How to add control of student sound/recording volume, sidetone, restart, and more to a Sanako Study 1200 environment, using the Launch Program feature and AutoIt

Home > audience-is-IT-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, service-is-programming, software-old > How to add control of student sound/recording volume, sidetone, restart, and more to a Sanako Study 1200 environment, using the Launch Program feature and AutoIt

2014/08/22 plagwitz Leave a comment Go to comments

UPDATE: A Windows7 (and Vista) version – which also uses a simplified deployment mechanism – is in the works, check back for a new post here.
In refining our Sanako classroom setup, we improved the control, that the Sanako Study 1200 affords the teacher over the student clients in the computerized classroom,
by extending the built-in Launch Program feature
with custom-made executables (realized in AutoIt V3) that can control the volume (here on Windows XP SP3).
This it how it works: Launch any of the programs (what each does is in its name) to any individual/group of students or the entire class in order to do any of these things on the student computers that the Sanako out of the box does not allow you to control, and that I often wish I could do when teaching language classes in a Sanako (or other computerized classroom management system) environment, like
1. controlling the volume of what the students
  1. hears
  2. records
2. turning the student sidetone (= echoing back the student microphone into the student headset) on and off
3. starting/pausing Windows Media Player
4. launching/closing quiz files in MS-Word
5. restarting an entire (misbehaving) student applications
Here is what we have:
Here is how using what we have looks like:
You can now request the download of these language lab enhancing programs, including source code, here.

Thomas' Work Space