Instructional Software

 

Audacity
All of the computers in EGARC are equipped with Audacity, which is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds in Linux, Mac OS X, and other operating systems. The program is quite powerful and yet very simple to use. It is used extensively in language classes as files can be created in mp3 format and uploaded directly into BlackBoard.

How to Create an MP3 File | How to Upload Your File to the Digital Dropbox | Download Audacity and the LAME mp3 Encoder

Foreign Language Keyboards and Proofing Tools
The computers in the EGARC Computer Lab (4074 Wescoe), the Digital Language Classroom (4068 Wescoe) and the Frank Bangs Memorial Computer Classroom (4066 Wescoe) are equipped with foreign language keyboards and spell checkers for a wide variety of languages taught at KU. These keyboards allow the easy insertion of accented characters in Western languages (like French, German, Spanish) as well as a way to type non-Western languages like Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Hebrew. To use these keyboards, select them from the language menu in the lower right-hand side of the screen. When selected, the grammar and spell checkers within Microsoft Office change as well. For information on installing these items on your own computer, please see EGARC's Installing Language Support webpage.

Gallery2
This open source web-based photo album allows instructors to upload photos, order the photos in any way that they want and do in-class slide shows, all using an intuitive web interface. Albums can be subdivided in any way that you wish and can be password protected so that only students in your class have access. Instructors have their own special password to gain access to the administrative side of the album, but students see the entire gallery as if it were a normal webpage. No additional software is needed, and because Gallery2 is web-based, students can view the images outside of class to prepare for exams or as part of class assigments. For a demonstration of the student-side of a gallery, please click here and use "egarc" (no quotation marks) as the username and password. You can view the images as thumbnails, or click on an image to see it at full-size. You can also view the images as a slide show within this full-sized viewing mode. The full-screen viewing mode has been disabled in this demonstation album, but is available to anyone with an instructor login.

Slowing Down Audio with Quicktime

If you are having trouble understanding the language in an audio or video file because of the speed at which the person is talking, Quicktime player has a feature which can actully slow down the speed for you. To learn how click here.