Archive

Archive for 2011

How to stay up to date by receiving RSS like email newsletters in MS-Outlook

2011/11/21 Leave a comment
  1. Why subscribe?
    1. RSS is a great way to get your information both fast and filtered.
    2. For advanced filtering of RSS feeds, try Yahoo Pipes.
    3. However, WordPress makes this even easier by allowing for a wealth of atomic searching and filtering options. Choosing the right template (and content strategy), if you click on any of the linked items in either the category list or tag cloud on WordPress,
    4. wordpress-category-listwordpress-tag-cloud
    5. the resulting page will include an RSS link wordpress-rss-link, or simply add “/feed” to the URL of your category, tag or even search result page, to get a feed  that you can subscribe to.
  2. How to subscribe?
    1. MS-Outlookmakes subscribing to RSS more convenient since you do not need to go to a separate application like an RSS-Reader. Read your RSS with your email, think of the RSS feed as an email list, but personalized to your interests.
      1. You can subscribe to the “RSS feed” link like so: outlook how to subscribe to an rrs feed
      2. For historical reasons, I still use Google Reader, but I rely on Outlook’s advanced automated content download (including full text posts and multimedia attachments) and well-understood archiving, search and export features to not miss podcasts which I want to collect for potential use as teaching content: rss-outlook-feed When Outlook fails, as with some RSS formats, you can still try and resort to the Internet Explorer Feed store: rss-internet-explorer-feed
    2. If you use OWA: you can read feeds, but not add them through the OWA interface. If you are staff, you can still add them in Outlook first. If you are a student and restricted to NINERMAIL, you need to use a different feed reader. I recommend the free web-based Google Reader.
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, documentation, e-infrastructure Tags: , , , ,

Memrise: Another flashcard site for vocabulary learning

2011/11/21 Leave a comment
  1. Yet another attempt to tackle foreign language vocabulary learning with a crowd-sourced flashcard site: What is different this time, other than the layout?
  2. The site works with a seed/greenhouse/garden metaphor for spaced repetition (how intelligent is the underlying algorithm for that?) and processing/short/long term memorymemrise-seed
  3. You can have the word pronounced (is this Text-to-speech? does not sound like it. So will it scale?) The focus on non-target language “ponies” seems not fruitful. Actual target language context should be under “Samples”, but seems widely missing. Communicative motivation also. Multiple meanings and grammatical information seem to be missing from the lemmata. .single-word
  5.  memrise-emmnotic
  6. Looks like a long list of flashcard lists, but note that the number of included words is descending quickly, hardly one of the many textbooks
  7. German flashcards list - Memrise
  8. The site allows you to download the word lists as Excel files: download-wordlist-xls
Categories: all-languages, e-languages, Vocabulary, websites Tags:

Calendaring: How to view all your Moodle course assignments in Ninermail, OWA or MS-Outlook – Short version

2011/11/21 2 comments
  1. In Moodle:
    1. With Firefox (3.6 here), go to Moodle Calendar: https://moodle.uncc.edu/calendar/view.php?view=upcoming&course=1 
    2. Right-Click on iCal and choose “Copy Shortcut”: moodle-calendar-firefox
  2. In Ninermail/OWA: click “Calendar”, right-click “My calendars” , click “Add calendar’, click radio-button “From internet”, paste URL you put in clipboard into textbox, click button “OK”, right-click calendar added, click “rename” and call it “Moodle” moodle-calendar-OWA-subscribing renaming
  3. Alternatively, in Outlook Desktop: go to “calendars”, right-click “shared calendars” , click “add calendar’, click “from internet”, paste URL you put in clipboard into textbox, click button “OK”, right-click calendar added, click “rename” and call it “Moodle”moodle-calendar-outlook-2010-subscribing1
  4. Want a longer explanation?
Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, documentation, lms Tags: , , ,

How to run Windows Media Center during a Remote Assistance Session

2011/11/20 Leave a comment
  1. The /gdi switch for Windows Media Center allows for operating Windows Media Center full screen during
    1. Windows Live Messenger Remote Assistance sessions if you have to help a relative over the internet.
    2. Should also work in MSTSC Remote Desktop sessions if you manage media with Windows Media Center on your work network.
  2. You can combine the above switch e.g. with the program guide shortcut to go directly there: /homepage:VideoGuide.xml /PushStartPage:True
  3. Put the following in the “Target” field of your shortcut that you start on the remote computer (running Windows7 32-but here) during your remote assistance session:
  4. %windir%\ehome\ehshell.exe /nostartupanimation /gdi /homepage:VideoGuide.xml /PushStartPage

     

  5. Voilà, or rather: “Dem Inschenör ist nichts zu schwör”.
  6. wmc-gdi-remote-assistance1
Categories: documentation, e-infrastructure, Media Tags: , , , , ,

How to use the online Spanish pronunciation help to generate phonetic alphabet transcriptions and text-to-speech

2011/11/18 Leave a comment
  1. Go to http://showroom.daedalus.es/es/tecnologias-de-la-lengua/phonetictrans/phonetictrans.php, enter your text, select your phonetic symbol set:
  2. spanish-text2phonetic-alphabet-daedalus
  3. Unlike with the Portuguese help, there is no text-to-speech option here.
Categories: Advanced, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, e-languages, Intermediate, learning-materials, Spanish, Speaking, websites Tags: , ,

Troubleshooting the wireless headsets in the TV viewing area

2011/11/18 Leave a comment
  1. For lack of small group work areas, the 3 headsets help sharing the LRCROOMCOED433. They amplify the sound for the TV viewing audience, allowing to turn the TV volume down so as not to disturb other users in the shared area.
  2. No sound?
    1. headsets turned on?
    2. headset volume turned up?
    3. headsets batteries dead?
    4. transmitter turned on?
  3. Static noise on headsets?
    1. headsets batteries weak?
    2. no line of sight to transmitter?
  4. Other things you can try:
      1. a different headset. We have 3.
      2. a different transmitter. We have 2.
  5. An image says more than 1000 words:
    1. CIMG0005 
    2. CIMG0004
    3. unisar-tv777-03
    4. unisar-tv777-05
    5. unisar-tv777-04unisar-tv777-01
    6. unisar-tv777-02
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, documentation, e-infrastructure, hardware, headphones, Listening, TV-viewing-area Tags: ,

Things to check when your Study1200 cannot record students anymore

2011/11/16 Leave a comment
  1. Symptom: All your exam recordings fail to collect:CIMG0090
  2. Cause:  Student do not have write permissions to the collect folder anymore, a prerequisite for the Sanako Study1200: CIMG0087
  3. Resolution: Have write permissions reinstituted?
Categories: e-infrastructure Tags:

Web-based romanized letters to Cyrillic transliteration tool.

2011/11/16 Leave a comment
  1. Our Russian tutor uses this transliteration tool HTTP://TRANSLIT.RU which allows for phonetic input on a keyboard that does not have Cyrillic letters and seems popular with native speakers of languages written in Cyrillic.
  2. As so often, that implies: not designed for language learners. The explanation attests to that: translit_info
Categories: Advanced, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, Intermediate, Russian, websites, Writing Tags: ,