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Getting started with sound recording

This page is for material on sound recording - what you need to record sound, and how to get started. Please add ideas or information if you have any knowledge or interest in the area.

What is Sound Recording?

Sound Recording essentially means capturing a piece of sound onto a storage media, so as to archive it and review it afterwards. It is not just storing sounds but also maintaining its quality, i.e., the playback of the recorded sound must be an exact imitation of the original sound that was recorded. To do this we need the proper equipment, and some essential skills and knowledge.

What do you record sound with and what do you record into?

Steps in Digital Recording
Digital recording is accomplished using a DAW - Digital Audio Workstation. A DAW can be a stand-alone unit or the combination of a computer and software.

 * Step 1: Sound (vibration of air molecules) is captured by the diaphragm of a microphone and is converted into an electrical signal. This is the analog step.

 * Step 2: As the electrical signal is very low (mic-level), it must be amplified by a pre-amplifier to line level.

 * Step 3: The amplified electrical signal is converted to a digital sample containing binary digits (bits) by the A/D Converter (analogue to digital converter). Higher voltages are assigned larger numbers, and the maximum/range is dependent on the bit depth (CD-quality is 16-bit, DVD-audio is 24-bit). The number of samples every second is based on the sample rate (CD-quality is 44.1 kHz, maximum DVD-audio is 192 kHz).

 * Step 4: The digital information is stored on a medium such as a hard drive.

 * Latency Correction: Step 1 to 4 requires time and if you are recording track by track (first track guitar, second track voice), then you play back the first track and you record the second track. That is not a problem, if you just record one track. The latency can be measured by recording one track with short clicks and you play back the clicks with the speakers and then you record the clicks from the speakers with a microphone. Zoom in and mark the shift of the first click in track 1 and the first click in track 2. At the bottom of audacity you can see the length of the marked section in milliseconds, that is the latency of your recording device (125 milliseconds). Set the latency settings of your device as e.g. -125 milliseconds. After this latency correction all recorded tracks are in sync.

For listening to your recordings a similar, but reversed, process of step 1 to 4 is used to play back the recorded audio.

The Wikipedia has more information on DAWs.

Digital vs Analog
The sound wave in the air isn't 'sound' until it is captured by a transducer. The human ear is a transducer. It takes the variations in the air pressure caused by something, such as the vibration of a guitar string, and converts it (transduces it) into something that the brain interprets as sound. A microphone is a transducer that converts the variations in air pressure into electrical signals which are then an 'analog' of the sound. This audio can be recorded to tape and stay analog or it can be converted to digital information and stored in a file on a computer hard drive.

Equipment
At first, you will want convenience, ease of use, and low cost. But you will rapidly come to the limits of this path as you gain more knowledge and experience. You may still want convenience and ease of use, but more features and more flexibility will become more important to you as time goes by.

For the modern person, a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is the mainstay of recording. Basically, a DAW is your computer. The sound is captured by a transducer, such as a mic, or the pick up of an electric guitar, sent to an audio interface or sound card where it is converted to digital and processed through the software and stored on disk.

For a decent set up one will need a good computer (modern laptops will do), audio software, a USB or Firewire hardware audio interface and a transducer (mic, guitar, etc.) connected to the interface with a cable.

Simple setups are effectively the same, though the sound quality will suffer using the soundcard in any modern computer. You've probably seen the mic input jack on your computer. This will work, but it's not that hard to set up an external hardware audio interface. Prices range from below $200 to thousands of dollars.

The hardware audio interface connects to your computer through USB or Firewire. There are interfaces that are cards that fit into the computer in a slot or through PCMCIA and ExpressCard slots, but these are more expensive. The easiest is to stick with a USB or Firewire interface.

Some brands of audio interface are MOTU, M-Audio, Echo Digital Audio and Tascam. A quick search on your favorite search engine for 'hardware audio interface' will give an overwhelming list of options. It comes down to budget. Spend the most that you reasonably can, cutting corners here will lead to problems down the road. This part of the discussion is a whole world in itself, but a two or three evenings researching the topic will lead one to an option that works within a budget and allows for expansion in the future.

Briefly, the major considerations are:

1) How much audio do I need to record at one time? Am I going to have to record a whole band at once or am I going to play everything one thing at a time and layer the recording?  This will help to decide how many audio inputs you will need.  Two inputs, with a stereo output for your stereo (so you can hear all your hard work), limit the cost.

2) Consider the highest quality pre-amp your budget will allow. The pre-amp is part of the hardware audio interface.  The lower the quality of the pre-amp, the lower the quality of the digital conversion which will lead to dissatisfaction as you get deeper into the art of recording.

3) Will I need MIDI functionality? MIDI, or Musical Instrument Digital Interface is a whole topic in itself.  Briefly, MIDI allows one to connect a synthesizer or other sound module up to the DAW.  With the advent of fast CPUs and lots of inexpensive RAM, this is less important for many small studios because of the ability to use plug-ins.  See 'Plug-ins' below.  One can get a cheaper audio interface without MIDI functionality that has a better pre-amp and a separate MIDI interface can be added later if needed that connects via USB.

Microphones
The Wikipedia page offers more information on microphones. Microphone choice and position is an aspect of recording that has one of the biggest impacts on the sound.

Condenser (capacitor) microphones
Condenser microphones require power (typically 48 V, called phantom power) to bias two metallic plates. Vibrations in the air cause the capacitance to change, converting vibrational energy into electrical modulation.

Dynamic microphones
Dynamic microphones can be either moving coil microphones or ribbon microphones. Moving coil microphones such as the popular Shure SM-57 are the most durable type of microphone and can often withstand high sound pressure levels. Ribbon microphones are often much more fragile. Dynamic microphones do not need phantom power to operate. In fact, phantom power will break most ribbon microphones.

Diaphragm size
The size of the microphone's diaphragm has an effect on its frequency response. Generally microphones with smaller diaphragms such as pencil condenser microphones pick up higher frequencies well. Larger diaphragm microphones can pickup lower frequencies better.

Polar pattern
A microphone's polar pattern determines the direction in which the microphone "hears" sound. Popular polar patterns include:

 * Omnidirectional: picks up sound equally in all directions (360 degrees around microphone).
 * Bidirectional/figure eight: picks up sound mostly from front and back, rejecting it from the sides.
 * Cardioid: picks up sound mostly from the front.
 * Hypercardioid
 * Supercardioid

Microphones can either be fixed pattern (only having one), or may allow the polar pattern to be selected. Ribbon microphones are often figure 8. Moving coil microphones are often cardioid.

Microphone use
An overview of which microphones to use when recording (beginner's guide):

 * Guitar or any amplifier - Uni-directional Dynamic mic
 * Drums - Uni-directional dynamic mic
 * Overhead drumset - Omni-directional condenser
 * Vocals - Condenser for recording, uni-directional dynamic for live performance (although this is not a live performance article, the reader should be aware that that there is a large risk in breaking the condenser mic when playing live. They are very fragile. A small drop could destroy it)
 * Acoustic guitars/instruments: Condenser, any directional.
 * Other instruments. Trumpets, etc: Condenser mic, unless the instrument is overly loud. Unless there is too much background noise, omni is much easier to use and set up (you do not have to point the microphone at the instrument and then deal with issues of inconsistency. More later)
 * Non-instruments-Same as "other instruments." Although every item is technically an instrument by definition.

Alternative conversions of sound to electrical signal
Song Torch

Microphones may be bypassed with certain electric instruments. For example, an electric guitar may be plugged directly into a recording device if that device supports instrument-level input. If not, the guitar's signal will have to be amplified to line-level by a pre-amplifier before being recorded. A guitar amplifier with a line out can provide this function.

 * Many amplifiers have 1/4" unbalanced TS (tip-sleeve) output jacks.

 * Keyboards/synthesizers have similar output jacks, but may be balanced TRS (tip-ring-sleeve).

Computer

 * If you use a computer to record and/or edit, you will need two items: a sound card or hardware interface and recording software.

