News
A New Year, a new LangLab PASSPORT - Version 3.0 released
January 5, 2009 - The most significant enhancement in this version is support for teacher-controlled synchronous work by a class. A teacher using the Monitor module can take control of the Client module for each student present, to have the class work in unison. The teacher can make the Client module play a clip and stop it and can initiate recording and stop it. Such teacher-controlled work facilitates administering or practicing for standardized tests with restrictions on hearing a clip and time allowed for oral responses.
When the teacher clicks on a Take control? checkbox in the right panel of the Monitor screen, a message tells the teacher how many computers are being controlled. Pull-down menus let the teacher choose the lesson and an item in it. Clicking on the LOAD button makes every student's Client module go to the item. The teacher can use buttons like those of the Client module to control playing and recording.
A teacher who takes control can use the Call All function to ask questions, then initiate recording and have students answer the questions in items that have no initial audio clip. In this way a teacher can improvise lessons when there has not been time to record or import audio clips and assemble other materials for items of a lesson beforehand. Teacher-controlled recording of oral responses can also follow impromptu use of audiovisual materials projected or played outside LangLab PASSPORT.
Version 3.0 also makes it possible to use radio buttons (small circles a student clicks on to select an answer) for multiple-choice, true/false, and aural discrimation questions. Radio buttons ensure that students select only one response. Checkboxes are still available for checklist questions, for which a student is supposed to select more than one thing.
See additional detail and images in the Release Notes. To obtain a free trial version with updated documentation, e-mail us.
LangLab awarded top marks in last IALLT evaluation of digital language lab solutions
LangLab was the only product to receive top marks across the board in the 2007 study of digital language lab solutions edited by Prof. Jack Burston and published by the International Association for Language Learning Technology. Categories in this second edition of the study included range of features, usefulness of features, ease of operation, reliability of operation, adequacy of documentation, customer support, value for money, and overall. Copies of the study can be ordered from the IALLT Web site. Particularly notable is that the enthusiastic review LangLab received in this evaluation was for an older 2.0 release, later supplanted by the considerably more powerful, more flexible, and more attractive 2.2 release, and that the current LangLab PASSPORT 3.0 further extends LangLab's capabilities dramatically.
E-LangLab partnership with leading provider of classroom-management software
In mid-2007 E-LangLab, LLC announced a partnership with GenevaLogic (now a Netop company), provider of the most widely used classroom-management software. E-Langlab now offers clients GenevaLogic’s award-winning Vision®6 product for classroom management, a perfect complement to E-LangLab’s own LangLab PASSPORT. By using Vision®6 in conjunction with LangLab PASSPORT, institutions can add extensive and user-friendly classroom-control functionality, and the combined cost of ownership of the two products is far below that of other language-lab products with built-in classroom-control functionality. Read the 06-27-2007 press release, see what one can do with the combination, or read about Vision on GenevaLogic's Web site.
E-LangLab Exhibits
Coming Exhibits
- American Association of School Administrators, San Francisco, CA, February 20-21, 2009, booth 940
- California Language Teachers Association, Sacramento, CA, February 27-28, 2009, booth 53. Session on "Integrated Teaching of All Language Skills" with LangLab scheduled for February 28, 9:30 AM.
- SCOLT/FLAG/SEALLT Joint Conference, Atlanta, GA, March 5-7, 2009, booth 20
- CALICO (Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium), March 12-13, 2009, booth 17
- TESOL, Denver, CO, March 26-28, 2009, booth 225. Exhibitor session entitled "Discovering LangLab PASSPORT, the most affordable all-skill multimedia language lab" scheduled for March 27, 10 AM in room 606 at the Colorado Convention Center.
- NECTFL, New York, NY, April 17-18, 2009, table T-13
- ACTFL and other 2009 exhibits TBA.
