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Software-based laser pointer in PowerPoint

2014/03/26 Leave a comment
  1. You can activate software laser pointer in PowerPoint by pressing CTRL and P  (= Pointer) while displaying your slideshow. Then you can draw on your show to highlight points, just like with a laser pointer – but unlike that, it cannot run out of battery power!
  2. Other keys you can press:
    1. Erase = E (unlike with a laser pointer, you have to),
    2. deActivate = CTRL and A.
  3. Other advantages: unlike some other screen drawing tools that freeze the screen (MS-ZoomIt notably), the software laser pointer:
    1. allows you to proceed through the PowerPoint presentation normally;
    2. can be saved as ink annotations, and will show up if you convert your PowerPoint to a video or play it with narrations.
Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, office-software Tags: , ,

Sanako Web browsing activity not compatible with modern web infrastructure (SunGard Portal, Outlook Web Access)?

2014/03/26 Leave a comment
  1. To access campus resources – here an assignment in a Moodle course – our students need to log into a SunGard portal (with SSO – a pretty common product in higher education)l, but already the redirection after login fails with this session expiration error.
    1. We could work around this problem by browsing to the target site and logging into Moodle directly.  But our students normally do not know how to do that.
  2. More problems arose when students tried to open an email in their campus OWA, in a popup window, which, however, gets redirected to the first browser homepage.
  3. This was during an “open/prevent policy” web browsing-activity, where – to keep students on task – only certain sites (social web, webmail) were blocked.., as can be seen in this screenshot: webbrowsing-prevent-policy
Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, digital-audio-lab, e-learning, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

Save the web, with Clip to OneNote

2014/03/26 Leave a comment

No, I don’t mean save from proprietary vendors or from spies Smile – I mean: save it to your personal storage during web browsing, like so:

clip2onenote

The essence of http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/17/onenote-clipper-clip-the-web-right-to-onenote/. https://www.onenote.com/Clipper/OneNote should be useful not only for personal research on the web.

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-learning, office-software, websites Tags: ,

Configuring UNCC staff (MS-Exchange 10) email on Android 4.1.2

2014/03/19 Leave a comment

Screenshot_2014-03-15-15-17-08Screenshot_2014-03-15-15-16-31

Screenshot_2014-03-15-15-19-37image

May come in useful not only during initial setup… I had trouble sorting out the webpages addressing different versions, and translating the picture-less instructions, an so have others when they come to the LRC  for help. May this help some.

Categories: audience-is-teachers, documentation, e-infrastructure, mobile-phones Tags: , , , ,

Common commands in Speech Recognition for all languages supported

2014/03/17 Leave a comment

(I cut a corner and left out the language variants ZH-TW and EN-UK, sorry, we do not teach those here):

Categories: audience-is-students, e-languages, English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Operating-system, Spanish, Spreadsheets, Vocabulary Tags: , ,

Faculty Workshop Spring 2014: "Mira, mamá! Sin manos!". Practice speaking L2 with automatic intelligent feedback by operating LRC PCs through speech recognition instead of keyboard/mouse

2014/03/13 Leave a comment
  1. When: March 28, 2:15-3:15, April 4, 2:00-3:00
  2. Where: LRCRoomCoed434
  3. What: Language learning speaking practice assignments with automatic intelligent feedback using Windows Speech Recognition
    1. As part of the foreign language tools we installed with Windows 7 this past Fall, we got speech recognition on the LRC PCs for 6 languages (English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Spanish ) representing over 85% of our enrolment.
    2. Unlike the speech recognition that comes with learning content packages like Auralog or Rosetta Stone
      1. which had to be purchased, for individual languages, but stopped functioning on the server on a long time ago,
      2. was limited to built-in content ,
      3. was restricted by a separate account system,
    3. Windows Speech Recognition is
      1. free (with the operating system), runs on the local lab pcs, and should be a bit more robust,
      2. content agnostic and hence can integrate flexibly with your curriculum and contribute meaningfully to your students’ progression,
      3. can be integrated with the existing user accounts.
    4. We combine Windows speech recognition with the new LRC screencast software, MS-Office and Moodle to offer a simple self-access assignment type that
      1. is available on all 45 LRC PCs (= scales even to large enrolment languages and 1st-year classes that cannot use the 24-seat Sanako for face-to-face speaking proficiency training)
      2. and blends the “artificial intelligence” of speech recognition with human intelligence to provide students with immediate automated feedback during pedagogically sound speaking practice, with minimal grading overhead for the teacher (= grade secure assignments by looking at the very end of a student-submitted screencast).
    5. This workshop will show actual speech recognition usage and assignment samples
      1. so far in English, French, German;
      2. if you want to bring your own samples to this workshop – there might still be time- , or to an upcoming faculty showcase, I can help you during my biweekly LRC clinics (see LRC main schedule, or schedule your own).
    6. We will step you through – hands-on, including tips&tricks – a sample voice training and assignment completion: Better than my made-up assignments would be if you could bring one or more concrete tasks to be solved using speech recognition that we could prepare assigning to your students. Here are some parameters for that:
      1. Speech recognition can replace mouse and keyboard when operating the computer. Voice commands are simpler than sentences, so this could be a beginner task, as long as you have students study the (limited) command vocabulary (which I will make available during the workshop).
      2. Speech recognition can replace any writing task with dictation. Suggestions for proficiency levels:
        1. I have dictated a web page assigned for reading comprehension in a textbook used in 1200 or even a as a false beginner.
        2. However, a one-time training helping the computer recognize an individual’s voice is required and comes sentences that vary in complexity between languages
          1. English: very easy, Beginner level;
          2. German, French: let’s have a look together, I’d say 1202 level;
          3. Japanese: 3000 level, I was told;
          4. Please test with me during the workshop: Spanish, Chinese.
  4. Download the SlideDeck (too big too embed)
Categories: audience-is-teachers, English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, os, Slideshows, Spanish, Speaking, workshops Tags: , ,

How to resolve error “Speech Recognition could not start because the language configuration is not supported”

2014/03/12 Leave a comment
  1. Problem: I have seen this error CAM05472,
  2. Root cause: when the display language and speech language do not match (the latter is set to default to the former in the LRC, but it seems they can get out of sync), as you can witness here (English display does not match Chinese speech recognition): CAM05474
  3. Solution: Follow the instructions in the error message, i.e.
    1. Access the Speech recognition control panel here: image
    2. Then change the speech recognition language to match the display language, like I am doing here: CAM05475
  4. Quick workaround: Not sure about how quick, but in the LRC, you can also just try and restart the computers, they are “frozen” to a default configuration in display and speech recognition language (English/English – matches).
Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, Glitches&Errors, Operating-system Tags:

How students can manage sidetone manually

2014/03/08 Leave a comment

Sidetone echoes your voice from the microphone back into  your headphone speakers. It makes wearing the headphones feel more natural, and lets you evaluate your pronunication better.

Until it is configured properly out of the box, to enable it, you have to:

Open sound settings: image

Check and Increase the sidetone volume until you can hear yourself talking well: image

Categories: audience-is-students, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, Speaking Tags: ,