Sound card
A sound card is an audio interface that integrates with a computer through the PCI or PCIe slots on the motherboard. Most sound cards do not provide as high quality audio as an audio interface that was built for professional sound recording, however, for the consumer or hobbyist, a regular sound card will often suffice.

Audio Interface
The role of the audio interface, like a sound card, is to convert electrical signals carrying information about audio into digital information. They also do the reverse by converting digital information into electrical signals. The industry leader in audio interfaces is Digidesign, and their audio editing software Pro Tools.

Cables, Connectors and Adapters

 * XLR/XL3: The connector used by microphones. It is a balanced cable. The same cable/connector is used to carry digital AES/EBU signals.
 * TRS: A balanced 1/4" plug.
 * TS: An unbalanced 1/4" plug.
 * 1/8": a smaller version of the 1/4" used by some sound cards. A small adapter can be used to convert from 1/4" to 1/8" or vice-versa.
 * RCA: a consumer cable used in pairs to transmit stereo audio. Also used for S/PDIF digital information.
 * Optical: a cable used to carry ADAT or TDIF lightpipe.

Entry-level Consumer Software

 * Audacity
 * GarageBand
 * Goldwave
 * Sound Recorder

Prosumer to Professional Grade Software

 * Ableton Live
 * Acoustica Mixcraft
 * Adobe Audition
 * Ardour
 * Cubase
 * FL Studio
 * Logic
 * Nuendo
 * Pro Tools
 * Reason
 * Samplitude
 * Sequoia
 * Sonar

Plug-ins
Plug-ins are pieces of software that integrate into recording software. A plug-in can be a virtual synthesizer, or some kind of sound effect like reverb. (Look down into Audio Signal Processing for more details on different types of effects.)

Plug-ins are the main tool of the composer and audio engineer to shape the recording using a computer or DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). Plug-ins can be virtual synthesizers or sound effects, so a song writer can have access to a full complement of instruments and sounds AND add a reverb that emulates a club, church or even an open air stadium.

Generally, using plug-ins, one could lay down a drum track using a drum machine plug-in, and add a bass line the same way using a synthezer plug-in, then record vocals using a mic with a little reverb from another plug-in and have a complete song all on a laptop!

Plug-ins do require a powerful computer to work well, especially when many plug-ins are used in real-time. A lot of real-time plug-ins need a fast computer with a lot of memory. But that's not hard to find these days, so that's usually not a real limitation.

On slower computers, or for personal, technical or even creative reasons, plug-ins can be used "off-line" to process a recording and then "turned off". For example, one might record a dry vocal with dry drums and bass (dry meaning not processed) so the software can maximize the computer's power to get a good quality audio recording of the vocals. Then the composer or engineer can process the dry audio with a plug-in and store it as the new recording. Then when it is played back, one will get the sound with the effect without using any more of the computer's resources. This is a strategy used all the time by audio engineers to layer and shape the final product.

Dynamics processing
or Insert Effects, because the entire signal is processed before going further.

 * Compression/limiting
 * Expansion/gating

Dynamic Range - To help the understanding, we'll need some terms defined. Audio has a dynamic range. Simply put, this is the difference between the highest and the lowest levels of a recording. For newbies, level is the volume of the sound recorded. Also known as amplitude. An amp or amplifier, amplifies the amplitude, it increases the volume, it raises the level.

That said, Dynamic Processing is the manipulation of the amplitude of the sound signal.

LIMITER - nothing more than a special kind of compressor...a limiter will effectively turn down the volume of the recording when it comes to within a preset amount of the maximum available space for the sound.

Sometimes the dynamic range is too much for all the wires, speakers, digital processors, etc. and it clips. Just like the word implies, the sound level goes too high and it gets clipped like the tops of tree when the pruning shears are applied. Just like the top of the tree is clipped off, the same can happen to the audio signal. When that happens, part of the sound is lost and the resulting audio becomes noise. So, a limiter will effectively turn down the volume of the recording when it comes to within a preset amount of the maximum available space for the sound. That way it doesn't clip and the audio isn't lost.

Limiter's can be external hardware that the audio is passed through as an analog signal or it can be a plug-in where the signal is adjusted digitally. One example of it's use, is to place a limiter between the microphone and the recording medium. As the vocalist pops his p's or sputters, or just plain belts it out, the limiter will work to turn down the volume just as it reaches the "limit" and keep the audio from "punching a hole through the tape". This keeps the recording within limits and makes it easier to get a good recording that could otherwise be ruined even if only one part of it actually clips, (or gets too loud and goes over the top, so to speak).

COMPRESSOR - Brings down the high levels and raises the low levels. Going back to the concept of dynamic range, when a recording is made it has quieter and louder parts. The compressor will basically bring up the quiet bits and turn down the louder bits. It's an art to make a compressor sound good, but it is virtually required in most recordings, especially if they are to have a commercial exposure. All the wires and speakers, stereos, radio broadcast equipment, etc. have a range in which they generally work well. If the dynamic range is too great, the quiet parts get lost in electronic hiss and the loud parts can break equipment. So, compression is a vital tool of the audio engineer.

A compressor can also be placed in the analog part of the signal (where the sound is in the wires and cables) as a piece of outboard gear. Or it can be inserted as a plug-in on the computer and process the sound digitally.

EXPANDER An expander effectively does the opposite or a compressor. It will take the lowest levels and make them lower and the highest levels and make them higher. This is a simplified explanation, but it it in essence what happens. Generally expanders are used for more technical reasons, but with an expander plug-in, anyone can experiment on their DAW and see what they come up with.

GATE A sound processor that will let through or block off the sound signal at a preset level. For example, one might have a recording of drums, but in the parts between the hits, one could possibly hear the guitar coming through, though a lot quieter. Since the guitar has it's own track in the example, it's not needed in the drum recording. Besides, later when the engineer wants to compress the drums and make them punchier and generally louder, that guitar bleed through could become quite distracting. So, on can set the gate to cut off all the sound that's quieter than the drum hits that comes through between the drum hits thereby cleaning up the drum tracks so further processing can take place.

Creatively, a gate that opens and closes slowly can be used to make an electric bass sound a lot like a cello, or a vocalist to sound like an alien with a speech impediment. (Not that you might want a vocalist with a speech impediment, but imagine you were making a sci-fi video track and the creature that has come to take over the earth has to sound really weird. :) ed.) In these situations, one could make the gate slowly open as the bass is played so instead of sounding plucked, it sounds more like it was bowed, just like a cello.

Effects
or "send effects" because part of the signal is sent to them to get processed.
 * Reverb
 * Delay (Phasing, Chorusing, Flangering)
 * Distortion/overdrive
 * EQ

These kinds of effects are called send effects because a portion of the dry signal is sent to the processor. To understand this in real world reality, if you go to a concert you will hear a part of the sound directly from the performers and a part of the sound that is reflected around the venue. A reverb is a send effect that will take part of a dry signal and emulate a club, or hall, or whatever the engineer chooses and that will be mixed with the dry signal to come up with the same basic feel as being in a live situation.

REVERB

Reverb is everywhere, the whole world is full of reverb. Everywhere you go, your ears are picking up reflections of the sounds around you. In fact, reverb is part of how the brain processes the direction of the sound. As the sound reflects back to your ears, it is in a different phase of it's vibration and the brain processes these differences to decide what direction it's coming from.

Of course, the brain being what it is, it can be tricked. Judicious reverb can make the brain think it's in a stadium when actually it's in some guy's living room between stereo head phones. Too much reverb can make the sound muddy and messy with everything washed together.

Reverb can even be set so that the reflections it creates reinforces the rhythm of the music. Or if not applied very well, it can actually screw up the rhythm of the recording because the sound reflections are out of sync with the beat.

DELAY

Delay is a repeating of the sound and is often referred to as an echo in popular speak. However it is used very specifically in audio. The rock and roll sound of the fifties uses a short delay, sometimes called a slap delay, that is so short you wouldn't even know it was there until it is removed. But that is a classic use of delay that fattens up the sound and makes that unique fifties rock and roll feel.

