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Archive for the ‘audience-is-any’ Category

How to use the online Spanish pronunciation help to generate phonetic alphabet transcriptions and text-to-speech

2011/11/18 Leave a comment
  1. Go to http://showroom.daedalus.es/es/tecnologias-de-la-lengua/phonetictrans/phonetictrans.php, enter your text, select your phonetic symbol set:
  2. spanish-text2phonetic-alphabet-daedalus
  3. Unlike with the Portuguese help, there is no text-to-speech option here.
Categories: Advanced, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, e-languages, Intermediate, learning-materials, Spanish, Speaking, websites Tags: , ,

Troubleshooting the wireless headsets in the TV viewing area

2011/11/18 Leave a comment
  1. For lack of small group work areas, the 3 headsets help sharing the LRCROOMCOED433. They amplify the sound for the TV viewing audience, allowing to turn the TV volume down so as not to disturb other users in the shared area.
  2. No sound?
    1. headsets turned on?
    2. headset volume turned up?
    3. headsets batteries dead?
    4. transmitter turned on?
  3. Static noise on headsets?
    1. headsets batteries weak?
    2. no line of sight to transmitter?
  4. Other things you can try:
      1. a different headset. We have 3.
      2. a different transmitter. We have 2.
  5. An image says more than 1000 words:
    1. CIMG0005 
    2. CIMG0004
    3. unisar-tv777-03
    4. unisar-tv777-05
    5. unisar-tv777-04unisar-tv777-01
    6. unisar-tv777-02
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, documentation, e-infrastructure, hardware, headphones, Listening, TV-viewing-area Tags: ,

Web-based romanized letters to Cyrillic transliteration tool.

2011/11/16 Leave a comment
  1. Our Russian tutor uses this transliteration tool HTTP://TRANSLIT.RU which allows for phonetic input on a keyboard that does not have Cyrillic letters and seems popular with native speakers of languages written in Cyrillic.
  2. As so often, that implies: not designed for language learners. The explanation attests to that: translit_info
Categories: Advanced, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, Intermediate, Russian, websites, Writing Tags: ,

How to restart the LRC student printer station

2011/11/16 Leave a comment
  1. On the computer keyboard of the print release station computer, press the windows-key.
  2. This will bring up ("It’s a Windows system! I know this!") the Start Menu.
  3. Choose Shutdown/ Restart from there.
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, printer Tags: ,

Calendaring: How to view all your Moodle course calendars in one place (like live@edu, Google calendar or MS-Outlook)

2011/11/16 Leave a comment
  1. UPDATE: this does work, just make sure to give it some time to update AND to have actual appointments in the time window (length of that window is a setting you can change in Moodle) that you are trying to display.
  2. Static inclusion of syllabus deadlines in your calendar
    1. Go to your Moodle Course / “Go to calendar…” / select from dropdown: “Upcoming Events”:   “All courses”/ click on “Export Calendar/iCal. Open with MS-Outlook (fails in IE8).
    2. Here is showing how: screencast demo loading Moodle’s iCal into MS-Outlook (desktop).
    3. This is a static export of all your Moodle calendar information – taught and enrolled courses combined  (despite image_thumb showing in each of your courses. The dropdown: “Upcoming Events” does default to the current course, though).
    4. The utility of this (= what “all” comprises, and how helpful the event information is) depends on how the course designers use the Moodle calendar functionality – or allow Moodle to do it for them: For setting a start/end (= deadline) for any assignment or assessment automagically adds this event to the Moodle course calendar.
  3. A potentially even more useful dynamic subscription(that will reflect late-breaking changes, like extended deadlines in your courses or additional assignments)
    1. you can get if you right click on image_thumb2 and choose “Copy link” from the context menu.
    2. I have not found a way to feed the Moodle iCal link manually into MS-Outlook 2010 (Shared Calendars / Add Calendar / From Internet) or OWA (different problem comes and goes. Just subscribe while problem is gone Smile). In MS-Outlook, you can subscribe to this link via menu:tools / tab:internet calendars / button: new / dialogue new internet calendar subscription / paste the URL you copied. moodle-calendar-outlook-2010-subscri[1]
    3. Don’t forget to rename your calendar to something more useful than the default, like “My classes”, by right-clicking and choosing “Rename”in OWA or “Properties” in Outlook2010.
    4. moodle-calendar-outlook-2010-subscri[3]moodle-calendar-outlook-2010-subscri[2]
    5. Your syllabus deadlines are now always only two clicks away in your Ninermail:
      1. click on “Calendar”
      2. click on checkbox “Moodle”.
  4. What seems not possible with any current version of Moodle is editing/updating your calendar in MS-Outlook and having the changes synch with Moodle, or any import actually – only the opposite direction works. So the tool is more useful for students (who don’t need to edit) than teachers (but still a nice aggregator of teaching information for the latter).
  5. More on Calendar you can find in the official 1.9 Moodle calendar doc and FAQ.
  6. I would prefer to use other calendaring software, but the export options of the Moodle (1.9 and 2.)) calendars are limiting. So I also find myself adjusting the settings when using the Moodle calendar:

calendar-19-preferences_thumb1

  1. Adjusting these settings may also fix the following error in OWA which reads like ICS link is invalid/broken, but may only mean that no events where returned for the time window that Moodle defaults to (with performance reasons, which, however, does not apply if Moodle does not have to return *any* events to your request).  In other words: Try expanding the time window for events, e.g. to include the full term.moodle-calendar-owa-subscribing3
Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure Tags: , ,

More printing problems in the LRC: How to deal with student swipe card not being read

2011/11/16 Leave a comment
  1. Problem: You get this error message "Unable to communicate with vending hardware" (when student swipes the student id card):
  2. Things to try:  Try first restarting the print release station computer (How?). If this does  not help, in the past, this has indicated campus-wide problems. Call the HELPDESK to find out more. If they confirm, post a warning note for students on the print release station.
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, Glitches&Errors Tags:

Is there a better way to cross-link within Joomla?

2011/11/15 Leave a comment
  1. I find my best bet to find anything in the hyperlink dialogue is to go to the published site and search for the article. Here I finally found the article in questions, knowing that it lived (“had been filed”?) in “uncategorized”, which the site search results kindly let me know:
  2. joomla-cross-linking
  3. Obviously you do want to use the internal URL which should survive DNS-related changes.
Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, e-infrastructure Tags:

Microsoft Contextual Translator

2011/11/14 Leave a comment

Certainly an advance over the MS-Word thesaurus (unlike the MS-Word 2007 and up spell check, still not contextual). Does this work at least well enough to serve as a fruitful pedagogical exercise: “Which phrase does not belong in the group?”

contextual-thesaurus

Categories: Advanced, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, e-languages, English, Intermediate, Speaking, websites, Writing Tags: ,