Archive
Successful test of the new streaming video recording assignment for language proficiency assessment in Moodle.
- Video recordings allow for a more authentic assessment of spoken language proficiency. Today, we could test a new Moodle video assignment type for Almut’s Summer II Elementary German II class: Preparing a natural sounding statement on one’s favorite holiday. This Moodle assignment type is an extension to students of the teacher video upload tool using a service Kaltura – we hinted at that earlier.
- Teachers, when editing their Moodle course, can find this assignment type in the dropdown: Activity as “Video”.
- The assignment options: Note that creating a video assignment is pretty much the same as creating other assignments in Moodle, and so is grading, except instead of reading, you view the submission, right within the web page.
- An example of guiding questions for a recording assignment is here (topic: holiday, language: German):
- Here is how the teacher sees the student submission in the gradebook.
- Caveat: in Safari, we were not able to close the video popup, after viewing it from the class roster, and could only back out of the entire gradebook. Instead, from the roster, first open the page with the individual student submission, and review the video there on that page:
- For the student experience, see here.
- Further reading: The CTL has a number of step-by-step instructions which we recommend for further reading: Student Video Assignment, and specifically for students: Upload a Video for a Video Assignment; for instructors: Grading Video Assignment Submissions.
- The LRC had originally prepared to record the students with our old, handheld mini-DV cameras, import the movie into iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, then find a way to get the files (with easily identifiable submitter names) to the teachers. Hitherto, our best option was compression of the video to to fit into the Moodle 64MB file upload size limit (which, even if you decide to shoot and produce your video elsewhere and bring it as an uploadable file to the assignment , does not apply to the Video assignment either).
- Preliminary testing seems to indicate that video recording of pairs/dialogues is also possible with the LRC’s webcam setup . However, because of the angle restrictions, capturing such sessions will be less natural.
- Overall, the new Moodle video assignment seems a major improvement for all parties – students, teachers and support –, and can help with more authentic assessment of
Keyboard overlay stickers improve foreign character writing support in the LRC
Some non-western, but character-based languages benefit from having keyboard overlay stickers installed. Here is a list of what the LRC has:
| Amount | Languages | installed@ |
| 3 | Arabic | 1 list. station, 2 rightmost computers in the front row of the left (teacher perspective) half of the main classroom |
| 2 | Farsi | 2 rightmost computers in the middle row of the left (teacher perspective) half of the main classroom |
| 1 | Greek | 1 list. station |
| 3 | Russian | 1 list. station, 2 rightmost computers of the rear row of the left (teacher perspective) half of the main classroom |
Here are photos of the Arabic and Cyrillic keyboards:
We installed the stickers, so that they reflect the software layout of the keyboard that you get when choosing the respective language from the international toolbar. Note that the letters marked in red on the Cyrillic keyboard picture below are not supported by the Russian keyboard layout:
Since only one set can be added to any existing physical keyboard, the teacher computer keyboard can not have an overlay. The student computers with overlays are the listening stations and computers 6,7,12,13,18,19 on the LRC layout map.
Remember that the On-screen-keyboard software remains accessible at all PC’s through clicking “Start”, “Run”, typing “OSK”, clicking "OK".
Example where you can get your own keyboard overlay stickers.
Grouping students using Sanako Study 1200 “sessions”
This sccreencast on grouping with Study 1200 demonstrates:
|
0:00
|
left activity pane – button:add
|
|
0:25
|
right classroom layout pane – click or drag frame
|
|
0:50
|
the effects of grouping
|
|
1:05
|
bottom link: show corridor
|
|
1:25
|
moving between session/groups with context menu (not shown)
|
|
1:30
|
You may have to start/end the current activity from the activity pane first
|
Sanako Study 1200: Student Basics II: The Screencast
This screencast covers the basics of Study 1200 for students
For a quick guide to the Student interface, see Student Basics I: The Screenshots
Moodle metacourses, part II: The technology
One of the most missed business requirements for a LMS in version 1 of Moodle has been lack of support for sharing files across courses. This has been addressed by the e-Repository API in version 2 of Moodle, which, however, we will not have in the foreseeable future. In version 1, metacourses have been the most widely used workaround.
The technical concept behind a metacourse in Moodle seems to be best described like so: “A child course gives its [student - TBA:teachers need to be added manually, but fortunately do not change as frequently as students] enrolments [= access to] to the parent course” or meta course, which has no enrolment of its own. In practice, this can go either way: Using metacourses, one can “populate many [meta]courses [= building blocks of content (e.g. chapters, weeks, can even be separate, but required courses with different teachers – TBA: then exclude the teacher role from being added with enrolments, in Admin/Users/User Policies , flexibly combinable to make up a specific version of your regular course] from one enrollment or one [meta]course from many enrollments [= many sectional regular courses that need access to the same content]”. Either assign to many metacourses [= building blocks] 1 child course each, or vice versa assign 1 metacourse many child courses [=sectional regular courses].
