Tools

CALPER has implemented discussion-type tools and course management solutions for use with L2 (and other) learning environments. These tools have either been created or modified to perform with two critical features: (1) Unicode-encoding (UTF-8) and (2) MySQL database backend.

These features combine to support multi-lingual dialogue (e.g., displaying Chinese, English and Russian characters) within the same webpage (or document), and also to support the use of a "global" query to search or analyze texts across the use of all three tools simultaneously (e.g., comparing the frequency of certain Chinese/English juxtapositions appearing inuse across the different tools). In addition, all of our tools are coded using PHP*, which combined with the MySQL backend support provides tools that are fully scalable and cost-effective to meet local and national hosting endeavors.

Currently, CALPER is hosting several of these areas for university-level German students, high school level Spanish students and Intensive English Communication Program students.