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Posts Tagged ‘audacity’

How a teacher can organize a student-controlled high-stakes assessment recording session using the Sanako in the LRC

2013/03/12 Leave a comment
  1. How:
    1. An initial central microphone and speaker test (animated step-by-step) is recommended. Clear the session afterwards.
    2. Recording: Have the student operate the Sanako recorder to individually record (like during a self-access assignment)
      1. For starters, teacher can display this narrated individual recordings with the Sanako Student Recorder training screencast, it auto-starts and auto-cycles):
      2. And/or explain:
        1. Red Record Button to record;
        2. Blue Stop button to stop recording
        3. Green Play Button to play their assignment for review (also use the recap button to jump back)
        4. Menu: “File / New”, if they want to redo the assignment.
        5. Button: call/envelope to call the teacher on the teacher station for help (an audio connection between student and teacher should pause  the recorder automatically)
    3. Submitting:
      1. Individually by students:
        1. Menu “File” / “Save” (opt to save as student track mp3), to save locally, once student is happy to submit.
        2. (recommended:) upload the save file to a Moodle single-file upload assignment. Requires the teacher to create a Moodle Single file upload assignment, with optional attached file first.
      2. From the Sanako tutor at the teacher station:
        1. For entire class (If you do not need the flexibility to have students end at different times). TBA
        2. Group-wise (varying (staggered) recording times):  TBA
  2. Pro’s:
    1. Less distraction from language learning by having to operate technology (editing audio rather then practicing L2) and more language-learning-specific features (sidetone, recap) than if using Audacity.
    2. Works with the Sanako Study 1200 teacher stations (e.g. automatic pause of recorder when remote connecting to student during monitoring of recording task).
  3. Con’s:
    1. noise interference with dozens of student speaking in a confined space simultaneously. Nobody wants to return to the language lab station of yore, i.e. in a cubicle. However, a teacher-controlled oral exam (sample video, step-by-step video),
      1. can play a soothing background sound to students over the headphones which insulates them from their neighbors (prevents both distraction and cheating);
      2. there is no room  for distracting unrelated chit-chat;
      3. there is no need for distracting conversation when  students do technical troubleshooting, during highly structured question/response exams.
    2. More user flexibility/control  is achieved by more individual distracting operation of computer technology, which always implies more opportunity for user error. To reduce (not eliminate!) the error ratio:
      1. Students
        1. have to have received the general digital audio lab introduction for students.
        2. have to double-check their recordings for quality before submitting.
      2. Teachers
        1. have to monitor students’ recording progress closely
          1. which the Sanako Study 1200 teacher station (link cannot replace hands-on training) greatly facilitates (provided Students use  the Sanako Student Recorder, as described above).
          2. however, even with a classroom management system like Sanako Study 1200, it is impossible to completely monitor a class size of students operating computers. Therefore teachers
        2. have to check the validity of submissions before students leave.
          1. If you use submission through Moodle, here are 2 tips how to do this quicker:
            1. how to quickly download their Moodle file submissions
          2. Whether you use submission through Moodle or collection through Sanako tutor:
            1. view end of this video for how to quickly check validity of all file submissions in a folder using Audacity
          3. are advised to have a make-up assessment plan not only for those students missing the exam, but also for those that miss to complete the computerized multimedia assessment correctly.
Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, documentation, lms, multimedia-recording, Presenter-Computer, Student-Computers, training Tags: , , ,

How to mix SANAKO- recorded individual students’ audio tracks together

2012/11/05 Leave a comment
  1. If the students’ audio tracks are not already time-aligned, first use audacity: "time shift tool" to align individual tracks  image (with this tool selected, you can move individual tracks back and forth, to the left or right).
  2. If/ When they are time-aligned, use audacity/ menu: tracks/"stereo track to mono".
Categories: audience-is-teachers, Back office, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, multimedia-recording, recording-software, service-is-applying-learning-tools, Speaking, Student-Computers Tags: ,

How to fix “no audio” on the computers with black Sanako headsets

2012/10/10 Leave a comment
  1. First, show the Sanako student application (e.g. from button:Start / Student).
  2. Is the Volume Control slider set to 0? Move it up where it says “Adjust volume”:image
  3. Still hear no audio playing on the black Sanako headsets? Then the volume slider was likely moved to 0 since the headset was not detected: On the rear of the computer, check the connection
    1. of the blue headset plug into the USB extension cord, and
    2. of the extension cord into the rear of the computer.
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, documentation, service-is-troubleshooting-debugging, Student-Computers Tags: , , , ,

Why to save Audacity projects locally …

2012/09/19 Leave a comment

… with enough file space to avoid unspecific problems, including later parts of your recording becoming inaudible.

This problem was caused by attempting to save an Audacity project to a network share over a slow network and with limited storage space.

This Audacity project (.aup extension, with subfolders) had a size of a 200MB – the exported .mp3 likely less than 1% off that.

So always save Audacity projects you are working on on local hard drive or USB thumb drive.

