Archive
Phonetic transcription websites
Computerized Language resource centers are supposed to work wonders improving SLA students’ pronunciation: Can’t computers analyze and visualize sound for us?
However, it turned out there seems to be a considerable “impedance mismatch” not only between computers analyzing and understanding the signal, but also between a computer voice graph and the capability of a language learner to process and improve pronunciation on the basis of it.
Voice graphs may have some use for tonal languages. But can you even tell from a voice graph of a letter which sound is being produced?
Enter the traditional phonetic transcription that pre-computerized language learners remember from their paper dictionaries (provided you can teach your language learners phonetic symbol sets like the IPA). Not only are good online dictionaries perfectible capable of displaying phonetic symbol sets on the web (it’s all in Unicode nowadays).
There are now experimental programs that can automate the transcription of text into phonetic symbol sets for e.g. English, Portuguese or Spanish. The more advanced ones also come with text-to-speech.
You can provide your students with audio (or, text-to-speech capability provided) or text models and have them study the phonetic transcription, listen to the audio, and record their model imitation in the LRC. Maybe you will find that practice with recording and a phonetic transcription of the recorded text is more useful for your students’ pronunciation practice than a fancy voice graph.
Making audio cues for model imitation/question-response oral exams with Sanako Study 1200
We can easily record and post-process audio files in the LRC for use with the Sanako Study 1200 oral exam activities.
This can work not only for outcome exams (course- or chapter-wise), but also or formative assessment:
Think converting your textbook-based “drills” into Sanako, like repetitively recapitulating the newly acquired vocabulary item “donut” with different cues:
Example: “What can you do with [student can enter her favorite new vocabulary item for the current class] on [teacher can ask for one social web service after the other that her students likely are familiar with]?”. In response, student has to practice vocabularry item by forming sentences that fit the vocabulary item that fit like in the whiteboard example.
We can add to these recordings the features explained in the slide below.
I’d be happy to play you examples from this slide – and more – in the LRC (not to be published here so that the exam files can be reused).
Mac Mini (Mid 2010) Overview
Just trying to make the basic troubleshooting information more accessible from the field:
Taken from: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Mac_mini_Mid2010_User_Guide.pdf
Using NLP tools to automate production and correction of interactive learning materials for blended learning templates in the Language Resource Center. Presentation Calico 2012, Notre Dame University
View screencast 
here.
How to use the MS-Office Labs Community Clips Screen Capture Tool
- I seem to remember this initiative of having MS-Office users sharing tips and tricks using screencasts has been faded out – but the screen capture tool is still available, and it is not restricted to recording MS-Office applications.
- After download and install (here on Windows 7),
- click the community clips system tray icon to easily start a screen capture:
- Or access the context menu with advanced options:
- including restricting recording to specific windows:
- It does not start up very fast:
- It flashes a frame around the recorded area.
- This is a test…
- The preview starts automatically:
- About the file quality:
- Both the save and the email option
work, only the built-in upload fails, likely due to the demise of MS-Soapbox: 
, but can be easily uploaded to other services, e.g. MS-SkyDrive - Unfortunately, like the Windows Media Encoder clips, it won’t preview without download on SkyDrive – unlike the (newer) MS-PowerPoint 2010-recorded screencasts:
- Still, the MS-Office Labs Community Clips Screen Capture Tool seems to have a friendlier interface than Windows Media Encoder, and is as free.
How in Windows 7 multiple windows can share in one screen, and multiple screens in one window
- The windows management improvement I use most in Windows 7, in order to view multiple windows simultaneously (after introduction of preemptive multi-tasking in the late 80s, the operating system was renamed from MS-DOS to MS-Windows, not to “MS-Window”) is the snap-to-edge which you can access
- either by “throwing” your window (drag the title bar) to the left or right edge of your screen (top or bottom will maximize or minimize your window);
- or if you rather use the keyboard,
+ left/right arrow (+ up/down arrow will maximize or minimize your window). Keep pressing the combination and you will cycle the window position. Note that this works also across dual-screens.
- Also a welcome relief: In Windows 7 dual screen environments, you can drag and drop maximized windows between screens.
- The fact that you could not in Windows XP (where you have to de-maximize the windows first before dragging it) has caused much confusion wherever I introduced multi screen computers for teachers;
- in spite of the fact that you could not drag a maximized window away in the single screen environment that our users are more accustomed to.
- Guess I can now rather focus on upgrading a 11-year old OS to Windows 7 than on coming up with a more memorable explanation. Actually, people are currently raving about the dual-screen management improvements in Windows 8, but I that will take a bit longer to trickle through.
Does Respondus-lockdown–browser block when a user attempts to load a Moodle quiz on 2 different computers?
- We experienced slowness of Moodle during an exam where about 12 students
- load a Moodle quiz into the Respondus lockdown browser (lockdown browser hangs with message "page loading"),
- but also already when logging into Moodle with a regular browser (hangs on login page).
- Turns out large classes used the Moodle quiz function elsewhere on campus which put lots of load on the Moodle servers.
- What can we do on our end to work around this as smoothly as possible?
- First, be patient while Respondus-lockdown–browser displays “Page loading”
- “Refresh” or “Back/forward” are the next resort once “Page loading” attempt has stopped and the page
- states it cannot be loaded
- displays an error about missing CSS component (likely due to incomplete load before timeout)
- says it “can be loaded only in Respondus-lockdown–browser” while you are in Respondus-lockdown–browser (Huh?).
- Keep calm and carry on, i.e. on your current computer.
- In general, trying on additional “fallback” computers is likely to make matters only worse, since even more load is put on the Moodle server system.
- Specifically, however, does Respondus-lockdown–browser block when a user attempts to load a Moodle quiz in Respondus-lockdown–browser on 2 different computers simultaneously? One student kept getting “can be loaded only in Respondus-lockdown–browser” consistently, until closing Respondus-lockdown–browser on this computer. Then the quiz would finally load in Respondus-lockdown–browser where she was logged in on another computer (can this being tracked by the Respondus-lockdown–browser security layer that checks whether a page is loaded within Respondus-lockdown–browser? Why then no more helpful error message, or is this “Security by obscurity”? Data seems inconclusive).
- Additional tips for takers (and authors) of Moodle exams are available.
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