Thomas' Work Space

1. The LRC student PC image contains a file C:\temp\screencastfullhighaudio.wme
2. Doubleclick or run the file, in the encoder window that comes up, click the green menu button to record your screen.
3. When done demonstrating on screen, swtich back to the encoder window and click the red button to stop recording.
4. Rename and archive (the student hard drive is “frozen”) the screencast video output file which you will find in c:\temp\screencast.wmv.

1. The workshop stayed  “this side of the digital audio lab”, i.e. focused on those generic teaching tasks that the Sanako Study 1200 can facilitate which have the widest teaching application (including in, but also beyond language-skill-courses):
   1. remote controlling student computers,
   2. screen sharing, collaborating with students,
   3. launching applications on students computers,
   4. sending students to webpages,
   5. launching handout files to students and collecting their input back
   6. locking their computers, screens or keyboards,
   7. “clicker” classroom polls, for which I have written a PowerPoint Template you can base your own clicker-like face-to-face class exercises on.
   8. and more…
   9. Here are two screencasts of my presentation:
      1. one for the right screen/participant screen (using the Study1200 teacher to student screen casting). Requires Windows Media Player on PC, like in the LRC: download from MS-SkyDrive.
      2. one for the left screen/projector, where I displayed mostly a PowerPoint. You can watch this in parallel using another player, e.g. the VLC player, like in the LRC. However, it can also stream from MS-SkyDrive.

Click here to view a sample LRC assistant training presentation.

1. I am trying to replace – in the routine cases that do not need post-editing, but where speed is of the essence – my practice to post-process my screencasts in MS-Expression Encoder (installed on one machine only) and upload the result with a page to load a Silverlight Control – all hosted on my MS-Windows Azure portfolio.
2. Much easier and quicker would it be to store screencasts in MS-SkyDrive (mapping to drives in MS-Windows enables a more robust drag and drop than the still browser-specific web version on live.com), and top take advantage the embed links provided.
3. Unfortunately, WordPress.com, my blogging platform,  does not support iframes with videos from MS-SkyDrive.
4. However, by linking to the URL in the embed code, to open in a new window (with the inelegant instruction to “click on the thumbnail that opens”; if it loads slow, the thumbnail ALT displays essentially the same),:
5. I can get the  user to an MS- Silverlight control which loads:
6. and plays the video:
7. more user-friendly and robustly (This has been tested to work on MS-Windows 7 with IE9 and Firefox 3.6) than distributing the bare WMVs of my screencasts directly.

Those who wanted to, but did not make it to the vendor training by Sanako’s David Golden (who gave us a basic orientation displaying functions of teacher screen and student screen and demonstrated basic activity functions and what happens at the student screen), might want to have a look at the unedited screencast footage (for Windows Media Player on Windows, if necessary, resort to LRC) I recorded during the entire 2 1/4-hour session:

1. the first one recording the screen of a sample student station
   1. with an explanation of the student player at the beginning,
2. the second one recording the screen of the teacher computer
   1. have a look at the end around 2:10:00 where we connect a group of students via screensharing and audio (headsets), so that a group, dispersed across the classroom, can orally collaborate on an MS-Word document  that one student types into but all students see.
   2. The Sanako features used for this are from the dropdown: activity: discussion, and from the button: pc control:model student. Both can be combined with each other, and with a third feature, the capability to subdivide the class in multiple groups.
   3. This application I found useful when, before reviewing materials with one half of the class, I sent my more advanced learners off to a more independent and applied group writing task. I allows any member of the class to join the advanced group,  no matter where they are located. It also forces the group members to communicate  all the target language aurally to the model student. Finally, it affords them access (though not individually) to the language learning tools of a computer while working on their tasks

This screencast covers the basics of Study 1200 for students.

For a quick guide to the Student interface, see Student Basics I: The Screenshots