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Archive for August, 2011

How best to fit your class into the Sanako Study1200 Classroom Layout

2011/08/25 Leave a comment
  1. When started, the Study1200 Tutor will prompt for the classroom layout (computer and student icons in the right part of the Sanako window) that you want to load, like so:classroom-layouts
  2. We have 2 classroom layouts preconfigured for common uses of the LRC
    1. “right-half”: only the right half, as viewed by the teacher, of the coed434 main classroom. If you come with smaller classes (<16), this will fit relatively nicely onto the screen.
    2. “template class” = all that can fit onto the screen which means:To fit students (and, more importantly, the reasonably sized thumbnails of their desktops) onto the screen (Sanako Tutor will not span both screens, at least not if they have different resolutions), we  had to
      1. take the main classroom COED434lrc-layout-map-main (1000x442)
      2. break out the front 2 rows, break them apart in the middle, and turn them counterclockwise, like so: coed434-left-front2-counterclockwise (623x1000)coed434-right-front2-counterclockwise (627x1000)
      3. to achieve the following result in the Study 1200 classroom layout: sanako1200-screen-control-lrcthumbnails of the 2 front rows barely fit the layout, remaining computers from the rear row are cluttering the bottom of the classroom layout. This severely limits the usefulness of this great feature, and is counter-intuitive, which is twice as bad when standing in front of (or here rather: behind) a class. We are working on getting a bigger secondary screen on the teacher podium. Since we will also eventually need more Sanako licenses to equip the whole classroom. So the secondary screen should be as big as we can possibly get for the podium: 1900*1200 would be 1.75 times what we have now. 
      4. To simplify this while we wait, we have numbered the seats (rather: the monitors) in the LRC according to the computer numbers. In the Study-1200 classroom layout, you can show the computer (names which end in these) numbers instead of the the student login names, by going to menu: tools / admin / change student names.
  3. if you classroom configuration changes,
    1. you can change the layout by reloading a preconfigured classroom layout file, like so:classroom-layout-open
    2. you can alter the layout on the right on the fly, by CTRL-SHIFT dragging student/computer icons
      1. If you have done this, on exiting, the study1200 tutor will ask you whether you want to save your changes to the layout. Feel free to do this, as longs as you save them in your personal tutor folder. Please do not overwrite existing layouts for all teachers. 
    3. Classroom layouts are stored with the extension CCF, but are simply XML files. To preview or even edit them, You can open them in your preferred XML editor, like so in MS-Excel:classroom-layout-open-xml
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-languages, e-learning Tags: , , ,

Just testing the post by email

2011/08/25 Leave a comment

This appears to be a Trados error. Does it appear on every startup? On each Coed434 PC? We have to investigate.

Categories: Glitches&Errors, Student-Computers, translation-software Tags: ,

Sanako Study 1200 screen sharing: How students can present their computer-based work to the entire class from their seats

2011/08/25 Leave a comment
  1. Do you assign computer projects – web quests, writing tasks – to students on the LRC computers, and do you want each of them to present his/her project work to the entire class?
  2. You can save a fair amount of (precious class) time (and of distracting commotion), if you use the Sanako classroom management system’s screen sharing features.
  3. Rather than having students walk up (the “pedestrian” approach), transfer their work to (e.g. reopen their website or MS-Word on) the teacher computer and present it from there to the class –
  4. students can remain in their seats/on their computers, if you use one of these two approaches:
    1. to show the  students’ work on the classroom projector screen:
      1. Click on the student’s icon in the classroom layout, from the popup-window, choose button: “Remote Control” image
      2. a new window showing the student’s screen opens up: drag it to the projected screen and maximize it: ready to roll…
    2. to show the students’ work on the audience’s computer screens:
        1. from the center buttons, open the submenu of button “screen control” , choose submenu item “model student” image
          1. (to avoid affecting self access students in the LRC, you may want to group all your students into one color group, and then work with the colored left parts of the center buttons, instead o the grey right parts),
        2. with the altered mouse cursor, click on the student icon in the classroom layout that you want to become the model student
        3. the other students’ icons (either in the entire class or in the group affected, see above) in the classroom layout will change to the icon denoting “receiving model student”: student-icon-model-student. ready to roll…
Categories: audience-is-teachers Tags: , ,

LRC website homepage updated to included LRC newsfeeds

2011/08/25 Leave a comment

We have added newsfeeds to the most recent LRC news for students and teachers to the UNCC-LRC homepage, in the hope that our clients will find it easier to learn about new LRC features for language learning.

joomla-wordpress-newsfeed

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure, websites Tags: , , ,

Room and Equipment handling using MS-Exchange Resource Mailboxes: What the parameter AddNewRequestsTentatively means

