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Archive for the ‘audience-is-teachers’ Category

How to set text-to-speech to a different language on LRC Windows XP computers

2013/01/29 Leave a comment

set-deskbot-text-to-speech-language-to-portuguese

Example for Portuguese – choose your own language instead.

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Screenshots, Speaking Tags: ,

How to copy your tried and true Moodle course into the new term/sections

2013/01/24 Leave a comment

Just another shout-out for some useful documentation from the CTL: Instructions on how to copy your Moodle course: Text | Video. Plus a recommendation: stop being hard on yourself and refrain from manually adding content to individual sections of the same course, instead, use the copy (import) feature at term start in each section. Requires preparing your Moodle course when you do not teach and grade – which seems preferable and for which the LRC aims to offer Learning materials Clinics.

Categories: announcements, audience-is-teachers, clinics, e-learning, learning-materials, lms, training 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: , , , ,

How teachers can conduct a 1-on-1 student oral assessment in their office using Sanako Lite Recorder

2013/01/22 Leave a comment
  1. If you need to conduct an OPI or other one-on-one oral exam instead of class-size oral exams we offer in the LRC,
    1. we have conducted 1-on-1 speaking assessments using the Sanako headsets and Student Recorder in the LRC.
    2. However, since this setting does not offer much privacy (and also because it blocks  the LRC classroom ), we would recommend conducting such exams in faculty offices. For this scenario, teachers can use:
      1. one of the headsets that can now be checked out by faculty, and in working condition,
      2. the Sanako LITE or standalone recorder – which could not be rolled out by IT on all teacher computers, but I programmed a workaround installer – and is friendlier (for recording and listening/grading) than Audacity. Sanako recently provided a useful guide for one-on-one examinations with the Study Lite recorder here (you do not need a desktop microphone like shown here, it is sufficient to position the headphone appropriately on the desk instead).
Categories: announcements, Arabic, assessments, audience-is-teachers, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Listening, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, service-is-applying-learning-tools, Spanish, Speaking Tags: ,

How to record and submit a photo presentation assignment

2013/01/22 Leave a comment

A step-by-step explanation how Moodle/PowerPoint allow

  1. a student
    1. to create a photo album from their photos (remind them that they need to be able to download their photos onto the LRC computers), we will load this from their computers analogous to this: How to create a visual cue exam file using Insert Photo album in PowerPoint
    2. to narrate the photoalbum
      1. In the LRC with 2007: https://thomasplagwitz.com/2013/01/22/how-students-can-record-their-picture-or-photo-presentations-with-powerpoint-2007/
      2. or if they use 2010 outside of the LRC, https://thomasplagwitz.com/2013/01/17/recording-student-picture-presentations-with-powerpoint/
    3. To refine their presentation:
      1. Do not edit your audio – not  good language learning  pedagogy.
      2. Rather redo your entire presentation, paying extra attention to the weaknesses you observed when reflecting on your last recorded attempt . You will learn more foreign language this way than if you learn how to edit digital audio. Before you re-record your narration, clear the existing narration from PowerPoint, or save into a new file to be able to compare the Before/After.
    4. to submit: How a student takes a Moodle Single file upload assignment.
  2. a teacher
    1. to prepare:How a teacher creates a Moodle Single file upload assignment, with optional attached file
    2. to grade (reviewHow a teacher grades a Moodle Single file upload assignment):
      1. Save the Moodle file submission assignment
      2. Double-click the PPSX  file to play the file in PowerPoint.
      3. Use the Moodle grade book to grade and provide other feedback.
Categories: Arabic, assignments, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, documentation, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, office-software, Polish, Portuguese, recording-software, Russian, service-is-applying-learning-tools, Spanish, Speaking, step-by-step-guides, Swahili, Yoruba Tags: , , , , ,

How students can record their picture or photo presentations with PowerPoint 2007

2013/01/22 Leave a comment

  ppt ppt-save-as-show

  1. On the ribbon:slideshow, click “record narration”,
  2. click “Change quality”,
  3. change the quality to 16Kbit from the default of 8kbit (which caused audio break-ups when I tested),
  4. click OK and present, using the headphones,
  5. then Save As / Show.
  6. You can easily use the saved  file to e.g. upload the assignment to your teacher’s  Moodle / File Upload Assignment.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, multimedia-recording, office-software Tags: ,

LRC learning resources Moodle metacourses: Our list

2013/01/18 1 comment

UPDATE: The LRC Metacourses are being rolled over to MOODLE2. Metacourses having only an OldID are currently still unavailable in Moodle2. And the student enrollment needs to be updated manually until the end of add/drop. On the upside, teachers do not need to make course available to students anymore. The LRC can do this (Metacourses for languages saying #Ref are waiting to be rolled over, tell me if you need them)..

The following LRC Moodle metacourses for teaching materials are available to LCS and ELTI  (including LRC-Resource  with training materials for using language learning technology in and outside of the LRC, as well as for independent study languages).

The naming scheme follows the course abbreviations taught in the departments that the LRC supports:

These courses appear in the Training branch of the Moodle-courses tree-menu on the left (for all study programs you teach in):

moodle-tree-resource-courses_thumb

The metacourse for a language (or field of study)  is accessible to all students studying this language during the term of their study.

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure, English, erepository, Farsi, French, German, Greek (ancient), Greek (modern), Italian, Japanese, Latin, learning-materials, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Translation Tags: , , , ,

LRC online language learning materials: the list

2013/01/17 2 comments

Below you can find a scrollable and searchable list of LRC learning materials in Moodle metacourses  (of which you can find a standalone list here).

You can filter this LRC Excel Web App using the column header dropdowns. You can click on the language in the leftmost column to go to your language’s metacourses and in its folders easily locate the resources in the right columns.

Languages that do not have their dedicated metacourse are LCTL/independent study and can be found in the LRC metacourse.

Note that the material you are looking for are not necessarily in this list, as there are other containers for language learning materials used on campus, including individual Moodle courses, textbook publisher applications, often based on Quia, like for Hybrid 1st-year Spanish, and the library ereserves.

Larger view here. UNCC-LRC Editors click here.

 

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, English, erepository, Farsi, French, German, Italian, Japanese, learning-materials, Mandarin, Metrics, Portuguese, Russian, Spreadsheets, Yoruba Tags: , , ,