Hi all,
I would like to create a quiz for English students learning the Ukrainian language. A quiz question might read something like:
What is the Ukrainian word for artist?
Since the students are are using an English keyboard there is no way they can input their response in Ukrainian. Is there a simple foreign keyboard tool that students could use to input their answer, similar to the tool used in Google Translate?
I forget how to do it in previous versions of Windows, but here's how I do it in Windows 10:
Down at the bottom right corner of the screen I click on ENG US.
In the menu that opens up, if I already have the language installed that I want to switch to, I just click on it, and the keyboard layout switches to that language.
If the language I need is not already in the menu, I click on Language, preferences, and in a new window I click on Add a language. There is a large list to pick from and Ukrainian is one of them. Click on it, it will then be installed and can be selected for use.
Since my keyboard layout is English US, I have Googled for and download pictures of keyboards of the languages I have installed so that when I'm using one, I will know where the keys are mapped to on my English US keyboard.
Once you have the language installed you can get up the keyboard layout by running Menu/Run/OSK. That brings up the On Screen keyboard which shows how the keys are mapped, and you can click the mouse on the various keys.
Learn something new everyday. Thanks Marcus. This one is about number 12 today.
Wish I'd learned it about two months ago. Would have saved me a lot of time hunting keyboard layouts, many pictures of which were so low quality it was hard to see what character was actually on the key.
Thanks for your response.
I realise that one could install a OS language keyboard, however I am really after a virtual keyboard tool, similar to what is found when using Google Translate. I don't want a keyboard that is restricted to Windows since some students will use a Mac or an iPad. Nor do I want the students try to map the Latin alphabet to Cyrillic.
I would have thought when Moodle is used to teach a non-English speaking course virtual keyboards were used when creating quizzes and assessment.
If I were going to create a virtual keyboard in Moodle, I might begin with the charmap plugin in the Atto editor, change the unicode for the character table to Cyrillic values, change geometry and CSS to make it look like a keyboard, and change the behaviour to allow clicking multiple characters. This would allow students to enter Cyrillic text in any textarea i.e. forum posts and essay questions using unicode. The only problem with doing this is that students would have to install unicode fonts on their devices for it to be useful.
A second idea would be to use Cyrillic support in LaTeX to create a keyboard in the Atto equation editor. This is easier since the TeX commands in the equation editor are set in the admin settings for the plugin. MathJax does not support Cyrillic yet so you would have to configure and use the TeX notation filter with Cyrillic macros loaded in the preamble. Students could construct words with the equation editor. They appear as TeX codes in the editor, but will be rendered as graphics in pages or posts. It will display correctly on any device.
For a quiz I would not be as concerned about students entering text via keyboard. You should be able to use multiple choice, matching of drag and drop for vocabulary and grammar exercises. Again you will need to consider whether Cyrillic unicode is adequate or whether you should use images or the TeX notation filter.