2011/08/22 1 comment
  1. It is an instruction to the calendarattendant, that seems to be conjured up by automateprocessing: autoupdate, but also, now together with, but still separate from, the resource booking assistant, by automateprocessing: autoaccept
  2. It is an instruction relating only to meeting requests, not to meetings. But it is not the calendarattendant, but rather the resource booking assistant that decides what is to remain a request and what not (= what is to be accepted or denied, and thus to stop being a mere request and be promoted to a meeting). if there are no (mere) requests (since all requests, for whatever other settings, are either auto-accepted or auto-denied, so effectively automatically rendered into non-(not anymore) requests, the AddNewRequestsTentatively will have no effect on the calendar. It is these other settings, that may allow requests to remain requests. Even though the parameter name may sound like it is doing this, it is NOT AddNewRequestsTentatively that will turn off/override these other settings to make all incoming requests remain requests. It is rather automateprocessing: autoupdate (or a combination of automateprocessing: autoaccept and allbookinpolicy: $false and Allrequestinpolicy: $true (and even more so AllRequestOutOfPolicy: $true) that would do that.
  3. However, the latter is the combination if have for pseudo-rooms where it is important that the delegate can collate requests in a calendar-format when deciding which to accept/deny, instead of having to cobble together a picture from forwarded meeting request messages.
  4. Organizer can make a request (out of policy: maxduration), and it appears on the organizers calendaroutlook test AddNewRequestsTentatively true automateprocessing not autoupdate maxduration outfofpolicy lrc calendar this looks tentative_thumb[1]
  5. It appears on the room calendar for the delegate as tentative owa test AddNewRequestsTentatively true automateprocessing not autoupdate maxduration outfofpolicy lrc calendar this looks not tentative_thumb[1]

     

  6. It appears in the scheduling assistant as tentative, for others to seeowa test AddNewRequestsTentatively true scheduling assistant _thumb[1]

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, e-infrastructure Tags: , , ,

Room and Equipment handling using MS-Exchange Resource Mailboxes: What the parameter AllowConflict means

2011/08/22 1 comment
  1. NOT TRUE HERE? More info here, search “AllowConflicts”.
  2. Is required for a practically very desirable feature in handling of recurring meeting requests: A conflict exception still allows the basic recurrent meeting go through I found a helpful flowchart  457960_CalendarConflict01, see bottom left for effect of Allowconflicts.
  3. what will the effect be on non-recurring meeting requests? Will conflict in.stances (there are only instances with non-recurring meeting requests) still be denied? From the flowchart  and when allowconflicts comes into play (only after automateprocessing: autoaccept (it does not come into play with automateprocessing:autoupdate) immediately before thresholds ) and that it still does not allow actual conflicts, it appears to me that allowconflicts should have been called “allow-a-recurring-meeting-request-to-be-not-outright-denied-if-it-has-conflict-instances-that-have-to-be-denied-(always-by-the-autoaccept-agent)-as-long-as-not-the-ConflictPercentageAllowed-and-MaximumConflictInstances-numbers-are-also-exceeded”. it was, however, with good reason not called: “allowdoublebooking” J
  4. That much about the theory. Now the Test results for AllowConflicts $true
    1.   What works: Allowconflicts does not prompt the autoprocessing: autoaccept (calendar booking assistant) to allow actual conflict instances (double bookings)) from recurring meeting requests.
    2.   What does not seem to work, but is not important right now: thresholds for conflict amounts are ignored, even if both are crossed
      1.  MaximumConflictInstances= 5
      2.  ConflictPercentageAllowed= 25% guides the calendar booking assistant in deciding whether a recurring meeting request gets
      3. (10 conflict instances out of 20) still get accepted,
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, e-infrastructure Tags: , , ,

How to set the home page in your web browser

2011/08/22 Leave a comment

E.g. if you want to update your email start page from http://unccmail.uncc.edu to http://mail.uncc.edu.

in Safari, go to menu: Safari / Preferences / home page: type your updated page address in here and click OK. Visual walkthrough is e.g. here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIGocolMtzU.

Similarly in the preferences of all other common web browsers.

Categories: e-infrastructure Tags: , ,

List of LRC rooms, equipment & tutor hours that can be booked or checked out

2011/08/21 10 comments

The LRC has 98 resources (in black letters and green (NEW Winter2012) versus purple is w/o email address and booking is still paper-based; yellowis broken;red: is missing), that, per new procedure since Fall 2011 (explained in one screenshot), from NINERMAIL or MS-Outlook (Desktop), using their email address listed in column address@uncc.edu, can

  1. be booked online by sending meeting requests (all, except ccurrently tutors&LRC assistants. See column “users” for who is allowed to book).
  2. or whose schedule can be viewed (all by staff; the calendars that can be viewed/subscribed to by students are indicated by “View” below)

Note that as of Winter 2012, physical items can only be picked up and returned when the CIRCULATION window LRCCOED436 is open which is less often than the LRCAssistant is present at the RECEPTION desk. Please check both calendars (solid color = service available = good ) before booking AND (latebreaking changes) before picking up.

The following table comprises only rooms, hardware and “human resources” of the LRC. The LRC’s physical media and learning materials can be checked out using a different system.

In the table, the column “program” explains which department and study program this resource is available for (the LRC supports LCS, and film studies there in particular, and ELTI), “user” who within the study program is allowed to book the resource (teacher, students, LRC staff, including both assistants and tutors), “resource type” whether the resource is a room/office hour, or a piece of movable equipment,  “address@uncc.edu” which email address to send a meeting request to (shortform because of NINERMAIL length restriction), “display name” which searchable name you can find the email address under in NINERMAIL (includes tutors’s languages, explanation of room, camera and other equipment type), “make and model+manual field” the make and model of equipment items, including a link to the online maniual, if applciable, “calendar” a link to the publically viewable calendar of the resource, “max hours” the maximum duration a resource can be booked for (in hours, or 0 if there is no limit), and the “components” columns contain a parts list  for movable resources.

You can also filter, by clicking on the column header triangles, or enlarge (or hold CTRL and press +), or, if you are friends with the UNCC-LRC, edit.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure, faculty-equipment, film-studies-equipment, Metrics, service-is-library Tags: ,