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Protected: CTL’s Mahara Workshop in the LRC

2013/12/05 Enter your password to view comments.

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Another way to upload many files into Moodle 2

  1. Last time we started from “Add folder” to get to the handy drag-and-drop file upload control in Moodle 2.
  2. This time we do not want to create a new folder, but work within an existing folder (better for categorizing lots of files).
  3. Browse into the folder and click edit
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  5. click create folder
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  7. add name and click create
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  9. click to open folder
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  11. drag/drop files as zip in folder
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  13. oops, check the upper right warning :
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  15. Split your files into smaller segments
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  17. And be patient, there is no visual indicator of progress, or any action, after the drop), or else you get duplicates:
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  19. Just delete duplicates you might have created:
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  22. click on each zip file and choose “unzip”:
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  26. Delete the zip files (not needed anymore)
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  28. Finally, click “save changes”
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  30. Note, by working within a folder, you cannot link directly to the new folder you created.  It should however be easy enough to navigate to it if you send the link to the root folder, here “Interaction”.
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How teachers can collect any file from students’ computers with Sanako Study 1200 homework–the ultimate training…

…using animated .gifs. Different speed? 0.25sec,0.5sec, 0.75sec, 1sec, , 1.5sec, 2sec, 3sec, 4sec, 5sec, 6sec, 7sec, 8sec, 9sec, 10sec. 1.5sec

How to save your MS-Office files on SkyDrive

  1. Having to work on important documents from different locations – including office, classroom, and home – and getting tired of  lugging thumb drives around (or worried about losing or inadvertently destroying them)?
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  3. Use your university email and your password from last June (this one does not get force-updated every 90 days any more, you can manage it yourself).
  4. Upload your important files: image
  5. Drag and drop, e.g. a PowerPoint file: image
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  7. Click the file  – e.g. a Word file – to view it in your web browser.
  8. To edit the file , while viewing, click top menu: “Edit document”. Choose between  editing it in the browser (has still some  – ever fewer – limitations for complex documents) image
  9. You will have to log in again (on a non-shared computer I prefer to choose to be “signed in automatically”). image
  10. You have to click “Enable Editing” again, but then you are in your familiar MS-Word environment.
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  12. No need to re-upload the file: Save and close your file, when you open it again in the web browser, it got synched automatically: image
  13. To keep an additional local file backup, use the free MS-SkyDrive App which sets up a local copy of your MS-SkyDrive cloud storage – useful when you have to work offline (e.g. I used to travel every weekend on a plane, but needed to make good use of my travel time).
  14. Troubleshooting: If you run into problems, the first thing to try usually is a different web browser.

Faculty Workshop Fall 2013: Creating Mahara language learner portfolio pieces in the digital audio lab

    1. Thanks to all who came out to this workshop.
      1. You have already been emailed your portfolio pieces, like your students will be, by the LangLabEmailer.
      2. Converting your recordings to a file for Question/Response exams will take a little longer, let me know if/when you would like to use it.
    2. In addition, here are the workshop files:
      1. my slide handout as PDF with clickable links (includes “Can do”- Statements aligned with the Common European Reference Framework for language proficiency levels, which can help operationalizing your ePortfolio strategy)
      2. my slide deck embedded:
      3. my slide deck as a downloadable PowerPoint show: you can click through the animations at your own speed, view the animated GIFs, and listen (or jump over!) to my full presentation narration (both as of yet not supported in PowerPoint Web App)
      4. a screencast of the back stage view (Sanako tutor mostly), full HD resolution (big, but streaming), with complete uninterrupted (and unedited! please fast forward manually through the hands-on parts) audio . To facilitate your navigation, here is a table of contents :
        1. 0:00: Table of contents
        2. 2:30: Portfolio Pedagogy
        3. 13:47: Technical infrastructure: Moodle Mahara portfolio, Sanako, LangLabEmailer
          1. 17:47: Q&A
        4. 19:45: Option 1: presentation as screencast, examples from 1st-year Russian
        5. 34:50: Option 2: Free-form conversation audio, Examples from 2nd-year English  and 2nd-year Japanese
          1. 52:00: Q&A: Why a LangLabEmailer?
        6. 53:00: Option 3: question-response audio, examples from 4th-year Spanish.