More involved delay can be shown by considering The Pink Floyd and their characteristic sound. This involved lots of longer delays that repeat and wash into the sound. Sometimes delays are used to make a repeating loop that an artist can play along with and add to the loop to make an ever expanding texture.

DISTORTION and OVERDRIVE or better yet 'Overdrive Distortion'

Distortion and overdrive are interesting hybrid send effects. Following on the discussion above of dynamic processing, a distortion is what happens when the audio signal gets too big for it's wires and starts to turn into noise. It's a form of compression that, instead of getting too loud, the processor makes the sound go into a clipped state without actually clipping. Rock of the sixties took advantage of the smooth clipping of tube amplifiers when guitarists and keyboardists would push the volume past the limits of the equipment to get that distorted or over-driven rock guitar sound. But the overdriven sound was then recorded at the proper levels onto tape so the tape wasn't distorted, just the sound going onto tape. Done correctly it has it's place. Done incorrectly and the recording is ruined. Overdrive distortion effects make the signal distort but the resulting signal is recordable.

Overdrive distortion is a hybrid send effect in that part of the signal gets distorted and part of it stays dry, depending on the settings of the effect. For instrumentalists, distortion can be an effects pedal in the audio cable from the instrument, or it can be applied digitally in the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).

EQ
First, a quality pre-amp can vastly improve the EQ of a recording. No amount of EQ adjustment can properly fix an inadequate recording.

EQ or equalization is like the tone controls on your stereo, just more complex. Here you can boost or reduce the audio level at specific frequencies. For example, if the guitar is too "tinny" one might pull out 1 kHz while boosting gently around 2.8 kHz. Or for vocals, one might round out a thin sound by boosting 800 Hz and rolling off 8k.

Sound is measured by its rate of vibration called hertz, or Hz for short. The human ear can hear from about 50 or 60 Hz up to 20,000 Hz, or vibrations per second, under ideal conditions. Effectively the ear hears in a smaller range, but vibrations outside the range of hearing actually can affect the recording. Typically, an audio engineer might roll off all the sound below maybe 40 Hz and above perhaps 16 kHz. (The k is short hand for thousands. So 16k is 16,000 Hertz).

Just like the other effects, EQ can be a piece of outboard gear that affects the analog signal or it can be a plug-in that affects the digital signal inside the DAW.

Recording sounds
These should probably be separate pages
 * How to record vocals
 * How to record ambient noise
 * Issues in recording sounds

External resources

 * Tips on sound recording
 * Guide to the Home and Project Studio - from Tweakheadz
 * Recording live to a two-track - by Bruce Bartlett
 * WebcastAcademy.net The Basic Program
 * LibriVox.org Newbie Guide to Recording
 * WikiAudio.org
 * Audio Engineering online course under Creative Commons Licence

Where can we take this?
Now that you've learned a bit about recording sound, where would you like to go? You may wish to learn, teach, discuss and apply what you can do by going into more depth in Wikiversity's Audio Engineering Department which is developing the technology needed for producing the soundtrack for Wikiversity the Movie. Perhaps you are a musician interested in Jamming Online in a music genre such as Basic Blues & Rock with a GarageBand or the like. Maybe you are a linguist and would like to work on the development of audio resources for the Wikimedia Commons like spoken versions of important texts. The possibilities are endless.

You may have a completely novel application for advanced sound recording. Wouldn't it be great to be on the ground floor of Wikiversity's sonic potential? Hmmm. Just a thought.

WebcastAcademy.net Advanced User Modules

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Learning path

A learning path at Wikiversity is a customised thing that you find. Others may walk ahead of and behind you. You may choose to blaze your own trail. The path may fork leaving you with a choice. Your path may merge with another path you may not have been aware of. But that's the beauty of Wiki-versity.

The Be bold principle allows us the freedom to go where our hearts and minds lead us. We can follow our interests and even act upon our dreams. Wikiversity is an environment of discovery and adventure. You can follow the crowd or go off on your own. Your learning path is one that you make for yourself, but you never have to be alone.

title: Learning path


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User:Elistir

 My User page on Wikipedia —  Wikibooks

 * Learning
 * Langage Learning Policy (Proposal)

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User talk:Elistir

 If you want to contact me, it's easier to leave me a message here.

Quenya
Hi! Go ahead, start it! :) I don't have much time these days, but I am going to contribute to it perhaps some time later. --George D. Bozovic talk 15:39, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the enthusiasm and offereings. Anyway, I have some difficulties in finding the exact procedures for the setting up of such a course.--Elistir 15:48, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Babel it
Ho aggiunto il template, ora se vuoi puoi usarlo. Ciao --Came88 14:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

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Certified translator

Placeholder for drafting a Template:Translator_Certificate awarded to outstanding efforts in translating Wikiversity.

Institute for Multilingual Studies - Translation Department

Translation challenges
These are practice exercise articles:
 * 1) Languages - First Chapter of Translator's Handbook
 * 2) Multilingualism - Second Chapter

Essay Contest
Category:Essays is a new category for main namespace articles used for inspiration and enlightenment.

The Interlingual Beta Club wishes to kick off an Essay Contest to promote the Multilingualism Practicum conducted on all the Wikiversity_translations and Betas.

Please list your entries here:
 * 1) Learning path

The contest is two-fold:
 * 1) Foster Interlingual Dialog
 * 2) Recruit and train translators

See also:
 * Translator's Handbook
 * Wikiversity translations/Recruiting translators
 * Wikiversity translations/Training translators
 * Multilingual worksheet

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Wikiversity:Interlingual Beta Club

The Interlingual Beta Club is looking for a few good translators and a whole mess of wanna-be translators with open minds and a desire to learn the craft. Our reason for forming is based on a couple of facts: a) Wikiversity needs more translators. b) Wikiversity can train more translators.

About IBC
The Interlingual Beta Club has nothing to do with earning Bs in six languages (Wikiversity doesn't give grades anyway). It has to do with producing and improving Beta versions of Wikiversity and translations. The club is a vehicle for promoting a multi-faceted, interlingual Practicum for learning the vocation of language translation – a marketable commodity in the outside world and a much-needed function within Wikiversity proper.

The Translator's Handbook
The practicum is designed to propagate itself by way of a body of text:
 * The Translator's Handbook:An Interlingual Training Manual

This text, though starting (here) at the English Wikiversity will not stay here long. It's passage to de:Wikiversity and es:Wikiversity will take place immediately – even in its initial rough draft form. Like all Wikimedia Projects, it shall remain a work-in-progress for years to come. It can be thought of as a living document.

IBC's Roles
The Interlingual Beta Club is:
 * a custodial group for the Translator's Handbook
 * an association of Wikiversity participants with a passion for Interlingual collaboration and dialog
 * a learning group dedicated to Wikiversity translations
 * a teaching staff dedicated to Training new translators
 * an academic organization that promotes Multilingualism throughout the Wikiversity community

The IBC may take on other roles as well.

Academic Organization
The Interlingual Beta Club has by design a grassroots organization form characterized as a club. A campaign that begins at The Wikiversity Center for Foreign Language Learning at en.wikiversity.org grows quickly into a more formal academic entity that goes by the name Translation Department.

Translation departments
Adopting Foreign Language Learning's organizational parentage, a complex academic Practicum was drafted upward into the Practical Arts and Sciences. These are forming organically as specialized but interconnected Translation Departments within several schools:
 * 1) The School of Language and Literature (Humanities) via a focus on Foreign Language Learning
 * 2) The School of Linguistics (Social Sciences) via a classification schema built around Languages and Language families
 * 3) The School of Computer Science (Engineering and Technology) via a collaborative association with another practicum from The Institute for Applied Computer Science is organizing learning groups and developing resources:
 * 4) Computational linguistics/computer-assisted translation (Human-machine interfacing)
 * 5) Computational linguistics/machine translation  (lexicons, glossaries, corpora, automated tasks, etc.)
 * 6) Learning Objects (Learning object metadata processing, object modeling, data warehousing, etc)
 * 7) Other ACS Topics...
 * 8) School:Media Studies (Portal:Media) via a collaborative association with yet another practicum developed for The Media Project Institute centered upon (but not limited to) Wikiversity the Movie and its Mulitilingual aspects. Innovative spin-offs are expected.

