropriate for language instruction.

1. Using standard input cable from tape player to computer, digitize the tape using Sound Edit. It’s as easy as opening a new file, beginning to record, & stopping. An indicator gives sound levels during play. You can cut out noise, divide tapes into segments (usually using student employees), set sampling rates and save files in many audio types (QT, .au...).

2. Compress the file 4:1 using Apple’s Sound Converter, available in the public domain.

3. Using QuickTime Pro, open and export the data as a “hinted file,” ready for platform independent streaming.

Optionally, use Media Cleaner (about $300) for batch processing of the data files.

A: Audio can be done successfully on any machine. Analogue can be high quality. DAT is not necessarily better, and care must be taken with incompatible international standards. For video field recordings, use mini-disk recorders; they are smaller than DAT machines, and are okay for voice. FireWire can dump hi-8 and DVD right into a computer.

The Foreign Language Education and Technology (FLEAT) IV will be in Kobe, Japan, from July 29 until Aug. 1, 2000. Both the IALL and the LLA (the Language Laboratory Association of Japan) sponsor the conferences. For more information, visit http://www.hll.kutc.kansai-u.ac.jp:8000/fleat4.html.

Those interested in attending FLEAT IV, or helping with it, should contact LeeAnn Stone at: leeannstone@home.com.

Or what kind of budget other labs enjoy? Or which labs repair equipment in-house and which send hardware out for repair?

IALL is starting a comprehensive survey of lab directors to obtain information about lab hardware, professional status and the many hats lab directors wear.

Those interested in helping with the survey should contact University of Michigan Language Resource Director Monika R. Dressler, Ph.D., at: mdressle@umich.edu.

Kathleen Ford of UCLA is undertaking the revision of one of IALL’s great reference tools, the IALL Lab Management Manual. If you are not familiar with this publication or the companion IALL Lab Design Kit, you can get more information at the IALL website (IALL publications) at: http://www.iall.net/Pub.html. These are excellent resources for any laboratory.

The NERALLD membership year runs from October 1 – September 30. Dues are $25.00 per year, payable now. Voting membership in NERALLD is open to all interested parties, upon receipt of dues. Membership allows members to attend meetings, vote, and receive the NERALLD newsletter.

• a NERALLD member in good standing	• a member in the recent past
• member of our parent organization, IALL	• a likely target!

NEXT MEETING

April 7th, 2000 at Regis College, Weston, MA