How to control students’ access to internet and local apps with Sanako Study 1200

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Straight from the documentation, straight under your fingertips in the tutor interface, and most useful during assessments, but also for individual students that won’t stay on task.

Exam integrity considerations during mock and proctored written exams in the LRC

The easiest way to hold a mock or proctor a written exam in the LRC is provide the students a printout of the exam. For larger classes preparing, and under some circumstances (writing impediment due to injury), providing the MS-Word file on a computer to the student would seem a more convenient solution.

However, the LRC prides itself in the large collection of MS-Office proofing tools it has installed and preconfigured – accessing which from within MS-Word could be construed as cheating during a writing exam. As a matter of fact, since MS-Word auto-detects language, under-waving of misspelled words and incorrect Grammar provides unsolicited and unavoidable extra help.

MS-Office proofing tools could be turned off by using a special MS-word template as the basis for the exam. Easier and quicker is using the SANAKO which can not only block internet access of the examined students, but also block use of entire applications like MS-Word.

Instead of in MS-Word, your students could write their responses in an application that is not part of the proofing tools infrastructure, like Notepad. Western language diacritics can easily be written  in any application on LRC PCs thanks to US-International keyboard layout, and non-Western characters even easier than on paper.

For full security, the best environment for exams we can offer remains Respondus lockdown browser, integrated with Moodle, but this requires converting the exam to into a Moodle quiz (which Respondus has tools to facilitate).  In certain cases, it might be easiest to create a “dummy” quiz with one long text input field, which your students could type everything in, without having access to any other resources (internet, proofing tools, chat, what not…). However, this quiz still would have to be  in your Moodle course so that your students can access access, and their results get put into your gradebook.

Outside of Moodle – if you do not want to go down the Respondus-path – , you can rely on the SANAKO homework collection feature and my langlabemailer to receive the results.

How to type phonetic symbols on a computer

2013/11/16 2 comments
  1. Web-based On-screen-keyboards (point-and-click; low learning curve, but no fast typing speed; typing into a textbox from where you can copy/paste the result into other programs):
    1. http://westonruter.github.com/ipa-chart/keyboard/: Sounds are systematically organized. Suitable for learners, but also good for teacher demonstrations. image
    2. Partially based on keyboard shortcuts: http://www.ipatrainer.com/user/site/index.php?pageID=ipawriter: image
      1. http://ipa.typeit.org/full/: Other than the English version, the full version includes non-English sounds. The interface is optimized for fast typing (sorted by keyboard key). Presumably better for teachers using a screen projector as a whiteboard. image
      2. i2speak.com (reviewed here earlier): imageimage
      3. Update: Richard Ishida’s seems also impressive,
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        2. and you can use phonetics terminology to get characters selected, like so: image
  2. Windows-based:
    1. http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/resource/phonetics/: MS-Windows keyboard layout. May be good for even faster typing, if you can memorize the keyboard layout or add keyboard stickers (we unfortunately have too many languages vying for our hardware keyboard space already). Requires download & installation (may be added to the LRC keyboards during next imaging if we receive enough requests).
    2. http://staff.washington.edu/dmontero/IPACharmap/.
    3. http://sourceforge.net/projects/allchars/: If you are use to the ALT+### method of entering characters and are still on XP, this may be for you: You can generate your own keyboard shortcuts for phonetic characters.
    4. MS-Word:
      1. http://email.eva.mpg.de/~bibiko/downloads/uniqoder/uniqoder.html: Allows to select IPA-Symbols from a toolbar. Untested.
  3. There are also always X-Sampa and CXS and ASCII-IPA: ways of writing IPA in plain ASCII messages  – but yet another thing to teach novices in phonetics may be a bridge too far.