For base Moodle version 1.9 administration information, simply watch the first half-minute of this screencast, or read this extract from the Moodle documentation:
“To change a course to a meta course, set "Is this a meta course?" question to yes in the course settings.”
(Note that this option will disappear as soon as the course has an enrolment!)
In your metacourse “you can link [=”associate”] to or unlink from (add or delete) "child" courses by the course Administration menu. This icon and link only appears in meta courses: “
How to make a metacourse visible: “Making a metacourse visible before the metacourse is properly setup can cause Moodle to return ‘This course does not allow public access'(…) Verify that the linked "child" course(s) exists. “
Note: Metacourses may be set to inactive and unavailable to enrolled students until the teacher activates the metacourse.
Note: It takes some time for the meta-enrollment to apply (time depends on the setting for the cron-job).
How to handle metacourse teacher role enrollments: Certain roles can be excluded from being passed on as enrollment from child courses to metacourses. For our shared resource courses, this does not make sense (in the contrary, since any teacher from the child course may want to manage resources contained in the metacourses – this does not to be coordinated between teachers of similar child courses.).
TBA: How to handle metacourse enrollments across terms: Our metacourse shells will stay across the term, while enrollment will be automatically dropped with the child courses “going out of scope”.
Protected: How to conduct an easy oral exam with Sanako1200 (Model imitation/Question Response) – Part II: Implementation/instruction of examined students
Foreign Language Character Input on Windows XP in the LRC
The LRC offers the following foreign language characters writing support:
| American English | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Arabic | Google;MS;MS-maren;fontboard | maybe later, now osk | demo |
| British English | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Dutch | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Farsi | Google;MS | maybe later, now osk | demo |
| French | us international | not needed | us-int |
| German | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Greek | Google;MS | maybe later, now osk | demo |
| Italian | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Japanese | MS | not needed | |
| Korean | MS | maybe later, now osk | demo |
| Mandarin | MS;pinyinput | not needed | pinyin |
| Portuguese (Brazilian) | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Russian | Google;MS | maybe later, now osk | demo |
| Spanish | us international | not needed | us-int |
The support is best accessed from the “international toolbar”, like so: 
You can also use the windows on-screen keyboard to input non-Western characters on a computer that has not the corresponding keyboard overlay stickers. In the small-group workspaces, which have writing pads, you can also use the MS-Handwriting IME for East-Asian languages.
The on-screen keyboard (OSK) for foreign language character input on MS-Windows
A little known, but useful tool for non-western languages which can not be represented by the us-international keyboard layout, when no hardware keyboard is available:
The Windows on screen keyboard reflects the soft keyboard installed via Control panel / Regional and language options / Text input languages. and selected via the language toolbar, like so:
Easiest access, click Start, click Run, type “osk”, click “OK”. Or try this on XP: 
Questions? Read the About. Or just ask me a quick Our Databases: Resources with calendars -- Language learning material Moodle Sites, multimedia files -- films
FAQs for LRC student staff or for students or for teachers. To search our FAQs, in the browser addressbar, add after "https://plagwitz.wordpress.com/feed/?tag=faqs+/" "+TAG1" (from tag cloud below) OR "https://plagwitz.wordpress.com/feed/tag=faqs
&category_name=" "CAT1" (from category hierarchy below). OR search both categories and tags, and multiple TAGs/CATs (connect with "," for OR-search, with "+" for AND-search), like so: https://plagwitz.wordpress.com/feed/?tag=TAG1+TAG2+...TAGn&category_name=CAT1
+CAT2+...CATn"
Other ways to find help
If you cannot find it here, look there: 5,500 Language-Learning Links and Programs for learning or teaching 150 languages
Shortcuts:Our Lists, Our Maps, LRC Staff Moodle Site,LRC Project Moodle Site, 49erexpress, UNCC Moodle, Student Recordings: s:claslcslrcsanakostudent
Learning usage samples: Sanako oral exam, Kaltura webcam presentation, Dictation with speech recognition, Sanako written exam, Chinese and Japanese interactive stroke-order practice
Test the Sanako Installer, Webbrowser Popup Konfigurator for XP, or Windows7, faster LRC TeacherPC Log-in Let MS facilitate diacritics writing by installing for you US-International keyboard layout
This is my personal blog (Google+). The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer. The information in this weblog is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Thomas' Work Space 