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Protected: Windows 7 LRC image: The list

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Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, classroom-management-system, e-infrastructure, e-languages, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, Listening-Stations, LRCRoomCoed434, office-software, Operating-system, Presenter-Computer, recording-software, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, service-is-documenting, service-is-it-managing, small-group-work-spaces, software, Spreadsheets, Student-Computers, translation-software, web-browsers Tags: , , , , ,

Text messaging in class using Sanako Study 1200

2013/04/04 Leave a comment

Students click: image – Tutors click: image. Stop endless spelling out of URL’s or queuing with raised hands during class. Your students will image.

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, e-learning, Presenter-Computer, Student-Computers Tags: ,

How a teacher can organize a student-controlled high-stakes assessment recording session using the Sanako in the LRC

2013/03/12 Leave a comment
  1. How:
    1. An initial central microphone and speaker test (animated step-by-step) is recommended. Clear the session afterwards.
    2. Recording: Have the student operate the Sanako recorder to individually record (like during a self-access assignment)
      1. For starters, teacher can display this narrated individual recordings with the Sanako Student Recorder training screencast, it auto-starts and auto-cycles):
      2. And/or explain:
        1. Red Record Button to record;
        2. Blue Stop button to stop recording
        3. Green Play Button to play their assignment for review (also use the recap button to jump back)
        4. Menu: “File / New”, if they want to redo the assignment.
        5. Button: call/envelope to call the teacher on the teacher station for help (an audio connection between student and teacher should pause  the recorder automatically)
    3. Submitting:
      1. Individually by students:
        1. Menu “File” / “Save” (opt to save as student track mp3), to save locally, once student is happy to submit.
        2. (recommended:) upload the save file to a Moodle single-file upload assignment. Requires the teacher to create a Moodle Single file upload assignment, with optional attached file first.
      2. From the Sanako tutor at the teacher station:
        1. For entire class (If you do not need the flexibility to have students end at different times). TBA
        2. Group-wise (varying (staggered) recording times):  TBA
  2. Pro’s:
    1. Less distraction from language learning by having to operate technology (editing audio rather then practicing L2) and more language-learning-specific features (sidetone, recap) than if using Audacity.
    2. Works with the Sanako Study 1200 teacher stations (e.g. automatic pause of recorder when remote connecting to student during monitoring of recording task).
  3. Con’s:
    1. noise interference with dozens of student speaking in a confined space simultaneously. Nobody wants to return to the language lab station of yore, i.e. in a cubicle. However, a teacher-controlled oral exam (sample video, step-by-step video),
      1. can play a soothing background sound to students over the headphones which insulates them from their neighbors (prevents both distraction and cheating);
      2. there is no room  for distracting unrelated chit-chat;
      3. there is no need for distracting conversation when  students do technical troubleshooting, during highly structured question/response exams.
    2. More user flexibility/control  is achieved by more individual distracting operation of computer technology, which always implies more opportunity for user error. To reduce (not eliminate!) the error ratio:
      1. Students
        1. have to have received the general digital audio lab introduction for students.
        2. have to double-check their recordings for quality before submitting.
      2. Teachers
        1. have to monitor students’ recording progress closely
          1. which the Sanako Study 1200 teacher station (link cannot replace hands-on training) greatly facilitates (provided Students use  the Sanako Student Recorder, as described above).
          2. however, even with a classroom management system like Sanako Study 1200, it is impossible to completely monitor a class size of students operating computers. Therefore teachers
        2. have to check the validity of submissions before students leave.
          1. If you use submission through Moodle, here are 2 tips how to do this quicker:
            1. how to quickly download their Moodle file submissions
          2. Whether you use submission through Moodle or collection through Sanako tutor:
            1. view end of this video for how to quickly check validity of all file submissions in a folder using Audacity
          3. are advised to have a make-up assessment plan not only for those students missing the exam, but also for those that miss to complete the computerized multimedia assessment correctly.
Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, documentation, lms, multimedia-recording, Presenter-Computer, step-by-step-guides, Student-Computers, training Tags: , , ,