Categories: multimedia-recording, recording-software, service-is-troubleshooting-debugging Tags: ,

Spring 2012 Faculty Workshop II: Oral Proficiency testing with Audacity/Sanako

2012/04/30 Leave a comment
  1. View screens (best viewed side by side, but note that left and right screen are not synchronized):
    1. for full slide show (note the included short links for convenient further reading), left screen
    2. for Sanako interface and full audio track, right screen.
  2. Table of contents:
    1. Overview of a Sanako Oral Exam
    2. Examples of Exam teachers’ exam question recordings
    3. Example of a Sanako Exam
    4. Loop induction
      1. creating an exam question recording
      2. by taking a Sanako exam as a student
    5. Step-by-Step of administering a Sanako oral exam
    6. Grading Sanako oral exam student files
      1. Sanako voice insert for
        1. facilitating recording oral assignments for student without hard-coded pauses
        2. commenting on student responses during grading
    7. Sanako authoring tool for providing visual on top of aural cues to students
  3. workshop-2012-2-sanako-ppt-thumbnails
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Arabic, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hindi, Intermediate, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Listening, Mandarin, multimedia-recording, Polish, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, Screencasts, service-is-assessing, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Slideshows, Spanish, Speaking, Student-Computers, Swahili, workshops, Yoruba Tags: , , ,

Error code 14001 when installing Audacity

2012/04/27 2 comments
  1. Symptom: Audacity installation seems to complete without error, but attempting to start Audacity at the end of the installation process results in an error about bad environment with the above error code.
  2. For your reference: It is has been the missing Visual C++ redistributable installation here in the past on staff computers.
  3. Solution: Download and install the redistributable, then try restarting Audacity: It should start now.
Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, multimedia-recording, service-is-documenting, service-is-troubleshooting-debugging Tags:

How to use Audacity to repeat audio cues for students when creating listening learning materials

2012/04/27 Leave a comment

A 70-sec screencast:.

Categories: documentation, multimedia-recording, Screencasts, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags:

How a teacher can use Sanako voice insert to easily add spoken comments to students’ Sanako oral proficiency exams

2012/04/25 Leave a comment
  1. All other things equal (given a limited amount of time), teachers can provide more and better corrective feedback on student oral proficiency recordings if, during their grading, they could easily insert their own oral comments into the students’ recordings (delivered as MP3 files to teachers’ desktops after Sanako oral exams).
  2. Both the Sanako Tutor and Student Player have a voice insert mode that is much easier and quicker to use than (albeit not free as) editing the student audio in Audacity (which we still recommend for bare-bone viewing/listening because of Audacity’s capability of loading and displaying multiple tracks simultaneously).
  3. Fortunately, Sanako tutor/student player are available on the teacher/student station PCs in the LRC (the latter’s insert function is available when the PC connected to the running Sanako Tutor on the teacher station).
  4. How easy and fast is it to use this? As you can see in this demo screencast on how to use Sanako voice insert to add spoken comments into your students’ Sanako oral exams, voice insert only requires:
    1.  a click on the voice insert button in the center, whenever a user wants to speak during listening,
    2. and, from the top left menu, a “file”/ “save as” at the end.
  5. In a next step – not only during the grading process –, how easy is it to distribute student recordings made with Sanako to students? That is TBA:a different story.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, multimedia-recording, Presenter-Computer, Screencasts, service-is-assessing, Speaking, Student-Computers Tags: , , , ,

How a teacher best adds cues and pauses to an mp3-recording with Audacity to create student language exercises

2012/01/25 1 comment
  1. The first screencast example uses insert tones and a gut amount of pause, for an interpreting exercise, into an authentic German political speech
    1. 1:00 search for a break (button: play/stop  - pause prevents edits)
    2. 1:05 move the cursor to the break (mouse left-click on timeline)
    3. 1:20 insert a pause (menu:Generate / Silence )
    4. 1:25 zoom in (button:magnifying glass, CTRL + mouse scroll wheel)
    5. 1:45 generate a tone (menu:Generate / Noise), change the duration
    6. 2:10 do not replace the selection
    7. 2:20 use undo, just like in MS-word and other programs
    8. 2:30 move the cursor to the start of the selection (mouse left-click on timeline)
    9. 2:40 generate a tone (menu:Generate / Noise)
    10. don’t forget to review results before distributing to students
  2. the second screencast example, of post-editing a questions/response exercise in ESL, takes the amount of pause inserted from the recorded teacher instruction for the student, and uses copy/paste to speed things up even more.
  3. You can also only insert tones and not pauses, as in the 3rd screencast, and allow the students flexible pause lengths, if you can rely on the Sanako Student recorder Voice insert. Or if you must, let students use audacity for recording also, and have them learn how to move the recording cursor around manually, and throw away the source track.
Categories: documentation, e-languages, Listening, Media, Screencasts, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Speaking Tags: , ,

How a teacher grades a Moodle simple file upload assignment

2012/01/13 1 comment
  1. When you initially createdyour single file upload assignment, there were no student submissions: 13
  2. Once there are, the link in the upper right of the assignment will tell you and take you right to the gradebook: 2-assignment-created
  3. Here you have an (1) overview who has submitted, and can click (2) to grade;  14 
  4. In the grading dialogue, you can (1) download and open the file submission (see techniques of grading student audio submissions with Audacity), (2) write comments as you assess the file, (3) assign a final grade and (4) save and move on to the next submission (fastest, when you do batch grading, the notify student of your grading feedback is still useful under these circumstances, but even more so when you your self asked to be notified by email of student submissions as they come in: faster feedback)
  5. 15
Categories: assignments, audience-is-teachers, e-learning, lms, Speaking Tags: , ,