Skritter Integration is LIVE!
John
August 26, 2009, 03:48 AM posted in General DiscussionHey, guys.
Just a quick note to let you know that the free Skritter integration (we call it "Skritter Lite") is now live. Premium and above subscribers can see it by going to either (1) the Vocab Manager (click on "Me" at the top, then "Vocabulary"), where there is now a "Writing Practice" link, or (2) from individual Lesson pages, on the Vocabulary tabs (select words to practice, then click on the new "Writing Practice" button).
I will do a blog post about this soon.
usr260809
August 26, 2009, 11:17 AMdoes not seem to work with traditional characters, or?
After switching to trad. (the small wheel top right) - I still have to write simplified.
Disappointing.
John
August 26, 2009, 04:03 AMHa ha! Great to hear.
I think the design could use a bit of prettying up, but the important thing is that it works well, integrated with ChinesePod content.
Note that the Skritter app supports both simplified and traditional characters, but we've discovered a bug whereby traditional characters do not display (simplified characters are displayed instead) in the Vocabulary tab of recently published lessons. We'll have that fixed ASAP!
bababardwan
August 26, 2009, 04:27 AMHey,I love having it on the vocab page of the lessons.The perfect spot to put it.What I love about this idea of integration is that for me personally ,while I loved the idea of skritter,I wasn't overly likely to just go off and practice hours of writing on its own.Now I can incorporate it as part of completing the study of a lesson..it's in a nice bite size chunk that I'm much more likely to actually do.I know I should review stuff,but in reality,apart from my new iphone toy and the awesome app that came with it,I pretty much don't .I like the setout showing the list of words etc.The only thing I can see missing that I would have liked to have had would be an animation button so I could see stroke order and direction.I guess that's only for the full blown version ? Still,extremely happy with this addition.Thanks CPod and Skritter.
Hey,it's even on the very oldest lesson already rather than having to wait for it to be rolled out.
Also just discovered if you click on a character from the skritter page it takes you to it in mdbg.The only benefit I can see to this is that mdbg has that nice scissor tool so you can break down the character.
chanelle77
August 26, 2009, 05:55 AMThank you for adding the character writing functionality! As far as I can see now, it works perfect and the "routing" is natural and logical. So excellent work!
I can say goodbye to my real life Chinese teachers now :-). Just kidding, but there have been added so many good things! It will be hard to top this month in the future!
maeann_ramirez
August 26, 2009, 07:14 AMc'mon John,
Your not really gonna leave us hanging like that, are you?
paulinurus
August 26, 2009, 08:29 AMNice work John and excellent integration... it works like a charm! Also, linking it to the vocab has made this function very efficient since poddies can focus just those words they wish to learn to write.
However, unfortunately the link to mdbg is not completed. Clicking a word gets to the mdbg dictionary, however the word appears as "??". If the word could be entered into mdbg's "translate" box, it'll be perfect.
sebire
August 26, 2009, 08:56 AMNot being a premium subscriber, I am curious - do you get the whole spaced repetition thing, or do you literally just get the one word on the lesson vocab page?
bababardwan
August 26, 2009, 03:53 AMwoot!
bababardwan
August 26, 2009, 09:13 AMself deleted
sebire
August 26, 2009, 09:18 AMThanks John, Baba.
Baba, what I meant was on Skritter, you have all the vocab which then comes up again at intervals, depending on whether the algorithm thinks you've learnt it or not.
(Love the woot, v amusing).
md1485
August 26, 2009, 09:20 AMIt is really great!! I didn't know of Skritter before and I think it has been an excellent idea to integrate it with Chinesepod. The idea of including it also on each lesson's vocabulary is simply perfect.
I have just subscribed to Guided (by the way, thanks for the special offer of August) and I am anxious to be assigned some lessons to start using all the possibilities of the site, including this wonderful tool Skritter.
Congratulations and thanks!
bababardwan
August 26, 2009, 09:32 AMsebire,
Sorry,when I saw John's reply at the same time I realised I was up the creek without a paddle,and he'd answered you anyway.I actually hadn't specifically heard that term SRS until ryanchild mentioned it on August 15 on the N&F and I must have misread his meaning but I thought he was suggesting it was something bad.I looked up SRS at the time and realised of the possible things that could be referring to that it must be this spaced repetition system.It sounds good to me.I'd like to have that happening.As it is I have hundreds of words saved in my vocab section that need sorting through.I'd like to master some and then just get 'em outta there to make it more manageable and focus on stuff I don't know.Anyhow,sorry I didn't quite twig what you meant.I initially thought you were referring to the srs but then I wasn't sure what you meant by "or do you literally just get the one word on the lesson vocab page?"..that last bit kinda threw me.Must be all the unexpected heat here lately.我脑子坏了，哈哈。
bodawei
August 26, 2009, 09:59 AMThanks John and the rest of the CP crew - the Skritter add-on is a bonus. The lack of a writing function did hold CP back, so well done.
I have a couple of questions (I am new to Skritter - make that about five minutes).
1. When a word comes up, is it possible to skip characters and come back? I do this all the time in the real world - quite often seeing the second character helps me recall the first character.
2. Is it possible to try any character there? I seem to be limited by the words in my vocab list.
boymeetschinese
August 26, 2009, 10:30 AMOne small stroke for cpod, one giant stroke for poddies everywhere!
henning
August 26, 2009, 10:59 AMbodawei,
ad 1) you can skip a character with the blue arrow-icon and (in CPod) jump around the vocab list with the vocab-buttons below the scratchpad.
ad 2) if you add vocab to Skritter, the characters must be in their database - which currently contains 3893 characters according to their FAQ.
bababardwan
August 26, 2009, 09:05 AMpaulinurus,
It did automatically open a new tab in mdbg with the word not only in the translation box ,but also the translation below it for me.I'd give it another shot mate.I think you need to click on the actual characters,not the pinyin.Good luck. :)
RJ
August 26, 2009, 03:52 AMLow Cal Skritter seems to be working fine in both places. Very powerful addition to cpod. Awesome. Baba will be along shortly to add a woot!