Educational uses for Rev

[kweto]

Alejandro Tejanda asked:

> What's the main operating systems of PC in Japan?

Windows, hands down.

> I've read somewhere that NEC computers are
> a majority in Japan, or it was long ago?

Long ago, there's a good chance NEC were dominant. All the schools of all
the schoolboards I taught at 15 years ago, for example, had installed
"top-of-the-line" CALL rooms (40+ PC's, projector screen, printers, all
networked, though no internet), and everything had the NEC brand.
(Incidentally, those rooms also collected a lot of dust.) And, knowing
bureaucracies, if two or three schoolboards went NEC then the likelihood is
also high that many (most? all??) other schoolboards nationwide went NEC
too.

Things now, though, may have changed.  This comment, too, is just a guess
from experience. For example, the private jr/sr high I was at most recently
was originally NEC based, but this year they re-did one of the CALL room's
with Dell machines. Must be the economy and everyone's efforts to cut down
on costs.

> Talking with some japanese people, i learned
> that relatively few japanese could speak
> english with fluency. This was a surprise for me.

Sadly, that's still probably true. But, then again, coming from Canada, I
can't speak with pride about the general French ability of Anglo-Canadians
despite years of education and, more importanly, despite the fact that it's
one of our official languages.

(Y ademas, Alejandro, me imagino que en tu mente estaras haciendo una
comparacion entre el nivel de ingles aqui y ese nivel tan alto que existe
por casi toda Europa. Si es asi, yo pienso que no es una comparacion
razonable. Por ejemplo, como ya sabras, los sistemas de letras y la
gramatica son bastantes diferentes, y, ademas, el ingles forma parte tanto
de la historia europeana como la de sus paises coloniales. Pero pensando
positivamente, me parece que a lo mejor despues de una o dos generaciones
mas, la abilidad en ingles aqui tambien se vera significadamente mejorada.
Por ejemplo, en una de los high-schools que enseno, casi todos los maestros
de ingles hablan el ingles "pera-pera". En contraste, hace quince anos antes
que, de las dozenas de maestros de ingles que yo conocia en las escuelas
publicas, solamente dos o tres hablaban o entendian el ingles
suficientemente. Puesto que, espero que las cosas esten cambiando
veramente.)


> > I would be very interested in
> > hearing more about what
> > you have to say about potential applications
> > in this field.

Kaj Schwermer asked that (Hello, Kaj! Nicolas Cueto here, in
Tochigi-ken/Japan for 15 -- or more?! -- years, and running just one
"eikaiwa" school), and, of course, the potential for RunRev or MC is near
infinite. Myself, I've made applications for in-class use or online; some of
it for making little doohickeys that just add fun to the class, some of it
for language analysis (part of my MSc involved corpora analysis of sr high
entrance exams), some of it for testing (and, horrors!, that includes
multiple-choice testing), some of it for generating classroom materials, and
some of it to handle repetitive tasks (like spitting out the html code for a
large table of photos). And, I agree with Kaj about the dearth of quality
CALL materials here. Hence why I roll my own. Now, if only I could draw, I'd
be all set. <g>

Enjoying and benefitting from this education thread!

Cheers,
Nicolas Cueto
niconiko language school (Japan)
http://kweto.com