18 Apr 90 JUDAIC STUDIES #38 23 Nisan 50 BS"D To send a note to this listserv on any issue of common interest, address it to judaica@taunivm Edited by Y. Greenbaum CONTENTS 1) Misnumbering 2) Online Notes 3) Concordances 4) Apt. Rental or Exchange 1) Misnumbering The last newsletter was #37, although the subject line was thinking ahead. The letter you are currently reading is #38. Sorry for any confusion. 2) Online Notes From: Tzvee Zahavy MAIC@UMINN1 04/13/90 18:54:28 These seem like interesting applications. From: JACKA@PENNDRLS Date: Thursday, 12 April 1990 1235-EST ONLINE NOTES 1990.1 From now on the Online Notes will appear on a quarterly basis rather than each month as in the past. APPLE HYPERCARD PROJECT FOR LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION Thanks to major support from Apple Corporation for the establishment of three computer labs for language instruction and one computer classroom as well as internal funding from the University of Pennsylvania, we are moving forward quickly on developing HyperCard modules for use in language instruction in the fall, 1990. Michele Proia of my staff has already written some 20 vocabulary and spelling stacks that use digitized pictures and sound to reinforce vocabulary development. Michele is currently working on a pictorial grammar and dictionary to be used in conjunction with any word processing system under MultiFinder. This grammar/dictionary will cover Capretz's vocabulary for our first year students. Two other students, who are taking courses in computer-assisted learning in the undergraduate school, continue to develop a dictation stack for use in French, Spanish and German. The prototype will be completed by May 1st. We expect that the teaching assistants in languages will then provide the dictation lessons, both written and audio, for student use. Such dictations will be finished by June 30, 1990. A new program, Grammar Baseball, was completed and is currently being tested. This program is based on various hand-held computer baseball games, except that we pitch grammar questions along with fastballs, curves and knuckles. So far, the teaching assistants prefer this game over BINGO for learning numbers and even HANGMAN for vocabulary. All the above stacks will be the basis for others in Spanish and German that will be produced this summer. Support has been awarded from the undergraduate education fund at the University of Pennsylvania to help retool the above stacks for those languages. In addition, work will begin in other languages this summer. For example, Professor Roger Allen is developing a proficiency-based reader for testing student knowledge of Arabic. The Hebrew division of Oriental studies will shortly begin work on developing stacks for first year Hebrew. The Classics Department received support to develop geography stacks for its courses in Ancient History and Latin. If you are interested in becoming involved as a beta test site for this stackware, contact me (Jack Abercrombie) for details via the networks (JACKA @ PENNDRLS). CCAT's INTERNET ADDRESS CCAT is still committed to making its programs and data available to the widest audience possible. Of course, such a service to the greater scholarly community is a costly undertaking, and the staff at CCAT has been seeking more economical ways to make the distribution of texts and programs less costly in hours than the past. This is why CCAT moved out of diskette distribution of biblical texts and sold the rights of distribution to other vendors. This is also why CCAT has established an Internet address for users at other institution to copy both programs and texts. The Internet address is: rm105serve.sas.upenn.edu. This Server also functions as the remote Server for a computer lab in Williams Hall, the language building at the University. Its second duty is to provide access to material for external users. To access rm105serve, dial up using Telnet if you want to browse the directory or ftp if you wish to remove material from the Server. The account external users may access is: GUEST. The password is: WELCOME. You may copy anything in this directory. We just ask that you send an electronic note to JACKA @ PENNDRLS just so we can know who has used the machine. CINEMA PROJECT ON INFOWINDOW STATION This spring CINEMA, the video disc project, was used by students in German 3 and 4 and an honor course in American Literature. Some 80 students in German watched either Three Penny Opera or M. The students in the American Literature Course saw John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath. In the case of all three films, students watch an annotated version of the movie on one of two InfoWindow system. (A third station is currently in need of repair.) At certain points in the film, they may access other information such as texts, transcripts, pictures, charts, graphs, and additional soundtracks stored on the hard disk. A survey of the students who used the installation still remains to be studied in detail though a cursory view of the comments indicates that the students were generally positive to this approach as was the case last year and the year before. In fact, some students came back on their own to watch the movies for a second or third time. A few even brought their friends! As for the instructors, those in German remain committed to this approach. Peter Conn in the English Department however is less certain about this approach given the current state of the hardware. He felt that improved resolution for digitized images and freeze frame on CLV discs could make this approach more viable than just simply giving hand-outs. Funding continues to support newer efforts in using Cinema in other languages. Sub-projects in Spanish, French, German and Arabic continue to work on preparing Cinema presentations for the fall, 1990. Funding was recently awarded to Robert Kraft to develop Cinema presentations for two courses, Christian Origins and The Life of Jesus. If you are interested in becoming involved as a beta test site for Cinema, contact me (Jack Abercrombie) for details via the networks (JACKA @ PENNDRLS). IBM CONCORDANCE AND LEX PROGRAMS Any readers interested in receiving our new IBM utilities disk, may contact me (Jack Abercrombie) for details (JACKA @ PENNDRLS). This disk contains a new version of SEEK and CONCORD. Both programs are fully documented and work with TLG encoded material. Source code is also available. 3) Concordances From: Marc Bregman Date: Wed, 18 Apr 1990 16:33 IST Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1234. Thursday, 29 Mar 1990. (4) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 90 14:48 EST (20 lines) From: Michel LENOBLE Subject: Hebrew or Indian early concordances. As I am trying to trace the earliest concordances and indexes ever published or compiled, I was wondering whether any Humanist had information concerning the Indian and Hebrew traditions which might have yielded such intellectual research tools as those just mentioned. Is the use of concordance quite frequent in these traditions and what is the date of the earliest concordance compiled? Based on which text(s)? In the western tradition the first one mentioned in several scholarly articles is dating back to 1239. Thanks in advance. Michel Lenoble Litterature Comparee Universite de Montreal E-mail: lenoblem@cc.umontreal.ca 4) Apt. Rental or Exchange From: Marc Bregman Date: Fri, 6 Apr 1990 13:30 IST Judaic Studies Professor (with wife and one small child) is looking for an apartment in Jerusalem - about three weeks beginning in the middle of July or a little later -- two bedrooms or thereabouts -- anywhere between Rehavia to Talpiot. Either rental or in exchange for a very nice apartment on the upper West Side of Manhattan is possible. If you know of anything, please contact Marc Bregman (HPUBM@HUJIVM1), Jerusalem, Office Tel. 02-203234, 203333 Home Tel. 02-724049.