How a teacher can adapt a Sanako teacher-controlled class recording activity for individual student recordings

2013/03/12 Leave a comment
  1. Pedagogical need:
    1. A teacher wants her students to record a presentation,
    2. but allow the students to move around freely in their recording afterwards, when evaluating it, and submit the best out of 3 tries:
  2. Technical implementation:
    1. Using Sanako activity:model imitation of differing for multiple groups
      1. offers maximum control, least flexibility: students have to speak their presentation linearly
      2. if you anticipate presentations of considerably different lengths
        1. first try asking your students – might be useful to them anyway to realize if theirs turns out to be much shorter than others,
        2. if students are unsure about the length of their presentation,
          1. conduct the first recording with the entire class and
          2. have students note what time their recorder time counter is at when they finish, and send you the time as text via the button:envelope
          3. group your students (grouping step-by-step) into Sessions A-F by incrementing  time according to what the student icon bubble shows
        3. then differentiate class into as many groups as necessary (if <= the 6 “sessions”A-F  Sanako Study 1200 offers) end the recording at a different time for each group
      3. for each group (one or more up to 6),
        1. choose from dropdown activity:  model imitation recording
          1. and from dropdown: source: none) with more than one group at a time,
          2. and (optionally) for not more than one group at a time (suggest choosing the biggest group for that) from (dropdown: source: file )  the  background noise to play
        2. and after each group’s allocated time (+ buffer) is up,
        3. press button:end to end the recording
        4. after collection of the recordings from students is finished, you can
        5. press button:replay image, to let each student listen to her recording (linearly, without control), and
        6. press button:free image, to let  students freely move back and forth on the timeline)
        7. eventually, press button: clear, to be ready:
      4. for tries 2 and 3: repeat above steps.
    2. using Sanako activity: self access:
      1. provides
        1. the teacher some  control (none over this turning into more of an editing than coherent language practice exercise),
        2. and students more flexibility (hence requiring prior recording training for students);
      2. students individually
        1. record
        2. move around freely in the file
        3. replay
        4. record over prior footage and/or start completely over  (menu: File / new)
        5. press button:envelope to text message the teacher that they are finished and want their (final )  recording to be collected by the teacher
      3. teacher
        1. moves signaling students into a group  (grouping step-by-step) that is
          1. dedicated for collecting recordings (TBA:does this not empty their buffer?)
          2. and button:pc control: locked (= no further or accidental changes)
        2. once an appropriate  (compromise between finished students wanting to leave and teacher not having to collect each recording individually) number of students have been added to this group, presses
          1. button: end to collect and
          2. button: clear session to clear the button
        3. assesses the recordings in the folder that opens with audacity;
          1. in case of problems, moves students  back to the group dedicated to recording
          2. else lets students leave
Categories: Arabic, assessments, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, multimedia-recording, Polish, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, service-is-assessing, Spanish, Speaking, step-by-step-guides, Student-Computers, Swahili, Yoruba Tags: ,

How a teacher can show a model student screen to other student computers in Sanako Study 1200–the ultimate training summary…

2013/02/18 Leave a comment

…using animated .gifs. Slower? Compact: 0.25sec,0.5sec, 0.75sec, 1sec, 1.5sec, 2sec, 3sec, 4sec, 5sec, 6sec, 7sec, 8sec, 9sec, 10sec. Or including unmarked frames: 0.25sec, 0.5sec, 0.75sec, 1sec, 1.5sec, 2sec, 3sec, 4sec, 5sec, 6sec, 7sec, 8sec, 9sec, 10sec. 1sec

Categories: animated-GIFs, audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, digital-audio-lab, documentation, Presenter-Computer, Student-Computers Tags: ,

If you cannot log into Windows because of accessibility dialogues offering you help

