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Willamette University Japanese
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Ronald Loftus Kanji Learning Modules Date Awarded: Summers 1999 and 2000 Other Participants: URL: Project Goals and Objectives: To provide a rich learning environment for students who need to study Kanji (Chinese characters) which are part of written Japanese using Quick Time Movies showing proper stroke order and writing technique. The unique and most valuable part of this project is that the list of characters to be studied and the order they are presented are according to the text materials we are using at Willamette. For the initial version of the roject, this text was YOOKOSO. Because we changed texts after a couple of years, however, we repeated the process of linking haracters to the QT movies a second time in order to accommodate the new textbook, NAKAMA. Process: It was somewhat of a complicated process because, in order host the materials on the web, primarily to provide cross platform capabilities, and also allow the students 24-hour access to the materials, we had to convert the movies to make them compatible with both our web servers and the Windows based systems that might access them. So each QT movie had to be matched with the appropriate character. The directory structure of the web site as well as the lesson materials were organized by chapters. All the character images and movies for Chapter 1 were put in the chapter_1 directory, and so on. We created an index page for all the chapters so the students would have a common starting place. The index page simply linked out to each of the chapter pages. It took about 50-60 hours to get the basic work done. Outcomes: The result is a very functional,
easy-to-use and practical approach to learning the proper way to write
Chinese characters. Their organization on pages by lesson makes it easy
to use, each page containing a grid of Critical Evaluation: I like both versions but
visually, the character's appearance in the first vision is a little
more substantial. However both sites work well and would be suitable
for adoption by anyone who is using either YOOKOSO or NAKAMA. It would
not make sense for a teacher using other materials trying to adapt these
materials to a different textbook. They are used with First and Second
year Japanese Language Students. They also offer an excellent Review
for students who studied with these (or other) textbooks. |
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