Contents

[Language Grid Toolbox ver. 2.1 Has Been Released]

[Multilingual Support for Education Project's Chat Tools Have Been Released]

[Monthly Maintenance for March]

[Language Grid Users] The Center for e-learning Research and Application, Nagaoka Univ. of Technology

Language Grid Toolbox ver. 2.1 Has Been Released

  Our multilingual collaboration tool Language Grid Toolbox ver. 2.1 has been released, and four new functions are now available. We also have improved on the translation speed in Text Translation, Multilingual BBS, and Multilingual Web Creation functions.
 

Q&A/Glossary Creation (test version)
  Language Resource Creation function has been updated and extended to create Q&As and glossaries.
  With the Q&A Creation, questions and answers within a community can be stored in different languages. The Q&As will be used for communication support between the Japanese staff members and non-Japanese customers in a store.
  With Glossary Creation, a glossary of a community’s original words and their meanings can be stored. The glossary will be useful for looking up community words in the texts.
  The above functions were developed by Kyoto City and are now provided as a test version.
 
File Sharing
  Files can be shared within a community.
 
User List
  This function displays a community's user list.
 
User Profile Definition
  To more easily identify each member in your community, the items in the user profile can be customized. For example, if you are a part of a university's community, you can add items such as “faculty” and "department."

Multilingual Support for Education Project's Chat Tools Have Been Released

  Project MUSE, Multilingual Support for Education released two chat tools in December. Each tool is combined with an original glossary on the Language Grid. This glossary was edited by the project and contains approximately 900 words in nine languages including Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Filipino, Vietnamese, Thai, English, and Korean, which are related to schools. The tools are available at: http://www.tagengo-gakko.jp/chats.html
(Click each box with the name of "Panelive" and "mixcha!".)
  The language resource that is combined with these chat tools is available to any Language Grid user. We hope it will be useful for developing tools for schools.
　

Monthly Maintenance for March

  The next maintenance of the Language Grid will be conducted on Monday, March 1, 18:00-21:00 JST.
If you wish to use the Language Grid during this period, please contact us in advance at operation [at] langrid.org.

Language Grid Users: The Center for e-learning Research and Application, Nagaoka Univ. of Technology

  The Center for e-learning Research and Application (CeRA) of Nagaoka University of Technology was founded for researching and practicing efficient education methods by utilizing ICT and evaluating educational effects of the methods. The organization provides e-learning classes to other universities and technical colleges, and the classes apply credit transfer system. CeRA developed an educational environment in the three-dimensional virtual space called Metaverse and studies new styles of education. In the last academic year, we conducted a collaborative experiment on Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in the virtual space with some technical colleges, which included Suzuka National College of Technology in Japan and the Clarkson University in the US. We made Japanese and US research teams individually then, and this year we will form a joint team of Japan, US, and Korea and conduct PBL using the Language Grid. Toward this, we have been offered the support of Wakayama and Kyoto Universities with respect to the system and dictionary coordination. We hope to extend the system to support the education of exchange students.
　
(Yoshimi Fukumura, Director of The Center for e-learning Research and Application, Nagaoka University of Technology)