Code of conduct
The Interlingual Beta Club is tasked with instituting a culture of intense collaboration (characteristic of any experimental project - the nature of a beta) while traversing extremes of interest and practice. Participant groups are expected to develop the ability to produce faithful translations of gargantuan bodies of both text and speech.

Our motto: Participation is everything is not so much about the quantitative aspects (popular culture, the hive mind, herd behavior, etc.) typical of wiki groups, but of the qualitative aspects (academic standards, ethics, worthwhile content, etc.). The personal choice to participate is the focal point of the WV:IBC. For example monolingual English-speaking members are encouraged to venture out of their "comfort zone" to join es:Wikiversity, de:Wikiversity and French Wikiversity. Our mission is to create comfort, eliminate confusion, resolve inconsistencies and dispel doubt. Our purpose is to innovate.

Consciousness Raising
A shortage of qualified translators seems to always exist. Much of the IBC's social definition and identity will come from its efforts to attract attention to translation projects, recruit translators and trainees, manage projects and collaborations, provide liaisons between versions, schools, departments and learning groups (socially and academically), and other adventures in experiential learning – Beta-learning.

IBC Motto:Participation is everything.

Essay Contest
Category:Essays is a new category for main namespace articles used for inspiration and enlightenment.

The Interlingual Beta Club is kicking off with an Essay Contest to promote the Multilingualism Practicum. This contest is synchronously conducted on all of the Wikiversity_translations and Betas.

The object of the campaign is to ask the question: Why is language translation important? The name: Translator's Handbook gives the impression of a lone translator at work parsing a body of text. The idea is to steer the reader (again singular) toward a personal context.

You'll notice that the introduction to the book is a placeholder for the contest winner's essay. The goal is to draw out of the Wikiversity community collective and individual ideas that can be embedded at not only the forefront of the book, but into the character of Wikiversity itself.

Certification
The IBC will develop an ongoing symbolic awards program along the lines of Wikipedia's Barnstars. Although Wikiversity is not in the business of conveying degrees upon even the most accomplished learners, the intense effort and focus required to faithfully translate a text must be acknowledged. Likewise, efforts to effectively teach the art of translation should also be brought to the community's attention. It stands to reason that the real-world demand for translators will eventually discover a growing pool of qualified personnel who have honed their skills at Wikiversity.

Literacy
Because the Translation departments are tied intrinsically to the broad scope of the School:Language and Literature, the prospects for Wikiversity translations could have an impact upon global literacy. It doesn't take a Leap of Faith to believe that the so-called "smaller" languages can benefit from thoughtful and accurate translations of texts that the major language world takes for granted.

Furthermore, new arrivals to Wikiversity may discover the effects of spin-offs such as lexicons, glossaries, advanced linguistics tools, multimedia objects and innovative approaches to problem-solving. By a slight stretch of the imaginination, one may even grow to believe that an increase in interlingual dialog can help bring about international understanding and World Peace.

We'll pause there.

Resources
Directory:
 * Interlingual Beta Club
 * Translator's Handbook
 * Multilingual worksheet

 * Wikiversity translations
 * Wikiversity translations/Recruiting translators
 * Wikiversity translations/Training translators

 * Wikiversity the Movie
 * Wikiversity the Movie/multi-lingual

 * Topic:Multilingual Studies
 * Topic:Foreign Language Learning

Participants
Membership is absolutely open:
 * 1) CQ
 * 2) J.Steinbock
 * 3) Erkan Yilmaz
 * 4) Daanschr
 * 5) Julien1311 talk
 * 6) Wilimut talk
 * 7) Akhram talk
 * 8) KirbyPuckettFan talk
 * 9) Angel Paez

title: Wikiversity:Interlingual Beta Club


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Category:Essays

Educational essays: academic, learning, critical analysis.
 * "Wikiversity resources and activities should promote learning above any personal opinions, beliefs, or biases that you may have. If you wish to express your personal take on someone or something, please do so in a way that is open, respectful, inclusive of academic participation, and informs participants on the issues that matter to you. Critical analyses and academic lectures are two possible ways to do this." - What Wikiversity is not

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Wikiversity:Essay Contests

Category:Essays is a new category for main namespace articles used for inspiration and enlightenment.

Essay Contests
Essay contests are a great way to call attention to new learning groups, schools or departments. They are commonly used by Schools and Universities to raise consciousness about important issues and to encourage discourse, discussion and dialog among learners and teachers.

If your School, department or other learning group wants to conduct a contest, please feel free to list it below.

Why is language translation important?
The Interlingual Beta Club wishes to kick off an Essay Contest to promote the Multilingualism Practicum conducted on all the Wikiversity_translations and Betas.

The contest is two-fold:
 * 1) Foster Interlingual Dialog
 * 2) Recruit and train translators

The winning entry will become the introduction to the Translator's Handbook. See also:
 * Wikiversity translations/Recruiting translators
 * Wikiversity translations/Training translators

This contest is to help promote the Practicum for Foreign Language Learning. The essay should encourage, inspire, inform and motivate learners of foriegn languages to enter a learning path toward becoming translators at Wikiversity.

See Interlingual Beta Club for more information. Announce and post a link to your essay at Wikiversity talk:Interlingual Beta Club. Good Luck!

New Contest
Add details of an Essay Contest idea here

Prize pledges
Add your name here and the amount you pledge as a prize. $1 Emesee 05:13, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

For right now, ending 2012, if you write an essay on any topic, and yours is the best essay, based on my judgment, I will send you 1 dollar! The rules may change and will be finalized sometime before 2012 (the date may change to).

Essays
Use subpages to start your essay.
 * /Example essay/

title: Wikiversity:Essay Contests


text:
Wikiversity translations/Training translators

Schools: Media Studies | Linguistics | Computer Science | Language and Literature

Institute for Multilingual Studies
 * English Language
 * German
 * Chinese
 * Languages
 * Translation Department
 * Wikiversity_translations
 * Translator's Handbook
 * Wikiversity translations/Recruiting translators
 * Wikiversity translations/Training translators
 * Interlingual Beta Club

Category:Languages and Language families Category: Wikiversity translations


text:
User:J.Steinbock~enwikiversity

This Custodian has been sadly missing from Wikiversity for some time. We hope to see this Custodian again, but meanwhile, any messages sent to J. Steinbock may not receive a quick reply.

If you are J. Steinbock, please delete this message to show that you are active on Wikiversity.

This user page is in the process of being modified
{| width=100% align=center style= "text-align:center;background:#87CEEB;-moz-border-radius: 30px;"
 * colspan=2 |
 * colspan=2 |

title: User:J.Steinbock~enwikiversity


text:
Wikiversity:Translator's Handbook

Institute for Multilingual Studies

Translator's Handbook

Interlingual Training Manual

This handbook is part of a learning path for Wikiversity participants who wish to become certified translators while helping to produce Wikiversity_translations.

Introduction
Essay: Why learn to translate?

Winning Essay goes here

The Interlingual Beta Club would like an enlightening and inspirational introduction to The Translator's Handbook. See certified translator for details.

Translating in groups
Some say translating is an art, some say it is a science. Here at the Translation Department, we think it's a matter of interpretation (pun intended).

For us it's a simple matter of getting the job done. Translating Wikiversity is a daunting task. No matter how or where you start, you're still at the tip of the iceberg. This version of the handbook is written in the English Language. German and Chinese versions are just right over there, but All Languages need to be taken into account. Impossible? You should never feel alone in this work. In the context of translating, participation is everything!

