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Quickstarts


Working with MANNA



This manual describes how to make a lesson using MANNA. It is a little out of date. It does not cover the latest features, such as the configuration dialog, also known as "Edwina's Box". It is also very Mac-centric, more so than MANNA itself. (There are more MANNA materials for the Macintosh, but the Win95 version is fully as functional as the Mac version.)



1. Gathering materials

To make a lesson in MANNA you need the following raw (but digitized) materials:

1.1.

 A quick-time movie. It is not hard to digitize a segment of a movie on your own When planning to digitize movies, keep two things in mind: (l) it's hard to remove subtitles, so choose a version without them, and (2) you really can't digitize anything more than 10 minutes long. For intermediate Russian, we've found that sequences of two-three minutes are more than adequate.

1.2.

 The script of that movie, in the target language. Your movie script should be a file written in a word processor that supports the Rich Text Format (RTF). Rich Text Format is one of the several possibilities listed in the menu "save as." To write our script and commentaries, we use MS WORD 6.1. RTF files produced in WordPerfect 3.0 will not work; you have to import them into Word 6.1 and resave there as RTF. In addition, MANNA cannot deal with the RTF created in Word 5. 
    [note: you don't have to transcribe the movie if you don't want to. If students can understand the movie pretty much without your help, you could instead use the "movie script" designation to provide them with additional vocabulary and syntactic hints; we do this to give my students the words they need to describe action that is not verbalized in dialog. Or you could designate as "movie script" a series of questions about the movie that students should be able to answer. Use your imagination: what you are creating here is a file that you are going to link, segment by segment, to the quick-time movie.]

1.3.

 A grammatical or cultural commentary or whatever you would like to substitute for it. This file will go in the window underneath the movie (bottom left); it will be linked to the movie script. Like the movie script, this is a text file. When you have completed it, save it as an RTF (Rich Text Format) file

1.4.

 A glossary of words in the script. This is the third text file. When you have completed it, save it as an RTF (Rich Text Format) file. You do not have to alphabetize the dictionary; MANNA will do it for you. Press return between each dictionary entry: MANNA needs a blank line in between definitions in order to alphabetize. No, you cannot use double-space to perform this. Leave a few blank lines at the top (they will end up at the bottom). 
    [note: an easy way to make a glossary for a short script is to take a copy of your script file, delete all the words you don't want to gloss and give definitions for the remaining ones; MANNA will do the alphabetizing.]


2. Make a lesson folder

2.1.

 Make a new folder (choose "new folder" under "file") and give it a name, say "Lesson 1."

2.2.

 Drag your raw materials into the lesson folder, and rename as follows: the movie becomes AQTMovie.mov, the script becomes Script.rtf, the commentary becomes Comm.rtf, the glossary becomes Glossary.rtf. 

2.3.

 Drag a copy of MANNA into the lesson folder. You are now ready to start MANNA and make links between movie and script and between script and commentary. (The dictionary does not need links because the program does a lookup.)


3. Make links between movie and script, script and commentary

3.1.

Start MANNA by double-clicking on it. Make sure that the RTF files are not still open in Word-if they are, they won't appear on the MANNA screen. You will see four windows. The movie is in one upper window and its text is in the other. The commentary is in the lower left hand corner and the dictionary is in the lower right hand corner.

3.2.

 Sorting the dictionary. Probably the first thing you want to do is to alphabetize the dictionary. MANNA will look up words whether or not the dictionary is in alphabetical order, but it looks better alphabetized, and for inflected languages in particular, alphabetizing is useful to the student.
3.2.1. Go into the Teacher menu and choose the Edit -> SortGlossary command. When the program stops (if your dictionary is very long, this will take a while), the dictionary will be sorted. The entire text is selected (highlighted). Don't deselect it, because you are not yet finished. What's going on is that the sorted dictionary is on the clipboard, ready to be pasted. So, you have one more step.
3.2.2. Quit MANNA, start Word . You can have Word running in the background if you like, though you must quit MANNA.
3.2.3. Select New File (command-N) and Paste (command-V), and Save your alphabetized dictionary as Glossary.rtf. (Remember to save it as Rich Text File, and replace the existing Glossary.rtf at the prompt.) Now either quit Word, or leave Word running but close the file. Restart MANNA. Your alphabetized dictionary is in place.

[note: If you are making a lot of lessons, you'll want to carry the dictionary forward from lesson to lesson, adding new words. For each new lesson, open your old dictionary and add new items at the top, in any order. Simply remember (l) to separate items by at least one blank line, and (2) leave a few blank lines at the top.]

3.3.

