Testing, testing, 1, 2

We're so happy to have some of our products ready (or almost ready) that we decided we would show it to some students and get their feedback.

A first test was organised in Germany at the begining of September. They gathered a few students that were already involved in the Hoogatrans Project and told them a little bit about our project.

They were able to show them :
The german videos for the soup recipe
The french videos made for the desert recipe
The glossaries made with Engage explaining some of the terms used in the french videos.



The results of this test is on page 12 of the following presentation :

Präsentation 27092012 scotland from Ecuisine

Another test was conducted at the begining of Octobe. This time it was in France and the Guinea pigs were also students involved in the HoogaTrans project : they had been working in France for two weeks, in some of the most prestigious restaurants in Bayeux (Normandie, France).

We decided to test the Language Module that we will use as an introduction to our course. It is mainly about getting them used to french and helping them to find strategies to guess new words from the context.

The testing lasted for a full hour and students were really excited about the project. They also pointed a lot of points we will be working on in the forthcoming days and weeks. This will be very helpful for all partners.

The experiment and the conclusions are detailed in this document (in French) : https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5CuuqC9k_8OYVdGOW5pWjV6R2s

Getting there ! A few news before Glasgow Seminar

A few news from the project as the 4 partners are about to meet in Glasgow for the WP2 seminar.

Our dear Scottish friends in Anniesland college is still in the process of filming their 4 recipes. They will be hosting the next seminar and I'm sure they'll have plenty of exciting things to show us.

German team has been working hard on its own courses.
Following the model set by the french team, they've been able to finalize all the videos for their first course : the Berliner Kartoffelsuppe, AKA the famous The Potato soup, Berlin style. You'll soon know everything to know about what makes german soups so unique.

The Polish team took a different approach : they decided they would start by shooting all the videos for their 4 recipes. And they did. They sent the files and they are perfectly neat : nice fast pace editing, clear pictures and sounds and yummy recipes featuring pierogis, beetroots, cottage cheese and cabbage... and if you thought there wasn't such a thing as "Polish food", prepare to be amazed !

In France, all videos have been shot, edited and uploaded to the YouTube Channel. All the courses for the first recipe, "the norman pie" is ready and being translated in German in order to be tested by beneficiaries of TGZ OPR GmbH. Those lovely guinea pigs are soon coming to France and they shall be prepared in the best way possible for this experience !

Also, we started working with a compagny based in Caen in order to find a solution for the deployment of the course. We found many ! And I'll tell you all about them... but just not now :-)

Happy cooking from the Ecuisine team !

Language Help inside the courses

There are 2 main aspects to the Ecuisine project :

1. Teaching the basics in cooking 
2. Teaching the basics in language to prepare students for a work placement abroad

To achieve that, each course contains 2 layers :

1. the cooking course
2. a language help

This language help comes in the form of :

• a glossary of the terms that are used in the cooking course (we, French, decided to call it "Dico")
• and a quiz to help students get familiar with and memorize this vocabulary.

We're currently working hard on these glossaries for our test course. Here's what it will probably look like.

Screen capture of the glossary in the language help module

On the left side is the list of the words to learn.

On the right is a nice, yummy and zoomable picture to illustrate the meaning and reinforce memorization. As one of my mentor puts it "Something to which you can hang the word to."

On the center is the "definition" of the word.

For now it only has the English translation but it will soon feature the German and Polish translations.

We also added a couple of exemples with their translations.

Our Scottish partner Anniesland College will proof read the English parts and the other partners will translate in German and Polish.

You can't quite here it from where you are but we will also reccords the entries (fleurer, fondu, pâte,...) so that students learn to recognize the word and get familiar with the sounds of French and their graphical representation.

All this was made using Articulate Engage, quite a bit of electricity and our brains.

This is such an exciting adventure !

... though I'm afraid I've gained a few extra pounds since I started working on this project ^_^

The mystery of the little russian - Explained

Do you know what a french cook means when you tell him that you need "a little russian" ?

In French, "La petite russe" is the name cooks use to talk about your normal everyday pan...

Our french teachers team just uploaded pictures they made of all the ustensils they use in their kitchen ! This is gonna be super useful for our project ! Thanks !

Une petite russe

(Very) Dynamic vocabulary building with Quizlet

Since a lot of the linguistic aspect of the course will be around memorizing vocabulary, I thought we need some

In Ecuisine, the main aspect of the language course will be around learning vocabulary. There are some really good tools on the Internet to automatizes vocabulary learning (this is something machines are really good at !).

Quizlet is my favourite of these tools. It's an easy to use tool based on the concept of flash cards. You just enter a list of words and their translation or definition and it automatically generates flash cards. See for yourself :

Choisissez un mode d'apprentissageDispersionApprendreFiches

Étudier ces fiches | Étudier les fiches french

Quick Seminar Debrief

Last week was our second seminar, an important step for all the partners : an opportunity to get together and find out the practical details about our collaboration the final outcome of the project.

The Scottish partner, Anniesland College, and the German partner, Technologie- und Gründerzentrum Ostprignitz-Ruppin GmbH [DE], came to France in Caen for 2 days. Unfortunately, the polish partners from 36°6CC couldn't come but Mosqi.to, the sub-contractor in charge of the design, brought a Polish touch to this meeting.


Many things were agreed on at this meeting :

Learning x (cooking + languages) = Ecuisine

The originality in the Ecuisine lies in the fact that it is not only an online cooking course but that each of the cooking course produced by its 4 partners will offer the trainees from the other partners the opportunity to follow their cooking course thanks to 2 language modules.

The aims are twofold :

1. Create a new distance learning offer in basic cuisine tranferring French approach, available to more partners as support for trainers and apprentices within the partnership and create new tools fully adapted  to non-native speakers preparing work experience abroad
2. Enable trainees to apprehend both basic professional languages, strongly connected to the activities, and the cultural and occupational differences to prepare work experience abroad.