Reading:
 * Wikiversity translations/Recruiting translators

Learning Families
Wikiversity, using a method similar to, but more efficient than Multilingual coordination at Wikipedia must come up with its own approach to Foreign Language Learning (and teaching). Here we have a unique opportunity to collaborate between and among Wikiversity versions and Betas, and have a bit of fun doing it. The Interlingual Beta Club is made up of native speakers and writers from many languages and backgrounds. The imperative of collaboration between Schools, Divisions and Departments expedite the process in several ways:
 * 1) Media Studies can pair with Computer Science to design an audio interface for Computer assisted translation
 * 2) Audio Engineering can be used to record well-known public-domain literary works that have already been translated into numerous languages to present comparitive samples of the same texts across languages.
 * 3) Linguistic elements can be programmed into AI components to tweak the performance of machine translation systems.
 * 4) Brainstorm!!!

Schools: Media Studies | Linguistics | Computer Science | Language and Literature

Language Families
NEXT: Languages

Explore:
 * Languages and Language families
 * Category: Wikiversity translations
 * Wikibooks:Languages bookshelf

Linguistics
School:Linguistics - Portal:Linguistics

Lexicography
Many keywords on the various Wikipedias have links in the left sidebar to other language articles with the same name, but translated to the other language. Tables like this one can be made to tabulate these keywords:

Translation Lexicons and Dictionaries:
 * Rosetta Project
 * Eurodicautom European Terminology Database
 * Logos Dictionary
 * LookWAYup Dictionary
 * Majstro
 * Word Reference
 * Your Dictionaries English version of diccionarios.com
 * German dictionary and translation tool

This chapter of the Translator's Handbook may someday contain an expansive lexicon.

Machine Translation
Machine translation is a sub-field of Computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another. At its basic level, MT performs simple substitution of atomic words in one natural language for words in another.

The Schools of Computer Science and Linguistics might someday meet at Computational linguistics to develop machine translation software for use at Wikiversity.
 * Altavista translation - "Babel fish"
 * Apertium - Free software machine translation toolkit.

Computer-assisted Translation
Computer-assisted translation, Computer-aided translation, or CAT is a form of translation wherein a human translator translates texts using computer software designed to support and facilitate the translation process.

See Computer-assisted translation

The Schools of Computer Science and Linguistics might someday meet at Computational linguistics to develop computer-assisted translation software for use at Wikiversity.

Appendix

 * Topic:Translation
 * Le Ton beau de Marot by Douglas Hofstadter. A book about translation.

See Template talk:InterlingualMainNavEn

title: Wikiversity:Translator's Handbook


text:
User:MelancholieBot

Mi estas la roboto de w:User:Melancholie!

=> Lernu Esperanton! <=

de:Benutzer:MelancholieBot es:Usuario:MelancholieBot

title: User:MelancholieBot


text:
Portal:Tolkien languages

Department description
The Department of Tolkien Languages is concerned with the teaching and learning of the languages created by the British Philologist  J.R.R.Tolkien.

Department news
8th July 2010 - Sindarin Course started.
 * 25th October 2006 - Lesson 0 of the Quenya Course is now avaible.
 * 22nd October 2006 - Department founded!

Courses | Learning Projects
See: Learning Projects and the Learning model.

 *  Quenya Course

Degree plans
See: Degree plan

Streams
See: Stream plan

 * 1) Participate in the Elvish stream.

Active participants
Active participants in this Learning Group

 * Elistirtalk
 * Mikemits42

title: Portal:Tolkien languages


text:
User talk:MelancholieBot

Bot usage
I have blocked your bot from editing. Please present it at Bots and request bot status before commencing your work. sebmol ? 16:07, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:MelancholieBot


text:
Talk:Latin stream

Wikibooks
How much use is Latin? 82.69.8.95 16:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Vocab exercises etc.
hi. i was wondering if maybe instead of just explaining the grammar and history of latin (which wikibooks has done) perhaps we could adopt a more friendly and interesting way of teaching. more specifically i was thinking of introducing vocabulary lesson by lesson and building up stories and translations. this is the way that most textbooks organise things and wikibooks has not adopted it for whatever reason. i also think it would be useful to direct students to exercises and things to help build up confidence. I have made most of these suggestions at the ancient greek page but nothing seems to have come of it. please reply to this and tell me your thoughts!!! Storeye 07:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Just one question
I would like to ask exactly what type of Latin is being taught here. It is my understanding that the idiom of Latin known as Classical Latin is the main type embraced by Wikipedia and the other projects related to it. I do not object to anyone teaching Classical Latin but I don't, I teach basic prinicles of Latin that I expect my students to be able to use when reading, writing, or speaking any kind of Latin. I don't think that using the letter J is wrong and I fucus on vocabulary that is most likely to be used by the student in everyday speach. I just figure that they can look up really big words the same as they would with English. If this site is specifically for Classical Latin then I suspect my contributions would not be helpful. --122.249.63.246 11:29, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * no, wikimedia prefers the modern latin (i.e. the one used after 1900)900674user 00:40, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Question on format
I have noticed that in most references to verbs only the first and second parts are listed (e.g., "sum, esse" instead of "sum, esse, fui, futurus"). Admittedly the four-part lists can scare off potential students- and are unnecessary when studying the first few levels of Latin. However, listing all four forms seems more "complete"- and I believe it is also the dictionary form. There are probably other issues on formats that are going to crop up as well- should we list or not list the dictionary form of nouns, verbs, and adjectives in the regular lessons? Ketaikeon 17:18, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Latin stream


text:
User:Nortonthe1st

Jack Rasmussen : Harrisonburg, VA

DC Born, Boarding School Raised, College failed.

I'm here for others out there like me. College Isn't the only option in life. I don't have a $95,000 dollar piece of paper to wave around, they arn't needed.

"No Spell Check can correct me, No Grammer leaves me unfuddled."

Enjoy Class.

Peace, NortonThe1st

title: User:Nortonthe1st


text:
Quenya

A course of the Department of Tolkien languages.

Unit Summary

 * Course code: ALE-U-QUE1
 * Suggested prerequisites:
 * Time investment:
 * Assessment suggestions:
 * Faculty: Humanities
 * School: Language and Literature
 * Department: Tolkien languages
 * Stream: Elvish stream
 * Level:

Course Contents and Goals
This course will provide you with a complete knowledge of Quenya, the best-known of the languages invented by Tolkien, as it was conceived in the last years of Tolkien's life. This language is more or less the version devised in the Lord of the Rings (see the problem of the canon).

The aims of the course are to:

 * Learn Phonology, Grammar and Syntax of the (last) Quenya as we can infer from the Corpus.
 * Knowledge of this aspect will also seek to make learners understand how we arrived at this form of Quenya and which "rules" are explicitly provided by Tolkien himself, or have been inferred.
 * Provide learners with introductory notions of
 * "Non-Fictional" development of Quenya (from the Qenya of 1915 to the Quenya of 1973)
 * "Fictional" development of Quenya (from Primitive Quendian)
 * Quenya Corpus

Learning materials
The following are principal learning devices used in this course, to which every lesson refers. Other materials may be required from time-to-time and their links will be provided in each lesson.

Textbooks for this course

Pre-Course
Before starting the regular lesson, it is required for learners to acquire some concepts that will frequently appear throughout this course along with instructions on how to read and write a Quenya text. Lesson 0 is a must for every learner, while in the Advanced Level section, materials are present that we suggest learners to read, but are not essential to Quenya acquisition and understanding. Especially, we suggest reading the section on how the concept of canon can be applied to Tolkien's Legendarium and Languages.

 * Lesson 0: Sundocarmi and Lambelë.
 * Theory of Sundocarmi - Phonology - Phonetics - Stress.

 Pre-Course: Advanced Level In addition we suggest learners read (and possibly apprend) the following documents before starting the regular lessons. For any questions, please refer to Lesson 0 talk

 * The concept of literary canon applied to Middle-earth
 * Fauskanger's Introduction to Quenya studies (Q#F:Introduction).
 * Why study Quenya? - The question of copyright - What is Quenya like? - The sources - A word of warning regarding parts of the corpus - Spelling conventions.