Earlier News
GloCALL 2007, in Vietnam (Hanoi, Nov. 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Nov. 6): Françoise Sorgen-Goldschmidt of the French Department, UC Berkeley, spoke on "Integration and Interaction with LangLab: A Multimodal and Multi-Skills Approach."
IALLT 2007, Medford, MA, June 21-23. Françoise Sorgen-Goldschmidt gave a talk about her use of LangLab to bring interactivity to multimedia at this conference.
September 29, 2006 - Françoise Sorgen-Goldschmidt of UC Berkeley spoke about her use of LangLab to teach pronunciation to the Capital Area Pronunciation Specialists (CAPS), a Sacramento, CA-area group of teachers of pronunciation and oral skills in the ESL/EFL context.
August 2006 - The August 2006 issue of Language Magazine featured an article by Dr. Richard A. Laden, a Director of E-LangLab, LLC, entitled "The Lure of Remote Labs." This article presents the reasons for using language-lab software, particularly software like LangLab that can extend the capabilities of the lab through remote access. Click here to read a version of this article.
March 2006 - The March issue of Language magazine featured an article on LangLab (pp. 56-57) by Steven Donahue, its features editor and an ESL instructor at Miami Dade College. Entitled "Frill-Filled Multimedia for Less," Donahue's rave review hails LangLab as a "remarkable product for users and creators (teachers)" praises it for facilitating "tailored...instruction...that produces measurable learning outcomes," praises its "sophisticated but...remarkably easy-to-use software modules," admires the way it "solidifies the teacher-student relationship," and concludes that for "schools which are both budget-conscious and keen on innovative content solutions that truly allow for student breakthroughs, LangLab may be the ideal solution." By permission of Language magazine (http://www.languagemagazine.com), click to see the entire article.
February 25, 2006 - The Chinese Language Program, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley, which has been enthusiastically using LangLab and evangelizing for it, held a seminar about the use of LangLab in teaching Chinese for instructors in Chinese in the region. The seminar featured Powerpoint and other presentations, a demo lesson prepared by Lihua Zhang, and a hands-on session for attendees in a lab of the Berkeley Language Center.
January 2006 - E-LangLab, LLC and the Taunton School, in Taunton, Somerset, England, announced that they have entered into a partnership under which LangLab, Ltd., a U.K. company founded by the Taunton School Educational Charitable Trust, will act as exclusive distributor for LangLab in the U.K. Taunton School (see www.tauntonschool.co.uk) is working with regional networks of schools and with the U.K.'s Local Education Authorities to promote the use of LangLab for strengthening language instruction. It intends also to use its relationships with schools in other European countries and with European Union organizations supporting language instruction to encourage widespread adoption of LangLab throughout Europe and transnational collaborations in preparation of instructional materials for use with LangLab. Taunton, which has a Citrix server farm, is interested in exploiting the remote-access capabilities of LangLab with thin-client school sites, in order to make LangLab's sophisticated but simple-to-use tools available to primary schools that would not themselves have the technology expertise or system-administration personnel required to handle a networked computer lab.
October 19, 2005 - Release of LangLab 1.9, which turns LangLab into a four-skill solution by including such features as the ability to link to lesson items images that pop up when an item is used and a scrollable text window for display of longer texts, written questions, and reponse boxes in which students can type answers to questions.
May 11, 2005 - Professor Jack Burston (software review editor of CALICO and head of the lab at the Rochester Institute of Technology) announced today that the IALLT volume on digital language-lab solutions he has edited would be available for purchase at the CALICO 2005 symposium and shortly thereafter from the IALLT Web site, www.iallt.org/iallt_services/iallt_publications.html.
Professor Burston, who uses LangLab at R.I.T., has written a chapter about it for this monograph. In the conclusion of his evaluation, he writes, "Anyone looking for a program to digitally replicate the functions of a traditional language lab program will certainly want to consider LangLab. Its simple user interface makes it easy to learn to use, for students as well as instructors. The platform flexibility and remote access it offers are in a class by itself for a product of this type."