Archive
Layout of the Language Resource Center (LRC)
The numbers in the layout correspond to the numbers we posted (to facilitate teacher and student orientation and to aid in LRC temp staff troubleshooting) on the computer monitors and also (for IT staff) to the number part of the underlying computer names which can also be displayed in the classroom management systems NetOP School and Sanako Study 1200 on the teacher computer (32).

LRC website migration from WordPress to Drupal
Deepfreeze rebooting the lab computers again during use
- I have been told that Deepfreeze will reboot lab computers (hourly?) only when they are idle (on login screen).
- However, I have observed the unsolicited reboot also when trying to work with these computers.
- Today, I had both lab computers that I was working on with the Sanako , reboot in the middle of my testing, with the 1 minute warning dialogue.

- Will pressing “cancel” prevent this, especially during high-stakes writing and speaking assessments with the Sanako? What if the users misses it (we sometimes deliberately have the screens blocked/blacked out during parts of classes).
Why not streaming audio from teacher to students in the Sanako is a poor workaround
- We lost streaming capabilities with upgrade to Sanako Version 7 – still investigating how we can get them back, for the workaround is not working well: Now class activities fail because of permission issues that we did not have when we still were able to stream.
- Below is the result of an attempt today to play a listening comprehension activity to students for a TOEFL list mock exam with a student that has regular SANAKO permissions, but not the ones to download from this file location (would need to redo the permissions if we keep streaming).

View a path to where you can start troubleshooting Pearson MyLanguageLab Wimba Voice Java
We used to do proctored LRC chapter exams using this textbook online component, but the Wimba Voice student recording tools stopped working, although a possible solution has been proposed with the problem report. This screencast leads to an exercise where more testing (each supported browser will behave differently – this is Chrome) is possible:: ![]()
Proposing for a free Moodle audio recorder: Technical options and faculty needs survey results
- Current popular options for a free Moodle audio recorder:
- Nanogong is a popular, feature-rich and simple recorder that go entangled in the recent java politics and security scares. Since the company has a non-free offering, chances are higher it will get updated to address these security warnings. It seems the long-term outlook for java in the enterprise is excellent, but i cannot judge the long term outlook for java as a client/in-browse solution.
- Poodle which played the 2nd fiddle to Nanogong for most of the time, seems to have caught up to Nanogong based on the above. that it is "server based" – but on theirs, not ours – Poodle has a freemium business model (could be an issue). Does this include the audio compression load? Does this have FERPA implications (and can they be resolved like with Kaltura)?
- Paul Nicholls has a number of flash-based popular audio recorder plugins , where record assignment submission seems to have superseded record assignment type for newer versions of Moodle, and assignment type offers student recording, while Record Audio repository complements this with teacher recording (and the same interface; i am not sure i understand which end user setup is required for repository).
- In the results of faculty survey on learning needs (sum of 0-centered Likert-scale), I find notable
- that teacher recording is considered almost as vital as student recording, and
- that most faculty even would be willing to deal with some complexity for the additional learning features that some of these recorders offer (Nanogong especially).
|
Question_text |
Rank |
|
It is important that my students can record their speech in my Moodle course (without need for separate software and file upload). |
14 |
|
It is important that the setup work that the teacher has to do before being able to assign audio recorder is minimal. |
13 |
|
It is that the teacher can record her voice in Moodle (without need for separate software and file upload), providing oral instead of written cues or feedback. |
11 |
|
Simplicity is more important to me than feature richness (controlling volume, limiting the amount of time a student can record, maximum number of recordings, Recordings can be slowed down or sped up , Peer review of recordings). |
7 |
|
I expect my students to have a microphone connected to or built-in to their home computer. |
5 |
|
It is important that other media than audio can be "recorded" (video (outside of Kaltura), webcam snapshots, whiteboard drawings). |
5 |