Lessons

 * 1) Lesson 1 To be finished...
 * 2) Lesson 2

Assignments
Translation assignment 1 Translate 3 well known kids songs ( eg. Old mc donald, Mary had a little lamb) into quenya.

Resources
Additional helpful readings include:
 * Quenya - a Wikibook on Quenya, covering grammar extensively.
 * Wikijunior Quenya - a Wikijunior page on Quenya.

Resources on the web:
 * Ardalambion (by Helge Kåre Fauskanger): The Tongues of Arda, Lessons, etc.
 * Quenya Course, with downloadable lessons and a study into Tolkien's inspirations and sources
 * Wordlists — the best and most up-to-date wordlists available online.
 * Some modern names in Quenya (Now We Have All Got Elvish Names)
 * Gwaith-i-phethdain Fellowship of the Wordsmiths. Quenya info also beyond Tolkien
 * Vinyar Tengwar
 * Download Vinyar Tengwar 43, with Tolkien's Quenya translation of the Lord's Prayer
 * Parma Eldalamberon
 * Lambengolmor-List Subscribe to recent developments in the study of Tolkien's languages
 * Quettie Conversional Quenya by Lisa Star
 * Parma Tyelpelassiva - The book of silver leaves
 * Ardhon Ellammath List of Quenya sound files

 * Are High Elves Finno-Ugric?
 * Quenya's relation to Finnish
 * English-Quenya Dictionary
 * Generator for Quenya typographical filler text
 * very detailed Quenya-English and English-Quenya dictionaries Also provides grammar

 * La Montagne du Destin French site that contains some information about quenya
 * "Quenya" in Enciclopedia Libre en Español
 * "Ambarenya.net" German Quenya Lexicon, including Phrasebook
 * Lambe órello óren Croatian site with Quenya Grammar Summary, texts, and sound files.
 * Lambi eldaron Slovak site about Quenya and Sindarin
 * Google in Quenya (unofficial)

Active participants
Active participants in this Learning Group

Tutors
 * Elistirtalk

Students
 * Hillgentleman 17:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC) I do not know any. I would like to know the lines of the Lay of Leithiens.  Am I in the wrong classroom?  Should I go to Noldor?
 * User:Namenamenamenamename I dunno, this looks interesting. If anything happens with it let me know.

title: Quenya


text:
User talk:Vasiliskrin~enwikiversity

French Mentoring
Salut, Vasiliskrin. You are listed at the French stream as being an intermediate student of French who is interested in learning French. The French Mentoring project has recently been launched, and if you add your name to that list, I will do my best to put you in contact with an appropriate Mentor who would be glad to help you. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 07:49, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Vasiliskrin. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Vasiliskrin~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 00:11, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:24, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Vasiliskrin~enwikiversity


text:
User talk:J.Steinbock~enwikiversity

Spanish
Well, we have Spanish. Naming conventions might be useful too. It's pretty much freeform right now in my opinion. I would go about it in a way that makes the most sense for the material to be presented, and makes it easiest for you to enjoy and feel appreciated for the work you do here. Try to add links which will reference articles on Wikipedia and Wikibooks, so you don't have to duplicate too many resources. The idea is, we are trying to build online learning materials around online learning resources. I hope this helps - also, if you have other questions, you can raise them on Colloquium too. --HappyCamper 18:39, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Great! Welcome aboard :-) --HappyCamper 18:45, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar
Well, we dont really know if the barnstars going to be wikiversitys award yet, but heres one for your great work on the spanish articles.

Students
We seem to have a high level of teachers and very few students, so don't expect many right away. If you want to make tests or quizzes, feel free to use some of the stuff I've made at the Test and Quiz page. Good luck!--Rayc 21:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

If you can use it:
Well, Since you run the spanish program, i thought you might need a barnstar to use for spanish... stuff. So here it is, feel free to use it where ever or when ever you want to (Or not at all)

Hope you like it. Heltec talk

de nada
No hay de qué. Si puedo ayudarte en algo, encantado. Acerca del wikilibro, unas de mis páginas favoritas son: b:es:Plantilla:Vocabulario (es)/8 y Español/Como lengua extranjera/Vocabulario/Playa --Javier Carro 23:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

recording conversations
If you want to record conversations or speech samples in Spanish language for the language learning project, you can count with me. I already have a software with which we could record skype conversations. Greetings, --Javier Carro 23:32, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, from Madrid. What about you? We can write several daily situations. For the method to be attractive it would be nice if the stories are connected with each other and also, of course, funny to listen :O)  --Javier Carro 07:26, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

guidelines or criteria by which someone may become a custodian
"Is there an accessible list of requirements, or guidelines, by which someone may become a custodian. For instance, x number of edits to y number of namespaces" <-- No. The basic goal is that a custodian be a trusted member of the Wikiversity community. Each person has their own standards and criteria for deciding if a candidate has attained the required level of trust. With time, it will become possible to measure how many edits of what type tend to produce enough trust so that a custodian candidate can win wide support. At this time there is not much of an established track record except that custodian candidates with just a few Wikiversity edits tend not to be approved. Wikiversity participants who want to help with custodial work should establish a record of good editing and then declare their desire to become a custodian at Candidates for Custodianship. --JWSchmidt 03:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Departamento de Lingüística
You know, if you really want people to learn languages quickly, you could have people wanting to learning english here:  talk to people on this side wanting to learn spanish.--Rayc 00:36, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Good Luck
Well, just wanted to wish you good luck in finding a mentor. You will make a good sysop if they make you one. (P.S. it will probably help your case if you remove the welcome message from top of talk page) Heltec talk

 * You formatted it fine, I reformat them when i reply. If you dont get a mentor you might want to put yourself up for a vote for full custodianship, i think you would get voted in. Heltec  talk

mentor
"Would you mind being my mentor as a custodian?" <-- You can ask me again in December after Rayc is done with his probationary period. --JWSchmidt 02:44, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Or me when I'm done . :) Would these be useful: El Salón de Clase Flashcards?--Rayc 00:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * That would be a longer wait. You need to have three months of sysop experience before you can be a mentor. --JWSchmidt 01:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

If you can wait that long, I'll ask to have you made a probationary custodian when the 5 day comment period for Rayc is done. --JWSchmidt 19:50, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

 * I have a note up for December 6 of my calendar reminding myself to offer to be your mentor. You will then be able to decide if you want to accept mentorship on December 15. --JWSchmidt 17:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

 * You may want to add some information at Support staff. There is a reading list for new custodians. Also, it is helpful for coordination of custodian activities if custodians spend some time on IRC at the #wikiversity-en channel on freenode. --JWSchmidt 18:06, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Welcome back. "is there a way to upload .ppt files (PowerPoint)?" <-- based on this I think it is theoretically possible, but Wikimedia Foundation projects seem to all say: ".ppt" is not a recommended image file format and will not allow them to be uploaded. We could explore if Wikiversity would be allowed to have them. --JWSchmidt 23:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

 * Oh, this is simple to do for anyone with shell access - I'll look into this now.. Cormaggio talk 17:01, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

If a PDF is available from the [Gutenburg Project, there is really no point in having a copy here. I suggest deleting [[:Image:Phaedo.pdf]] and just providing a link to the file at the Gutenburg Project. --JWSchmidt 18:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I see that the Wikimedia Foundation project "Wikisource" has a copy of the Phaedo. --JWSchmidt 18:43, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Userpage
Maybe you could turn you cool user page into a template?Elatanatari 23:53, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Custodian
Hi there, just to let you know I've made you a custodian - and you can keep in touch with JWSchmidt, as your mentor. All the best. :-) Cormaggio talk 16:48, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Great Job
Thanks for pumping out so many articles. If there were barnstars here I would give you one.--Sir James Paul 18:34, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment. I appreciate it! :-). -- J.Steinbock 18:35, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Agricultural Engineering
What did you take out of agricultural engineering that was a copyright violation? --Remi0o 21:47, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Spanish
Hello, Are you still accepting students for Spanish I?  thank you! Staylor 17:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)Sarah

