HOW TO CREATE A READING ASSISTANT.

 

There are four parts to creating a reading assistant such as ITAL205 uses:

 

I.                    CREATE READING TEXT, UNGLOSSED THEN GLOSSED.

 

II.                 CREATE QUIZZES.

Create quizzes which incorporate the reading text and then ask questions.

 

III.               ORGANIZE CONTENT.

 Link all the quizzes together to form a whole so that the student goes through the text, chunk by chunk, first without glosses and then glossed, being quizzed after each chunk.

 

IV.              GRADE.

Grade the quizzes. Show the student their grade.

 

 

 

To create the quizzes, you can use either WebCT or Hot Potatoes JQuiz.

 

To link the quizzes, use either WebCT or Hot Potatoes Masher (need to purchase). Grading will be done using one of these programs also.

 

 

I.                    CREATE TEXT

a.       Create web pages with the plain, unglossed text selections.

                                                               i.      A template of the web page with the formatting, background color, etc. set to what we use for plain text pages is found at http://www.udel.edu/fllt/staff/stabosz/v1plain.html  You can use this as a template, or create a similar page on your own.

                                                             ii.      To use this as a template, use FTP to download it directly to your hard drive or floppy (you will need Rae’s username/password). Or you can save it from Mozilla on to your hard drive or floppy without needing access to Rae’s info.

                                                            iii.      To save the template on your hard drive or floppy, browse the page using Mozilla, select File/Save Page As, and select Save As type to be Web Page, HTML only .

                                                           iv.      Once you have saved the template, use Word to edit v1plain.html so that it has the text you desire, without glosses . Save page as a Filtered Web Page. Give it a name of its own (e.g. cristoforo1plain.html)

 

 

b.      Create web pages with the glossed text selections.

                                                               i.      A template of the web page for glossed text is found at http://www.udel.edu/fllt/staff/stabosz/v1gloss.html  You MUST use this as a template, as it contains HTML source code to do the mouse overs and mouse clicks.

                                                             ii.      Follow steps a.ii. and a.iii. above to transfer template to your hard drive or floppy. Give it a name of its own (e.g. cristoforo1gloss.html).

                                                            iii.      Open this file in Word.

 

                                                           iv.      At this point it might be good to summarize what the student will see when they go to the glossed pages. They will see a reading text with glossed words. The glossed words will be highlighted in blue like a normal hyperlink. The student can choose to either roll his or her mouse over the glossed word, or click it.  When the student rolls a mouse over the word, a synonym in Italian for that word will appear. When he or she clicks the word, the English dictionary meaning of the word will appear.

 

                                                             v.      When you open the template in Word, the screen will look like this:

 

                                                           vi.     

                                                          vii.      Your first task in Word is to replace the first piece of template text (i.e. “Text up to first gloss”) with the reading text up to the point of the first glossed word.

                                                        viii.       Then you will replace “gloss1” with the first glossed word. You will then create a hyperlink to that glossed word by highlighting it, selecting Insert/Hyperlink, and then inserting the name of the file itself (e.g. cristoforo1gloss.html) as a hyperlink.

                                                           ix.      Then you will replace “Synonym1” with the Italian synonym for the glossed word.

                                                             x.      Finally, the trickiest part of using the template. You need to create the English definitions that the students will get when they click on the glossed word. To do this, select View/HTML source to go directly to the HTML source code.

                                                           xi.      Use Edit/Find or Edit/Replace and Find/Find to find the word “Definition1” in the source code. It will be embedded in a line of HTML that looks like this: onclick="MM_popupMsg('\"Definition1\"')"     Take out Definition1 and replace it with the actual definition for your first glossed word.

                                                          xii.      Use Edit/Find or Edit/Replace and Find/Find to find the word “Definition2” in the source code. Replace it with the definition for your second glossed word.

                                                        xiii.      Do the same for all definitions until you have replaced them all.

                                                        xiv.      Click x in the upper right hand corner of the HTML source code screen to return to Word. Click File/Save as and save the file as type Filtered web page.

                                                         xv.      Browse the page and check out the glosses, the mouseovers, the mouse clicks.

 

II.                 CREATE QUIZZES

a.       Use WebCT or Hot Potatoes to create quizzes.

III.               ORGANIZE CONTENT

a.       Use WebCT, Masher, or your own web page to organize the order you want the students to do the quizzes.

IV.              GRADE

a.       Use WebCT or Hot Potatoes to do grading.