2013/01/23 Leave a comment

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  1.  Symptom: You cannot log in since accessibility tool dialogues (like above) come up when typing your password
  2. Workaround: Restart the computer (and make sure you have no item sitting on the keyboard while doing so, usual suspects: textbooks, bags). If you do not want to restart, but fix it immediately, you can read more about Windows XP accessibility features and keyboard shortcuts here.
  3. Root cause: You may have activated Windows accessibility features by erroneously depressing for a long time or repeatedly pressing a  modifier key while the LRC computer was on the welcome screen.  You may not run into this behavior from your personal computer (or read here how to disable Windows  7 Sticky and Filter Keys), but the LRC needs to be ADA compliant. Think of it as another LRC language tool  that sometimes may get into your way temporarily if you do not study the language, but that you would not want to miss for the language you do study.
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, e-infrastructure, Listening-Stations, Presenter-Computer, Reception-desk, Student-Computers Tags:

New keyboard shortcuts for diacritics on LRC Teacher PC

2013/01/23 Leave a comment
  1. The US international keyboard layout that has come with MS-Windows for many years (though – except in the LRC – not set as default, you need to enable it in the control panel) greatly facilitates typing of characters for most languages that use Roman script with common diacritical marks, but does not cover Pinyin and similar diacritical marks.
  2. Carly from Carleton, as avid a language teacher as a technologist,  had the great idea to extend Microsoft’s US-international keyboard so as to include all the Pinyin tone marks (and other accents useful for linguists). Here is the upshot, extracted  from her  instructions, but excluding  what (either shortcut or (use of common accents within Pinyin is now covered also below) purpose) has not changed from the shortcuts of the non-extended US-international keyboard  that used to be the default in the LRC:
  3. What you want Which keys you press (before comma  is “dead” key = no result until after next key) Example

    acute accent, pinyin 2nd tone

    ‘(=apostrophe), vowel

    á é í ó ú

    grave accent, pinyin 4th tone

    `(=grave), vowel

    à è ì ò ù

    macron accent, pinyin 1st tone

    hyphen, vowel

    ā ē ī ō ū

    pinyin 3rd tone

    %(=shift+5), vowel

    e.g. ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ

    ü with pinyin tones

    Accent, double-quote

    e.g. ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ

    letter with dot below

    ; (=shift+period), letter

    e.g.clip_image001

    letter with double acute

    : (=shift+;) , o or u

    ő, ű, Ő, Ű
  4. We are offering the extended US-international keyboard this as an optional keyboard on the teacher and student PCs with Windows 7.
    1. To select the new keyboard layout, use the language toolbar, click on 2nd option:
    2. image
    3. To explore the new keyboard layout use the Windows On-screen keyboard which will let you peek ahead after your pressed a dead key.
    4. To bypass a special dead key (= get the normal behavior of the key), press SPACE after it.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-languages, English, French, German, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, Italian, Operating-system, Polish, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, service-is-applying-learning-tools, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, Spanish, Student-Computers, Swahili, Writing, Yoruba Tags: , , , ,

The LRC writing input methods (“keyboards”) are not configured right

2012/12/14 Leave a comment
  1. clip_image001
  2. In intl.cpl, we do not want keyboards installed for western and central-European (= characters a-z, merely altered by diacritics) languages, including US. We type these languages, including US-English, with the us-international keyboard extended 2.1, which has to be set as default, and that US-English extended 2.1gets checked as the keyboard for all western languages ("show more"). The regular US keyboard gets removed/made invisible to the user, and with any reasonably recent version of MS Sysprep tools, that is no problem anymore.
  3. For non-Western languages, the built-in windows keyboards should be "checked", and also the alternate input that we had to download and install methods need to be "checked" under their languages: MS Maren, Google input methods nee to be enabled (checked): e.g. Farsi is not enabled (checked).
Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, Glitches&Errors, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, Student-Computers, Writing Tags: