Perapera-kun: Chinese Popup Translator and Learning Tool

in his answer to a query concerning learning of CL at the recent REACH forum, PM Lee mentioned two translation tools that can be useful. one is google translate (which i guess i need not mention), and the other is perapera-kun, which works as a firefox add-on. the translations are based on the open source Chinese-English dictionary, CC-CEDICT. i have downloaded, installed and tried it myself, am impressed by the capability of the ability to recognise word and phrase (字词分辨). there are still room for improvements for some translations but as of what it is now, it definitely minimise the need for one to switch to another dictionary software, or to flip a physical desktop dictionary. of cos, learners might start complaining the ‘confusion’ caused by too many definitions given at one glance, but isn’t this a problem of most dictionaries all along? advancement of technologies will one day help us resolve this issue i believe (:

and in case you’ll like to hear PM’s words:

The ICT Connection, Launched!

after near 7 months of work, from conceptualising to engaging vendor to put things together in machine-understandable language for human-comprehensible output, The ICT Connection was finally launched last week at the iCTLT 2010. let’s not think abt the work ahead for a while 😛 cos in actual fact, the real work of populating the portal with ICT lesson examples has just started. here’s the video of the launch scene, and the launch animation to mark the moment 🙂

through The ICT Connection, we hope teachers will be able to learn about ict pedagogies that can enrich and transform the learning environment of our students. teachers can also find ict lesson examples created for teachers by teachers, which integrate pedagogy and technology to cultivate self-directed (SDL) and collaborative (CoL) learners. all teachers are welcome to make use of these ideas and also share their ict-based lessons with fellow teachers.

as part of the on-going promotion of the portal, “do visit us today ;)” *hehe*