audience-is-teachers | Thomas' Work Space

Protected: LRC Clinic designs a remedial package for Germ1202 using MyLanguageLab

2013/09/04 plagwitz Enter your password to view comments.

Categories: audience-is-teachers, clinics, service-is-learning-materials-creation, service-is-tutoring Tags: GERM1202, mygermanlab, mylanguagelab, pilots, treffpunkt-deutsch

LRC Clinic on Video: In PowerPoint, embed from file or web

2013/09/04 plagwitz Leave a comment

Categories: audience-is-teachers, clinics, Glitches&Errors, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, workshops Tags: 64-bit, apple-quicktime, ms-powerpoint, video, youtube.com

Wacom Bamboo Tablet enables Teacher to draw characters for class

2013/09/03 plagwitz Leave a comment

We set up one of the Wacom Tablets which we have used for Hanzi/Kanji/Hanja practice in our student group rooms, at the LRC teacher station. Benefit:
1. drawing characters where typing (including with IMEs) is not a satisfactory option. This includes
  1. IPA
    1. I noticed phonetics teachers making heavy use of the whiteboard and document camera/projector to transcribe.
    2. We tested a Phonetics keyboard, but remembering your keyboard shortcuts has a learning curve;
    3. Besides, the keyboard is currently not user-switchable.
  2. stroke-order demonstration for East-Asian languages.
2. Unlike the document camera, the Wacom could be set up at the teacher station – no need to move to the other end of the room, and works without need for the video switch we consider replacing.
3. To use, you can
  1. e.g. start MS-paint (click start-button, “Run”, type “mspaint”, click “OK”)),
  2. select the “pencil” menu icon to the right of the center here: ,
  3. remove the pen from pouch on the side of the wacom tablet next to the keyboard,
  4. draw digitally with the pen tip (soft),
  5. select the “eraser”menu icon to the right of the center here:
  6. turn the pen and rub to digitally erase (or “select all”and press the “del” key),
  7. finally save the drawing, if you want to reuse it or share it with students (e.g. using the Sanako playlist ).
4. To change settings, go to the control panel (click start-button, “Run”, type “control”, click “OK”and start the Wacom Bamboo Control Panel Applet,
  1. if you do not like the Wacom tablet input panel being set to represent the entire left screen that is visible to students on the projector.
  2. if you are not right-handed,
  3. etc.

Categories: audience-is-teachers, French, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Speaking, Writing Tags: character-input, graphics-tablets, phonetics

Wacom Bamboo Settings for Teacher

2013/09/03 plagwitz Leave a comment

For the dual screen teacher station, it should be the student viewable monitor

Are we complicating things with touch ? We still have a mouse connected.

In tablet, no button allows setting to "popup menu"

Categories: audience-is-teachers, Presenter-Computer, software, Writing Tags: cth-460, graphics-tablets, wcacom-bambo

How to speed up jumping around YouTube videos in class with YouTubeCenter

2013/08/27 plagwitz Leave a comment

Problem: When you use – that is to say: analyze – YouTube video clips in a classroom setting – whether in Film studies or second language acquisition classes –, you will find yourself jumping around a lot in these clips. This can be slow and enter a lot of undesirable little interruptions into your teaching (or learning) flow.
Root cause: Since pedagogical use is not the primary use case for YouTube videos, their download configuration defaults to streaming, which preloads the video only a few seconds ahead of the cursor or playhead.
Solution:

If you want to buffer or preload the entire YouTbue video clip before examining it in your class, you can install a browser add-on called YouTubeCenter.
Here is more on how to install YouTubeCenter.
No configuration necessary, ”Dash Playback” which buffers videos completely locally, is the default setting.

Categories: all-languages, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-learning, Film-studies, service-is-configuring-learning-tools Tags: video, youtube.com

YouTube Center, a power user extension for your video usage in class

2013/08/27 plagwitz Leave a comment

YouTubeCenter comes for a variety of browsers, but note that Firefox seems the only practically supportable browser in our campus computing environment.
To download and install, go to : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/youtube-center/ and click on:
There is not shortage of settings (e.g. preselected is the Dash Playback, useful to speed up jumping around a video, by disabling streaming):

Categories: all-languages, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Film-studies, reviews, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, software-old, web-browsers, websites Tags: video, youtube.com

Fall2013 LRC room booking and equipment circulation improvements

2013/08/22 plagwitz Leave a comment

We had a lot of problems over the last 2 years with students, unlike faculty and staff, not getting automated accepted/declined responses to their resource booking requests. This seems now finally a thing of the past:
In addition to automated responses in cases of policy violations or booking conflicts, we meant to automatically enforce policies that restrict booking of certain resources to certain groups. While groups still need to be maintained manually, this is now possible (and being implemented first for film studies and film club students that have exclusive rights to our film equipment). And here is what it will look like: “You don’t have permission to book this resource”. Don’t hand out equipment to clients who got this response.