ICT

**Our guide is downloadable at the bottom of this page**

A few highlights below to tease you to read the attached PDF article by Primary /Elementary Mandarin Chinese teacher Simone Haughey at the bottom of this article.

Why blog?

Teachers and students can blog as a way of sharing and displaying ideas, work and questions. Anyone can blog and many students and teachers use them for the learning/teaching of foreign languages.  There are great benefits for blogging in the Chinese classroom and particularly as students can access it from home as well as other students elsewhere anyone in the world who can read and respond to your blog too.

Unable to attend the biggest Chinese conference? Do not lose out.... 

Have a look at our highlights and plan to go next year to hear everything first hand and to network with other professional Chinese teachers. Whether you are from the US, or not, here you can catch up on the best from the plenary speakers and the workshops as The Chinese Staffroom has done the hard work of selecting some highlights and linking to much more.

Which conference are we talking about? ......  The 2011 US National Chinese Language Conference (NCLC) organized by the Asia Society, College Board and Mandarin Institute encourages dialogue in the field of Chinese language education to ensure its wide-scale success.

Some statistics........over 1000 attendees, of which1/4 do not have a Chinese programme but wanted to learn how to establish best practice in their school, many others wanting to learn about about ‘ next practice’ including new developments such as the use of technology in the classroom.......

DOWNLOAD PDF AT BOTTOM OF ARTICLE

Who should read this article?  The use of ICT in language teaching is now a standard part of being a good MFL (Modern Foreign Language) Teacher. Chinese is lagging behind best and next practice in this area. Learn to be at the top of ‘ICT and Chinese’ and your c.v. will stand out from the crowd.

Look at the last section of the attached article for how you can update your c.v. if you gain experience with podcasting.

Here are a couple of excellent tools to help you write pinyin with tone marks.

1. Pinyinput

Pinyinput is an excellent tool to easily produce pinyin with tone marks. It was written by a user of www.chinese-forums.com called Imron Imron has written an excellent and easy to use tool for producing pinyin with tones. It can be used in what is called a ‘checked’ and ‘unchecked’ mode as follows:

Checked Mode:

Only accepts (mostly) valid pīnyīn (mostly valid in that it only checks for correct combinations of initials and finals, and not valid/invalid combinations of tones). When typing, if you place a number at the end of a pīnyīn syllable then Pinyinput will automatically convert the correct vowel in the syllable so that it has the appropriate tone e.g. Typing Ni3hao3 will produce the output Nǐhǎo.

Unchecked Mode:

There are different ways of getting your computer to write Chinese characters.

1. Microsoft Office Input Method Editor (IME)

All Microsoft Office applications allow you to set up your PC for pinyin Input for Simplified AND Traditional Chinese characters. Once set-up you will be able to ‘switch’ from using English to pinyin input.

How do I set-up my PC? 

A simple set-up guide for a typical Window XP PC is attached to this article

If you have older versions of Windows or Vista there are some excellent guides available on Pinyin Joe’s website http://www.pinyinjoe.com Pinyin Joe also has some additional useful tips about how to efficiently use the pinyin input and ways that you can adjust setting to allow for faster or slower input methods.

Once Set up, how do I type?

Launch Word.