 Making links between the movie and the script.
3.3.1. To make a link, start the movie by going to the "Action" menu and choosing "Play." (Remember, you want "Play," not "Play selection" or the "Play Selection" button.) Move your cursor down to the double-line stop button (bottom of the movie screen) so you're in position to stop quickly. When you see where you want to make your link, click on the stop button. [If you don't quite like where you've stopped -you've gone a little to far forward, or would like to go back a few frames - use the fine increment adjustments ++ and -- on the top of the movie screen.] 

Now go into the script window and click twice at the point where your text selection stops. If the text was highlighted, clicking once will remove the highlighting; the second click will make the link. As you make your link, the cursor bar appears. 

Now go into "Teacher" and choose "Add Pair." Save your work ("Save Pairs"). That's it.
3.3.2. What if you make a mistake? What if you want to check your links as you make them?

To check your work:

    If you want to check your work, either give a mouse-click anywhere in text you just processed, or highlight some part of it. Then use the "Play selection" arrow or go into the "Action" menu and choose "Play selection;" either way, you will see what you've got.

    Another way to see what you've got is to keep on pressing the "move forward" or "move backward" buttons. This will allow you to cycle through the text. By seeing what text is highlighted, you'll know what you've done. The movie will jump ahead along with the text. 

If you want to delete a link:
    Keep in mind that the command "delete" erases the boundary between the beginning of your target segment and the previous one. Usually, when you think "delete" you're thinking of removing the end of your target statement. Hence the following rules:

    Move to the next segment. Either use the "next segment" arrow, to the right of "play" above the movie screen, or go into "Action," choose "Next Segment."

    In "Teacher," choose "Delete Pair."

    Save your work ("Save Pairs"). Check your work (play segment). The link is gone.

To delete all links:
    Go into "Teacher" and choose "clear table." (The file that holds correspondences is called a "sync table.) Alternatively, if you want, you can go into the lesson folder and simply put the MovSync.tab or ComSync.tab into the trash.
3.3.3. To make a new link after deleting one, or make a new link in the middle of an existing segment, do the following: 
    Give a mouse-click at the beginning of the segment you want to make.

    Go to the "Sync" menu and choose "Sync All to Script." The movie will now jump to where the script is.

    Save your work ("Save Pairs"). Check your work (play segment). The link is menu.

    Play the segment by choosing "Play" -- not "Play Segment" -- in the "Action"

    Continue as earlier. (When you see where you want to stop, stop the movie using the double-line stop button at the bottom of the movie screen, as earlier. Now go into the script window and click at the point where your new text selection stops, as earlier. The selection will be highlighted. Click once to get rid of the highlighting. Click the second time to make the link. Go into "Teacher" and choose "Add Pair." Save your work. And there you are.)
3.3.4. Making and deleting links between the commentary and the script.  
    Go into the script window, and highlight the words you want to link to a commentary.

    Go into the commentary window, and click where your comments to that bit of text stop.

    In "Teacher" choose "AddCommPair." Save your work ("save pairs.")

    Go back to the text screen and click again. When you do this, the text you've just linked will change color. This alerts the student to the fact that a commentary exists.

    To delete, go into "Teacher" and choose "DeleteCommPair." Save your work ("save pairs.")


4. Some other possibilities and commands

4.1.

 (These features are new and some of them still unstable.)

To see where links are, go into "Teacher" and then "Edit;" in the "Edit" menu choose "Show hyperlinks." You cannot make links while hyperlinks are showing. To remove them, choose "Hide hyperlinks" in the edit menu.

To add or change text while in Manna. (Sometimes you want to do this if you find, for example, that your transcript is inaccurate, or you want to add text to a silent sequence.) Do the following (the procedure is similar to sorting the dictionary):

    Go into "Teacher, " then "Edit," and choose "Show hyperlinks." Now you can edit the script and commentary windows. You can only do simple editing in this mode. MANNA does not yet support "copy" or "paste," and you can't change the font. (If you want to do major editing, you'll have to go into Word.)

    When you are finished, choose "Hide hyperlinks." Now choose "Script to clip" or "commentary to clip" in the "Edit" menu, depending on which screen you have been editing. You can only save the work in one window at any given time; to edit both script and commentary you have to go through the sequence twice.

    The edited text is now on the "clipboard," ready to be pasted. It will appear in Word as soon as you start or return to Word.

    Quit Manna. Once in Word, Select New File (command-N) Paste (command-V). Save your work as Script.rtf or Comm.rtf (remember to save it as Rich Text File, and replace the existing files at the prompt). Now either quit Word, or leave Word running but close the file. Restart MANNA. Your edited file is in place.


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