Vivid dream
Well, just to tell you he has blanked out his talk page again, thought you might wanna know. Heltec talk

IRC
"I have also had troubles with it." <-- what IRC software have you tried? --JWSchmidt 16:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I've been trying to access #wikiversity-en from multiple computers, but all of them lead me to the This page cannot be displayed message. -- J.Steinbock 16:40, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * What kind of computer do you use? --JWSchmidt 18:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Template protection
It seems that most vandals are not smart enough to find the main page templates. In general we only protect pages when we find that they need to be protected.--JWSchmidt 18:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

rollback
Please do not use rollback to revert edits that are not obvious vandalism. example --JWSchmidt 21:25, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I realized I may have made a mistake shortly after I reverted it. My initial thinking was that the lengthy version was better than the condensed version. Thanks for commenting. -- J.Steinbock 21:30, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not questioning your choice to revert the edit (I did not read it carefully), but when reverting an edit that is not obvious vandalism, you need to provide an edit summary that explains why you are reverting the edit. --JWSchmidt 21:37, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Not a problem. I'll keep it in mind. :-). -- J.Steinbock 21:52, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

"no useful content" means...
Template:Main welcome says "no useful content" and it means "no useful content". Please do not put that template on pages that do have content, even if it is not much useful content. Wiki pages often start small and grow. The main point of the template is to keep the deletionists from deleting useful pages that do not yet have content. --JWSchmidt 18:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

 * "Why was the template removed on the Public Health Strategies for HIV article? Right now, it is simply a list of external sources without any additional information from the Wikiversity community."

 * This is how wikis work. One person adds some content on one day. Later, the same person or someone else adds more. It is really destructive to the wiki collaborative process to go around labeling the honest contributions of wiki participants as "not useful". "simply a list of external sources" <-- One of the goals of Wikiversity is to provide links to learning resources that are at other websites. Also, it always makes sense to be aware of resources outside of Wikiversity while developing content within Wikiversity. --JWSchmidt 18:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

 * "My confusion is what is stated on the Colloquium under the heading Page Deletions"

 * Okay, we can discuss it there. I know that there are other people who agree with you about deleting pages. My opinion is that if the page is doing no harm, then do not delete it. Leave it as an invitation for additional content to be added. --JWSchmidt 20:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Dialogo
'''Submitted by Spencer, OH, some lazy 6th grader who learns from the internet. I found the tutorials at Wikibooks extremely useful, and here isi some of what I learned. Though it might be incorrect, I'm still going with it, as this is all what I picked up in about 4 or so hours. :)'''

 * Juan: ¡Hola!
 * Juanita: ¡Hola! ¿Cómo te llamas?
 * Juan: Me llamo Juan.
 * Juanita: Hola Juan. Mucho gusto.
 * Juan: Y tú, ¿cómo te llamas tú?
 * Juanita: Me llamo Juanita.
 * Juan: Mucho gusto, Juanita. Cómo está usted hoy?
 * Juanita: Estoy así-así. ¿Estás?
 * Juan: Estoy muy bien, gracias. ¿Cómo te gustas?
 * Juan: Comutadoras gusto. ¿Y tú?
 * Juanita: ¡Gusto perros y gatos!
 * Juan: Sí. Adios Juanita.
 * Juanita: Hasta mañana, Juan. ¡Adios!

'''Please make all possible corrections, and, if possible, notify me on my userpage. Thank you.'''

69.161.213.251 03:08, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

PPT files
Sorry, I've been pretty scattered over the Christmas period. Basically, anyone with shell access to the wiki can do this - it requires someone to edit the LocalSettings.php file. Any developer could do this - you could ask on IRC #wikimedia-tech (though I see you're having problems with that), or you could ask Sebmol to do it (or get him to bug someone in the developer community). I'll be back to normal internet access in early January - and try to catch whatever time I can in the meantime. Cormaggio talk 13:34, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Folding a long discussion
Dear J.Steinbock, Could you tell me how to fold a long discussion on wikiversity?--Hillgentleman|Talk 04:08, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Happy new year. I am referring to this: w:zh-classical:user:hillgentleman, or a multilayered version here: w:zh:user:kilva
 * I tried to copy and paste it to beta:wikiversity and it did not work. --Hillgentleman|Talk 06:26, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * In zh-classical, the following contents would be folded-up; one needs to press a button to open it up --as you can see on my page.  It does not fold up here.
 * To be precise: not automatically folded here, and does not fold at all on beta: --Hillgentleman|Talk 00:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

tree 類
 * Portals
 * 維基事
 * 維基人
 * 史
 * Thank you.--Hillgentleman|Talk 00:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

New test
El Salón de Clase quizI has been made for your use, as an example of a new quiz system I've been working on. See if I got the answers right, since I don't speak Spanish :)--Rayc 02:04, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually the repeated questions are a problem with the code. With 4 possible questions, if you answer the question within 0-15 seconds, it will give you the same question again. More questions = shorter switch time. I added color to the Correct text so that something would change every few seconds.--Rayc 03:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Spanish has be proposed as a featured page
Hi J.Steinbock, Your Spanish project has been added as featured content to Portal:Humanities. Hopefully this will attract more learners. It has also been nominated as featured content for the main page at Featured. Will you be able to accomadate more learners taking part in this project?

I had a chat with JWSchmidt on IRC #wikiversity-en about Spanish. One idea was to establish an embassy at [ http://es.wikiversity.org/wiki/Portada] were learners could conduct language exchanges and practice their Spanish. Mystictim 17:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Spanish Lesson 1

 * Ramon: Buenos dias.
 * Luis: Buenos dias, senior.
 * Ramon: Me llamo Ramon. ¿Cómo se llama usted?
 * Luis: Soy Luis.
 * Ramon: Encantado.
 * Luis: Mucho gusto.
 * Ramon: Lo siento, senior, pero necesito ir al baño.
 * Luis: ¡Adios!
 * Ramon: Hasta luego.

Mondomunchies 22:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Where did you get your wonderful Icons?
I'd like to get some look alikes for various Wikiversity pages.

New template
This new template has been created to coordinate studies for the Spanish 1 class. Feel free to deleted it or place it where ever you see fit.--Rayc 02:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Spanish course
Hi, I have established Spanish: An Introduction. It is the same and Spanish One, but using another way of teaching. They are also calling to merge it with Spanish One, but I think, ther is a possibility that both courses will survive. I would like to ask you if you can flip it into the box of Spanish?--Juan 19:03, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Spanish Contributors Refresh
I have send this announcment to all contributers, so one also for you:

Hi a few weeks ago I have found Spanish Language Division completely void. I added a new course for beginners, but the problem was that the sites Spanish and Topic:Spanish had unfriendly environment to add something like Spanish: An Introduction. I wait for a while, but then I started to reorganize those sites. My aims are give more freedom on these sites and to use more friendly Wikipedia templates (e.g. this) than the former HTML script was. Finally I would like to ask you if you can sign in ones more here and reconfirm your offer to help. You can also visit this. Regards Juan 15:57, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

You are invited to register for the Wikiversity Assembly

 * The Assembly has been established as a technique for developing reports on topics of import for Wikiversity administration. The Assembly is not a decision-making body, per se. Rather, it is designed to create or discover or estimate consensus, through focused, facilitated, thorough deliberation. Assembly reports may be referenced in regular Wikiversity discussions, but will not directly control outcomes. Where full consensus is not found, minority reports may be issued.
 * I invite you to register for the Assembly by adding your user name to the Delegable proxy/Table.

 * Registering for the Assembly creates no specific obligation, but does consent to direct communication as the Assembly may determine is appropriate. You may opt out of such direct communication by adding "no messages" to the Table when you register, in the user comment field, but it is unlikely that the default (communication allowed) will create burdensome traffic for you.

You are invited to name a proxy

 * When you register for the Assembly, you may optionally designate a "proxy."

 * I suggest that you nominate, as a proxy, the user whom you most trust to participate positively in a Wikiversity discussion if you are unable to participate yourself. The proxy will not be voting for you in any process. Rather, the proxy will be considered to loosely represent you, as a means of estimating probable large-scale consensus based on small-scale participation, in the event that you do not personally participate.

