Archive

Archive for November, 2012

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

  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".

How to view LRC hours&events ….

My iMac hard drive qualifies for the Apple recall

image

Yay! (I guess…?)

MS Windows Media Encoder, your free audio and video encoding utility

  1. Benefits
    1. Free
    2. Can cut and convert
      1. video
        1. Makes screencasts also.
        2. can capture video
      2. audio
        1. including pause removal.
    3. can stream
  2. Limitation: Outputs only to MS media formats (WMA, WMV) (
  3. Download here. There is also a 64-bit version.
    1. Officially supported on
    2. Windows 2000 and XP. I use it on Vista and Windows 7 (both 64-bit) also (for audio; no guarantees).
    3. f I remember correctly, Windows Media Encoder has a built-in limit to support only up to 4 CPU cores, you may have to limit CPU usage if you run on more advanced hardware platforms).
  4. a bit of config:
    1. For good quality video and audio, put a  prx file like this in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Media Components".
    2. Put a wme file like this anywhere and start by double clicking the file, then press green “Record” button.

Here are some direct links to live international TV

Arabic

Al-Jazeera

Chinese

CCTV-1

Dutch

RTV N-H (variety)

Finnish

Channel 4 (variety)

French

France 24 (news)

French

TV5 (news)

German

NDR (variety),

(new & untested) ARD live stream, or (likely more useful)ARD Mediathek

Italian

RAI (news)

Italian

TVA Vicenza (variety)

Japanese

Anime cartoons

Japanese

NC KYO (variety)

Korean

Korean — KTV

Norwegian

TV Haugaland (news)

Portuguese

Brazil — Programa do Jô

Russian

Russia — Vesti (News)

Spanish (Spain)

Spain — RTVE (news)

Spanish (Spain)

Spain — Telemadrid (news)

Spanish (Latin America)

Telesur (news)

Swedish

Där ingen skulle tro att någon kunde bo (Survivalist)

You can probably tell from the language selection where this list is from Smile: Many thanks, University of Minnesota Language Center, I only had to remove your scheduling information which we have no use for…

Categories: audience-is-students, Listening, Media Tags: ,

How to type accented characters with US International keyboard – the ultimate training summary….

…using animated GIFs. Slower? Click 025sec,0.5sec, 0.75sec, 1sec, 1.5sec, 2sec, 3sec, 4sec, 5sec, 6sec, 7sec, 8sec, 9sec, 10sec.

us-international.

Or how do you like this one? us-international.

How teachers restrict students to allowed web pages with Sanako Study 1200 web browsing (strict) activity–the ultimate training summary

…using animated GIFs. Load the speed of your choosing (or several, use CTRL-Click to open links in a new tab) into the left screen of the teacher station before administering an oral exam, with the window active, press F5 in your web browser to restart the animation from the beginning:0.50sec,0.75sec,1sec,2sec,3sec,4sec,5sec,6sec,7sec,8sec,9sec,10sec

.

Condensed (instructions only) for recap: 100cs, 200cs, 300cs, 400cs, 500cs, 600cs, 700cs, 800cs, 900cs, 1000cs. And if you need to pause:

LRC teacher screen new and improved

image

The above screenshot (taken from a screencast) does not do the new screen justice: Teachers can actually read all the ongoing student work, and, with two clicks, intervene surgically, where necessary.

On the right screen of the teacher PC in the main LRC classroom, we went from WXGA to HD1080, gaining almost 60% more screen real estate (=(1920*1080)/(1280*1024)), a crucial improvement for displaying all the information the Sanako Study 1200 provides the teacher with.

Or in more graphical terms (thanks to Wikipedia), we went from 2nd lower left to 3rd upper right:

1280px-Vector_Video_Standards5_svg

To fit the actual classroom layout into the display, we would however need the bottom lower right resolution (WQXGA). We still have to split the classroom you see into 2 halves and tilt those by 90 degrees clockwise to fit them onto the right teacher screen.

Since our left screen is still the original 1024*768 (and will be until not only the screen, but the switch and projector get upgraded), you have to work (= move your mouse pointer) around the “wall” formed by the black block in the lower right of this screenshot.

image