FALL 1999
Questions about hardware or software compatibility?
This is the place.
Just say no to multiple choice!
SBP's interactive exercises stress learner production. Click Ejercicios for an overview.
Internet-enabled multimedia?
Spanish for Business Professionals allows you to download daily news and financial updates over your internet connection. Bookmark our web site for details in the near future!
Wouldn't it be nice if students could e-mail assignments to instructor without leaving a tutorial?
The educational version of SBP comes with built-in e-mail window. Check out our Noticias page from time to time for more info.
Just say no to multiple choice!
SBP's interactive exercises stress learner production. Click Ejercicios for an overview.
Internet-enabled multimedia?
Spanish for Business Professionals allows you to download daily news and financial updates over your internet connection. Bookmark our web site for details in the near future!
Wouldn't it be nice if students could e-mail assignments to instructor without leaving a tutorial?
The educational version of SBP comes with built-in e-mail window. Check out our Noticias page from time to time for more info.
Real-time, peer-to-peer communication via the internet.
This is one of the technologies in SBP. Visit our Noticias site for updates on our progress.
Spanish for Business Professionals copyright © 1996-1999 United States Department of Education.
Spanish for Business Professionals is the property of the U.S. Department of Education. All rights reserved world wide.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
1. Who is your target audience?
2. What equipment do I need to run SBP?
3. Do I have to install the entire project on the hard drive?
4. Is SBP difficult to install?
5. Can I get a copy?
6. How much are academic copies?
7. Do I need special hardware or software to run the chat protocol?
8. I have a CD-ROM recorder in my lab. Will I be able to make copies of SBP for my students?
9. When will volumes 2 and 3 be available?
10. Will SBP run on my Windows machine?
11. Who are the developers, and where are they located?
Who is your target audience?In keeping with the goals of the U.S. Department of Education's International Research and Studies Program, SBP is aimed at university-level students of Spanish and Business who need either an ancillary for their Spanish courses, or an independent to support their commercial studies. Nevertheless the curriculum is general enough to serve the needs of other business professionals who are not necessarily university students.
What equipment do I need to run Spanish for Business Professionals?At minimum, Spanish for Business Professionals requires a Macinotsh-compatible PowerPC computer with at least 32 MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive, and Mac OS 7 or 8 operating system. You will also need TCP/IP internet connection to take advantage of SBP's internet capabilities. SBP is a fairly advanced learning system and, consequently, fairly media (and memory!) intensive. We continue testing it on a variety of Mac-compatible machines. Here is what we have observed so far:As is generally the case with multimedia software, you will get better performance on a higher powered machine.
- 601 PowerPC (Apple 7200/120): satisfactory performance
- 603e PowerPC (PowerComputing PowerBase 180): slower performance
- 604 PowerPC (Apple 8500): excellent performace
- 604e PowerPC (PowerComputing PowerTower 225): excellent performance
- G3 PowerPC: excellent performance.
Do I have to install the entire project on my hard drive?No. Spanish for Business Professionals will give you three deployment options: 1) Hard drive, 2) Hard drive/CD-ROM, or 3) CD-ROM only. If you choose to install the entire project on your hard drive you will get optimal performance. If you need the disk space for other applications, you can choose the second method and install only the SBP application on your hard drive and run the audio and video media from the CD. This will save space on your hard drive. You may also run the entire project straight from the CD, in which case no hard disk space is required. If you choose this option, some of SBP's features will be disabled. Performance in this case depends a lot on the type of CD-ROM player you have. SBP is versatile enough to allow you to use the program in a way which best suits your needs.
Is SBP difficult to install?Not at all. It has its own installation software. Or you can drag and drop the folder from your CD-ROM.
Can I get a copy?We have a limited number of copies available for academic institutions. If you are an instructor or researcher in a college or university, you can receive a copy while supplies last. Request your version of SBP by e-mailing us at SBP@dt.uh.edu. Please include the folloing information in your request:
- Your name
- Your institution
- Classes which will be using SBP
- U.S. Mail address
- e-mail address.
How much are academic copies?They're free. We don't yet have a firm price for final versions, but we are confident we will be able to offer SBP site licenses to academic institutions at a very advantageous price. SBP is a not-for-profit project. According to the terms of our grant (U.S. DOE IR/S Program,TITLE VI Part A Section 660.10 CDFA 84.017A PR/Award number PO17A60002), the academic release will be available at cost, which basically means the cost of pressing and packaging the CD's, plus the small but inevitable administrative overhead. We are not permitted to accept royalties for these CD-ROM's.
Do I need special hardware or software to run the chat protocol?No. As long as machines in your lab have TCP/IP connections, you will be able to set up a chat network so that each copy of SBP can communicate with the others. The group chat protocol requires a piece of software called MultiVox to be installed on one of the machines in your lab. MultiVox will ship with the SBP CD-ROM.
I have a CD-ROM recorder in my lab. Will I be able to make copies of SBP for my students?Making additional lab copies of the software will requires special written permission. That won't affect the cost of the software, however.
When will volumes 2 and 3 be available?Tentatively, we expect to have volume 2 ready by the end of the spring academic semester 1999, and volume 3 ready by the end of summer 1999 semester. Please bear in mind that these dates do not constitute an agreement to ship SBP by a certain date. Our foremost proiority is not to ship anything until we feel it's ready.
Will SBP run on my Windows machine?Not yet. Our Intel-Standard version of SBP is in the planning stages. We hope to have a version which will run on the same machine as your Windows softwarew, but we cannot say definitively whether it will actually be a Windows app or run on some other operating system.
Who are the developers, and where are they located?Spanish for Business Professionals is under development in the Arts and Humanities Multimedia Lab at the University of Houston-Downtown. An overview of our staff and their credentials is available at or Personal site.