 * If you name a proxy, you will be consenting to direct communication with you by that proxy. If a named proxy accepts the proxy, you become, as long as you maintain the nomination (you may change it at any time), the "client" of the proxy, and by accepting, a proxy has consented to direct communication from the client.

 * See Delegable proxy for details.

Comments
I'm inviting all relatively inactive custodians to register for the Assembly, and to name a proxy as described. This is because you who have been and remain custodians have yourselves been trusted by the community, and your proxy choice, if you name one, may carry some reasonable weight, due to your experience. You may, of course, participate directly, whether you do or do not name a proxy. Thanks for considering this. --Abd 01:41, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Your admin status
Hello. I'm a steward. A new policy regarding the removal of "advanced rights" (administrator, bureaucrat, etc.) was adopted by community consensus recently. According to this policy, the stewards are reviewing administrators' activity on wikis with no inactivity policy. You meet the inactivity criteria (no edits and no log actions for 2 years) on enwikiversity, where you are an administrator. Since that wiki does not have its own administrators' rights review process, the global one applies. If you want to keep your rights, you should inform the community of the wiki about the fact that the stewards have sent you this information about your inactivity. If the community has a discussion about it and then wants you to keep your rights, please contact the stewards at m:Stewards' noticeboard, and link to the discussion of the local community, where they express their wish to continue to maintain the rights, and demonstrate a continued requirement to maintain these rights. We stewards will evaluate the responses. If there is no response at all after approximately one month, we will proceed to remove your administrative rights. In cases of doubt, we will evaluate the responses and will refer a decision back to the local community for their comment and review. If you have any questions, please contact us on m:Stewards' noticeboard. Best regards, Rschen7754 20:56, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called J.Steinbock. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name J.Steinbock~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:34, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:11, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:J.Steinbock~enwikiversity


text:
User talk:Chris9687

News from Topic:Japanese
The Introduction to Japanese learning project is now ready for use. You are recieving this message because you signed your name at Topic:Japanese/Participants. If you do not want to recieve any more messages from Topic:Japanese, remove your name from Topic:Japanese/Participants.

title: User talk:Chris9687


text:
User talk:Derek Holden

Sub Sections
Thoughts: Should "emergency medicine be divided into a section for ER physicians and Paramedical? Derek Holden 17:14, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Could I possibly make an attempt at restructuring Emergency Medicine in a similar style as the work I did on Haematology, Cardiology and Vascular Medicine, Respiratory Medicine, Gastroenterology,Endocrinology, Nephrology, Neurology and Obstetrics and Gynecology? DónalMcK 09:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Derek Holden


text:
Portal:Learning objects

Welcome to the Wikiversity Center for the Study of Learning Objects. This is a content development project where participants create, organize and develop learning resources about learning objects.

Learning Objects (like all objects) are little packets, in this case, of educational material designed to be easy to produce, package, distribute, find, sort, use, and so on. What they are exactly, and how useful they are seems a bit subjective to me.

Many on-line services purport to be the "ideal" or "complete" repositories for these learning objects, so we might examine for ourselves what they are all about.

Learning projects
See: Learning Projects and the Learning model.

Learning materials and learning projects are located in the main Wikiversity namespace. Simply make a link to the name of the learning project (learning projects are independent pages in the main namespace) and start writing! We suggest the use of the learning project template (use "subst:Learning project boilerplate" on the new page, inside the double curved brackets – ).

Learning materials and learning projects can be used by multiple departments. Cooperate with other departments that use the same learning resource.
 * Introduction to Learning Objects

Databases
Topic:Databases - Learning objects and their repositories require a knowledge of databases. We may develop a shared resource with a title something like Learning object database management or similar. (discuss)

"Due to interoperability concerns, all meta-information has to be stored in an application independent format. On the other hand, allowing the final user to efficiently perform arbitrary metadata queries is one of the most important goals of the repository. For meeting both requirements (...) a subset of the standard metadata [should be] stored in a relational database. The proposed mechanism is in no way restrictive, because complete LOM instances are also going to be stored as specified by the chosen standard binding."

Architecture

 * 1) Topic:Computer Architecture - Oriented toward hardware, but a good read
 * 2) Topic:Concurrency and Real-Time Programming - This is more toward the kind of architecture I wanna cover in our design labs later on.
 * Learning object metadata - Outline based on the IEEE 1484.12.1 – 2002 Standard for Learning Object Metadata

Labs
I think we can begin to craft some Wiki-fied learning object that are ripe for pickin'...
 * 1) Human—Machine Sonic user interface (SUI) - for use in Commputer-assisted translation User: Translation Department
 * 2) Musical Instruction Light tree - a set of colored lights (or color graphics) that cues musicians in real-time about their position and approaching changes during practice or performance - User: School:Music
 * 3) Bloom clock project - an attempt to create a language for discussing the bloom times of wildflowers and other plants that is neutral in respect to climate, region, and hemisphere.
 * 4) Wikiversity the Movie - a community-wide project to produce a promotional DVD that illustrates and describes Wikiversity.
 * 5) Learning Objects Brainstorm - Brainstorm - Users: Us (It seems the thread was archived, although I could not find it.)

Onward through the Fog
Juicy Future Topics to apply to education systems and Learning object development:
 * 1) Topic:Computational linguistics
 * 2) Topic:Scientific Computing
 * 3) Topic:Algorithms

Metadata
Metadata is required in order to describe learning objects, enabling learners and instructors to search, evaluate and utilize them. Standards compliance leads to a uniform style, enhancing the sharing, reuse, and exchange of metadata-described LO.

IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) Standard emphasizes on the "minimal set of attributes needed to allow these Learning Objects to be managed, located, and evaluated"

Participants
I have no Earthly idea why anyone in their right mind would sign up for this, but here's a place to do so:
 * 1) CQ 17:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
 * 2) w:Rjgodoy 12:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 3) Must.. Not.. Sign... Cormaggio talk 14:36, 18 April 2007 (UTC) Ach!

Resources
Examples of Learning Objects:
 * Earth Unfolding Quicktime movie of R. Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion map" of Earth

title: Portal:Learning objects


text:
Portal talk:Learning objects

"Meta-Metadata" <-- my head just eggsploded --JWSchmidt 17:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
 * LOL! Check my edit summary <-- CQ 18:23, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

WikiVantage
I think Wiki-folk have a huge advantage over systems built from scratch, especially if they're built to those accussed IEEE specs. The biggist thing (most central, anyway) in the Booch-Rambaugh-Jacobsen schOOl of meta-Meta bo-META-META is the CLASSIFIER which sits at the core of the UML backbone (...or is it at the Backbone of the core? i fergit...). That's half of the battle! Another third of the battle is won with Templates (in skillful hands of course). In my OOPinion, The Wikiverse is a great environment for Learning Objects! -O^O- CQ 18:53, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Shoot! MediaWiki has a built in one called the Category namespace.

Databases - about interoperability and efficience
In en.wikipedia, there are strong guidelines against it (Vanity guidelines). I am not sure what are the Wikiversity's policies about it, so let me know if my contribution violates any of them. w:Rjgodoy 20:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikiversity, like "brick and morter" universities, includes research and development activities. If you have a paper online that is relevant, citing it here is not considered "vanity". See Original research. -- CQ 14:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Learning_object_metadata
What is Learning_object_metadata for? Should we move it to wikiversity? (there is a  template there). w:Rjgodoy 13:49, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. I'm not sure, yet, Rjgodoy. The reason for it being there as a blank page template is for use in developing a future implementation of LOM in mediaWiki, which may or may not come about. The comments on the talk page there are useful. If we do move it here, we should import it in the proper way. I'm thinking if we use it, for this project, we would use it like Category:Page creation templates. -- CQ 14:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

 * Ideas would also be welcome at Metadata. Cheers, Cormaggio talk 14:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

title: Portal talk:Learning objects