Flash cards are a pretty common tool for learning languages. But what if you want to learn a sign language? I’ll tell you. Take a paper flash card and write down the word or phrase that you want to learn on one side. Now turn the flash card and put a video that shows how the word or phrase is “spoken” onto the other side. Wait a second …
Paper may have some shortcomings here. Luckily, there’s software that can help you out with digital flash cards that can handle audio and video as well. Alas! My beloved H5P offers a content type called Dialog Cards, but it cannot handle videos. Yet! Have a look at what feature I have just completed in my spare time …
Please note: This demo is probably broken. That’s not because my code isn’t working, but because the pull-request has been pending for over three years without being merged in, but I have installed official code on this site and am tired of patching in my changes over and over again with every new release of Dialog Cards.
Might not only be useful for sign language, but also for referee signals in sports, flag alphabets, tie knots, … Anything that could benefit from more dynamics than images can offer.
The feature seems to working, although I have not yet tested it on all major browsers and operating systems. Also, please don’t expect it to pop up in the official version of Dialog Cards within the next couple of days. First of all I don’t know if the feature will be accepted, and furthermore the H5P core team is very busy finishing other things and will probably not have time to do a code review soon.
Code: branch on github (until included in official version)
Credit where credit is due
Sure, H5P lists all the license information anyway, but why not mention here that the videos that I used were created by Henrike Maria Falke and are licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license?
I got the inspiration for adding the feature to H5P Dialog Cards from Sebastian Morr aka @blinry. He created a script that can pull resources from SignDict, a video dictionary for sign language, and automatically create flash card sets for the tool Anki.
Hmm, there’s no such script for H5P Dialog Cards yet … 😉
Hi Oliver!
Thank you for your effort. Would really love to do use this on our own e-learning platform for sign language.
However, I can’t manage to upload it to my H5P libraries (on WordPress). I created a .h5p from your files off github but once I upload this via H5P in my WordPress installation I receive several errors. Do you have a suggestion how to upload your library? Or is it supposed to just replace the files from the Dialog Cards library? Thank you!
Hi Matthias!
There are a couple of things that can cause trouble (hard to say without knowing the error message). First and foremost, the version this fork is based on is outdated – the official version of DialogCards has been changed a lot recently, and the video add-on will have to be rewritten before it can be included in the official version. I plan to do that next week, so if you don’t need it now and can wait until someone reviewed the code, that’s probably the best way to go.
Just downloading the archive from (from the correct branch) from github is not enough in general. The repository is meant to provide developers/translators with everything that they need to get going, including files that will cause H5P to reject the archive. You’d have to remove everything that doesn’t belong in the archive according to the specs, or you can do that by using the tool H5P CLI. And you’d have to upload it on the library settings page, of course, not using the Content Hub.
Also, be sure if you really want to use an unofficial version. It will work, of course, but any update of the official version will overwrite the changes.
Cheers,
Oliver
Hi Oliver,
thanks for the quick reply. I would love to see this implemented in the official version – looking forward to that!
So I am right in understanding, that your library overwrites the official H5P Dialog Cards module?
Thanks again,
Matthias
Not sure if I can explain it without diving into terminology.
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: If your version of Dialog Cards is newer than this one, then H5P will not install this version. This version, until the pull request is accepted and merged into the official code repository, is a fork. It’s either or, you can’t use both. You could, of course, create a separate new content type (e.g. “Video Dialogue Cards”), but I don’t think this would make much sense here.
Thank you for your answer! I really hope they will accept and merge it into the official repository.
I am pretty confident that the pull request will be accepted. Still there may be a bottleneck, as Joubel needs to earn money, of course, and may have to give higher priority to other things.