Student-Computers | Thomas' Work Space

Japanese Language Tools (Proofing, dictionary, furigana) in the LRC MS-Office 2010 installation

2013/09/30 plagwitz Leave a comment

Even if not showing in MS-Word’s Language selector),

Even though there is no Japanese Thesaurus:
There are these tools:

In the Research pane, "English Assistance: Japanese" (in the ribbon / "Review" tab, Proofing section, press the , then ALT-Click a character to start a lookup:
a Japanese Consistency Checker:
Furigana:

To enable:
Result (in view / Web layout):
Incidentally, my blog has not quite made it into the TOP 5 of MSW-Office help content:

In addition, for Office, but also beyond, there are the tools of the MS-Office Input method editor (which include dictionary help when you write):

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Dictionaries, e-languages, Japanese, Listening-Stations, LRCRoomCoed434, office-software, Presenter-Computer, Reading, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, small-group-work-spaces, Student-Computers, Writing Tags: dictionaries, furigana, proofing-tools

Creating site-specifically useful learning content for the Sanako Study 1200 vocabulary testing

2013/09/06 plagwitz Leave a comment

The usefulness of the Sanako Study 1200 new (from ver 6) vocabulary test activity hinges on the availability of site-specific vocabulary lists.
Sanako UK
1. seems aware of this and publishes vocabulary collections for textbooks and assessments commonly used in UK secondary education.
2. Sanako favors using the built-in format and saving it on the network share that is required for the Sanako study 1200.
3. Vocabulary tests are organized and can be discovered and browsed by file name only.
TBA: How could something similar be done in a US HE context? One would need:
1. establish which textbooks are (and will remain) in use?
2. are they e-books or would the material need digitization?
3. is the chapter vocabulary easily accessible as a list? Appendix glossaries encompass usually much more than the vocabulary required to study, so testing on these would quickly become frustrating
4. how best to reformat the materials (from turning into a table to handling linguistic metadata) for easy use with the Sanako vocabulary test?
5. how best to publish the material?
  1. to make it manageable for the updaters: crowdsourcing? copyright issuew?
  2. to make it easily selectable for the teacher: filter by integrated linguistic and course metadata?
6. Last not least: How to do all this economically? Taking into consideration teacher preference, enrollment, preexisting materials…?
  1. cost lowered if tabular lists of vocabulary already exists
  2. benefit is lowered if online flash card applications already exist.

Categories: audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, Presenter-Computer, projects, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Student-Computers, Vocabulary Tags: sanako-study-1200, vocabulary-test

First steps with the Sanako Study 1200 vocabulary test activity

2013/09/06 plagwitz Leave a comment

Click to watch an example below of the new (in version 6, we are now on 7) activity:”Vocabulary Test” which allows you to administer during a face-top-face-class just exactly what its name says –
with these benefits:
1. needing no paper,
2. digital contents
  1. “can” and reuse past tests with ease
  2. TBA: can you swap target and source language?
3. blending automated and teacher feedback:
  1. the example I give below is based on what the teacher gave me: single words and very short idiomatic expression.
  2. You can use longer phrases (I prefer teaching and studying vocabulary in context), but then it become increasingly unlikely that the automated feedback is accurate (The automated feedback is limited to exact, up to case-insensitive string matching – now distance metrics).
  3. You can override the automated feedback before sending the results back to the student. This is somewhat practical, since the submitting is fast and not all students will finish at the same time, and if you provided students with the follow up activity after submission, The teacher overriding the feedback gets unpractical in large classes, so it is recommended restricting the test to short source/target language pairs. Also be clear about or minimize punctuation and, if required, the format of other metalinguistic information (gender, plural forms etc).
Issues:
1. not communicative, how can this be used or fitted in with other activities to make best use of a fully computerized face-to-face teaching environment?
2. simplistic autocorrecting algorithm (case-insensitive, otherwise exact, right or wrong, my way or the highway” string matching)
3. no tracking, no memory, personalization only via the other built-in Sanako personalization features (groups – to be left to the teacher to handle)
4. no learning content – at least no vocabulary learning materials usable out of the box for us (TBA).

