Last post on any topic #5

electronic books and japan

I have been considering buying a Kindel reader. Of course, down the road I would like to use it for Japanese language study, but not so sure that it would be useful at this point after reading the above article/link. Does anybody out there know if the Kindel reader can display script in languages other than one based on the roman alphabet? I am thinking if you have the html code then you might be alright...

4th post on any topic

Dragon teaches English in America

Dragon in hospitals


Above, two links. The first is to an article in Buisness Week and the second is an article from the Financial News.

The Buisness Week article is a review of Dragonal Natural Speaking voice recognition software, something I continue to be interested in. However, Buisness Week is not impressed. One thing in paticular that they point out that I agree with (although I am personally impressed with Dragon) is if you mumble and talk to yourself when you compute, you could be in trouble with this technology. I used Dragon 's basic package and found myself going back and deleting out many "doh"s "shoot"s and "gosh dang it"s.

Perhaps the more expensive packages are better, and it seems so because the second link is to how this technology is being promoted in hospitals as part of the new health care system according to the second link. Financial News reports that Nuance holding, the company behinde Dragon Natural Speaking, are in talks for a contract that will part of the new health care package. Hospitals would be required to use their software, so the higher end stuff must be nearly flawless. I think it is cool to think some of the same CALL we study, is also used in hospitals and law offices around the country.

3rd post on any topic

I shouldn't have started talking about video games. Just as I was ready to put the blog down for the week, two articles trickled in. Nintendo has answered the hedgehog CALL to more educational software in gaming. The fight has begun. Nintendo plans on releasing new line of DS lite CALL. Check out the link... Mario teaches English Personally, I like what they already have for learning Japanese, and their English stuff is already good, too. Nintendo guru talks education

2nd post on any topic

Hedgehog teaches English

Above is a link to recent blog in the WSJ. It says there is new CALL in Japan combining language learning and gaming. The same group of designers that created Sonic the Hedgehog are involved.

Moonshot, the company designing all this is making a useful product. Especially the net native student should appreciate this CALL. Built on the old idea that kids love playing games as opposed to traditonal desk learning, the software looks fun and educational. Their concept could help language teaching move foward, take a look at the article it has link to Moonshot HQ.

First additional posting on any topic I choose

Microsoft exec pitches Internet usage tax
Here is an interesting piece. It goes back to my recent comments on the class voice thread when we discussed Wikipedia. I said that the idea of access to the wealth of all human knowledge was nice, but not realistic. Microsoft execs saying things like taxing the internet is why I bet it will never be free access. 'Death and taxes' Ben Franklin said, are the only things we know for sure. Taxing the internet and all its contents(wikipedia, google)makes sense to governments and it will happen.


*Just as I put this post on my blog, I checked my RSS feed, and BBC has an article on the topic of internet access as a 'human right'. It includes opinions from around the world on wheter governments should infringe on citizens right to internet access. This seems to be a huge topic that we are going to be seeing more of soon.
World's opinion is that internet access is a 'human right'