Categories: audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, Learning-logs, Presenter-Computer, Screencasts, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, Student-Computers, Vocabulary Tags: sanako-study-1200, vocabulary-test

Protected: Many input languages, keyboards and IMEs requested are not accessible to most LRC users

2013/08/28 plagwitz Enter your password to view comments.

Categories: all-languages, audience-is-IT-staff, e-languages, Glitches&Errors, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, Presenter-Computer, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, Student-Computers, Writing Tags: character-input, image2013, intl.cpl, sysprep

Protected: Sanako “Student audio is not available”…

2013/08/26 plagwitz Enter your password to view comments.

Categories: digital-audio-lab, Glitches&Errors, Presenter-Computer, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging, Student-Computers Tags: image2013, sanako-study-1200, student.exe

Sanako recording during pairing won’t work

2013/08/26 plagwitz Leave a comment

Now: Records one party only – bad if you have to find this out only after an exam… You can see this in the graph here – low audio is partner speaking, and not audible: and hear it yourself on campus here: "S:\coas\lcs\lrc\sanako\student\8-7-2013_2-35-18_PM ELTI level 2 final pair\Group A5 (falothma, maldubai)_sent.MP3"
Then (example of how it is supposed to sound): "S:\COAS\LCS\LRC\sanako\student\2013-02-27 14_13-pair-no-names\Group B4 (LXCOED434-PC36, LXCOED434-PC17)_sent.MP3":
workaround: Instead of being able to default to mp3 format, as we used to, the teacher now has to save the audio of pairing activites in a Sanako proprietary format (MIFF) and, including the students, play it back with the Sanako prpoprietary player. If the teacher does not remember to change the format from the default MP3 to MIFF for pairing exercise recordings, the teacher (and students) will lose the assessment materials of half the class (and likely not find this out until when the files get opened for grading).

Categories: digital-audio-lab, Glitches&Errors, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging, Student-Computers Tags: image2013, oral-exams, pairing, sanako-study-1200, student.exe

Pearson mygermanlab "AUDIO INIT FAILED" for Blackboard voice/Wimba setup wizard – a firewall issue?

2013/08/26 plagwitz Leave a comment

In Firefox, Chrome, IE8 on Win 7 (64bit) …

No other missing requirement in browser tuneup but QuickTime (which is said to be not required for PC)… And here is the likely solution from the Pearson website:

“Audio Init Failed” or “Error: Communication Error”

This error occurs because the computer’s security prevents the Wimba plug-in from sending data to our servers. Please take the steps described below to be sure that communication between your computer and our servers is always allowed.

Please configure the security program or firewall on your computer to allow the file shown below (audioproxy.exe) to connect to the internet. (If you do not know how to make this change, please contact technical support for the security program you are using.)

Windows XP or 2000
C:\Documents and Settings\[Windows Username]\Application Data\HorizonWimba\JSecureDoor\audioproxy_X.Y.Z\data\audioproxy.exe

Windows Vista
C:\Users\[Windows Username]\AppData\Local\HorizonWimba\JSecureDoor\audioproxy_X.Y.Z\data\audioproxy.exe

Java applets or Java Script also must be allowed by personal firewall or internet security software. Some firewalls have settings to block Java applets and Java Scripting, which will prevent Wimba Voice applets from loading. You may need to contact technical support for that firewall or security program for assistance configuring that program to allow Java applets and Java Script.

Your browser must also allow Java applets and Java Scripting.

Internet Explorer

Open Internet Explorer and click Tools > Internet Options

From the Internet Options window, select the Advanced tab

Scroll down the list to Java(Sun) heading and make sure the box below it is checked
Note: If you do not see Java(Sun), go Sun’s Java website at www.java.com and click Free Java Download.
Scroll down the list to the Security heading and make sure the box beside Allow active content to run in files on My Computer is checked
Click OK

Pasted from <http://247pearsoned.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7356/~/blackboard-voice-(wimba-voice)%3A-error-messages>

More info from the Pearson troubleshooting documentation: