Archive
Protected: LRC old media inventory for spring cleaning
How LRC assistants now help maintain LRC functionality with routine checks
Oral assessments have begun this week in the LRC. Please note that when using the LRC you may see LRC assistants going through the rooms doing a variety of chores (if need be, we can remind them that they must not disturb classes and other user activities).
We have written a large number of procedural guides, check lists with spreadsheets and illustrated parts lists (linked below) to train 7 groups of experts (varying in size between 2-6) in how to regularly inventory, test and maintain functionality of LRC equipment and services:
1. Daily LRC walkthrough check
2. Weekly headset test
3. Weekly film equipment check
4. Weekly staff and equipment calendar check
5. Biweekly faculty equipment check
6. Film collection maintenance (work in progress)
7. Help desk supervising
Samples of issues that we hope to address this way:
a. You check out a headset for recording learning materials over the last weekend before classes start and do not want to find it broken.
b. Your students come to the LRC for a quiz assignment/distance education and in the middle of it find the headset does not play audio while the timer/class is running.
c. You hold a recording class in the LRC and do not want to spend the first several more minutes – after the computers logged in – troubleshooting individual headsets that do not play or record.
d. Your students, when setting up film equipment for a film project (with location, actors/interviewees scheduled) have to find that the lights cannot stand essential since screws are missing.
e. Films cannot be located.
f. Etc.
I hope you will find experiencing fewer such issues a simplification in your interactions with the LRC .
How LRC assistants help maintain the film collection
Tuesday, January 21, 2014, 10:14:54 PM | plagwitz
Protected: How LRC assistants help with LRC room and resource mailboxes
Tuesday, January 21, 2014, 11:17:00 PM | plagwitz
New supervisor role for senior LRC Assistants
Monday, January 13, 2014, 7:09:36 PM | plagwitz
Friday, January 10, 2014, 10:45:32 PM | plagwitz
Friday, January 10, 2014, 8:52:51 PM | plagwitz
Thursday, January 02, 2014, 9:34:08 PM | plagwitz
Thursday, January 02, 2014, 9:00:44 PM | plagwitz
LRC daily walkthrough for all computers
Thursday, January 02, 2014, 9:38:44 PM | plagwitz
LRC daily walkthrough for classroom PCs
Thursday, January 02, 2014, 9:34:03 PM | plagwitz
LRC daily walkthrough for iMacs and printer
Thursday, January 02, 2014, 9:31:03 PM | plagwitz
LRC daily walkthrough for listening and group room stations
Thursday, January 02, 2014, 9:30:24 PM | plagwitz
Protected: A checklist for our regular equipment inventories
Monday, December 23, 2013, 11:43:29 PM | plagwitz
Checklist for the LRC Camera16
Monday, December 23, 2013, 11:32:25 PM | plagwitz
Monday, December 23, 2013, 11:19:13 PM | plagwitz
Monday, December 23, 2013, 11:15:42 PM | plagwitz
Monday, December 23, 2013, 11:14:29 PM | plagwitz
Checklist transcription foot pedal
Monday, December 23, 2013, 10:58:52 PM | plagwitz
Checklist for Voice recorder 03
Monday, December 23, 2013, 10:54:45 PM | plagwitz
Checklist for Voice recorder 01-02
Monday, December 23, 2013, 10:43:35 PM | plagwitz
Checklist for light kit (08-11)
Monday, December 23, 2013, 10:15:00 PM | plagwitz
Functionality tests for LRC microphones
Monday, December 23, 2013, 7:05:13 PM | plagwitz
Checklist for Vixia cameras (11-14)
Monday, December 23, 2013, 6:59:00 PM | plagwitz
LRC Wireless microphone basics
Monday, December 23, 2013, 5:59:04 PM | plagwitz
Monday, December 23, 2013, 5:25:24 PM | plagwitz
Checklist for light tripod (05-12)
Monday, December 23, 2013, 4:27:07 PM | plagwitz
Checklist for lavaliere microphones (01-03)
Monday, December 23, 2013, 3:29:47 PM | plagwitz
Checklist for heavy tripods (01-04)
Monday, December 23, 2013, 3:26:20 PM | plagwitz
Monday, December 23, 2013, 2:24:28 PM | plagwitz
Checklist for Rebel cameras (17/18/19/20)
Monday, December 23, 2013, 12:46:44 PM | plagwitz
Checklist for microphone booms
Monday, December 23, 2013, 12:34:00 PM | plagwitz
Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 3:02:51 PM | plagwitz
LRC hosts help desk for students to register on their McGraw-Hill Connect online textbook website
This special Help desk will be sign-posted in the LRC on the day of the events. For now, consult the calendar of the iMacsand Group Room1, 2 (see https://thomasplagwitz.com/2012/11/04/how-to-view-lrc-hoursevents/).Here is the documentation:
LRC Fall 2013 announcements
- The LRC has upgraded to Windows 7 and Office 2010.
- Benefits:
- Your students can use the computer interface from the default English to about 20 languages, including non-Western.
- Your students can also use speech recognition (in English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish), e.g. for dictation exercises (Example videos: very bad French, decent German). Students can train the computers to their voice and take their training data with them. I’d love to explore with you possibilities for pronunciation practice with automated intelligent feedback .
- Your students can use old and new MS-Office Proofing tools.
- Caveat: W are still trying to restore some former functionality (e.g. no Google Arabic, Farsi and Russian IME etc.). Please bear with us while we deal with the new college tech infrastructure.
- Benefits:
- The LRC has upgraded its Sanako digital audio lab software.
- Because of budgetary constraints, our software agreement had to end with version 5 . This summer, the vendor presented us with a free upgrade to version 7, with compliments for my blog posts about using the Sanako.
- Benefits: We decided to implement the upgrade lest you and your students need relearn in the middle of the academic year and since Version 7 adds valuable language learning : which I would love to explore with you: Vocabulary exercises and Pronunciation exercises which make use of the computerized text-to-speech capabilities we just implemented with windows 7
- Caveats:
- We are still trying to restore the old Sanako configuration. E.g. Pairing recording is not working currently.
- I hope to upgrade my LanglabEmailer software to support the new version after the term is underway.
- For students attending distance classes with Saba Centra in the LRC, microphone audio on listening stations fixed, no more 30 minute delay when joining class.
- UNCC is upgrading to Moodle 2. The CTL is investigating how the LRC Metacourses for audio materials I created can be converted to Moodle 2. If you need the audio materials from the metacourses, we can help you upload them into your individual courses temporarily.
- Classroom AV: We found a temporary workaround for the projector image quality and are investigating permanent solutions. Currently no VHS video and doc cam display during classes (we would love to scan your text anyway and distribute them digitally).
- LRC Calendars and Booking:
- In the LRC Room and Equipment List, your will notice some new film studies equipment (calendars requested from ITS).
- We added new calendars to the Quicklinks on LRC home page : Tutors and LRC assistants. Please keep checking how we fill these open positions over the next few weeks, and use the help they can offer you.
- When booking, you can
- get help at the LRC reception desk;
- book yourself from anywhere,
- or have your “delegate” book (planned; setup requested from ITS).
- I will continue next week with the biweekly Sanako Clinic to aid teachers with their LRC class preparation. Please consult the LRC calendar if you want to drop in, or reschedule one with me for your needs.
- I am also offering LRC introductions for your class during the week 2 and 3 on a “first-come, first-served” basis, and à la carte (I suggest consulting a one-sheet menu with an overview of LRC facilities that I am preparing.) Please let me know if you are interested.
LRC offers generating audio files from your foreign language texts
- Would you like to expose your student to L2 listening materials beyond the audio learning materials that come with your textbook?
- Materials customized to the learning needs of your classes? From current affairs maybe?
- Would you prefer no to send them to internet audio that may be difficult and time consuming to integrate?
- Do you lack the time to record speaking cues, oral exam questions or reading models yourself?
- Do you need audio files that you and your students can rewind/fast forward/replay, edit and record into with voice insert?
- And would you prefer using audio in your classes that comes with aligned text, whether that audio that has been transcribed or vice versa, to create glossaries, captions, multimedia assignments?
- The LRC now offers generating audio files from your foreign language texts in many languages.
- The service is based on the quality voices of Google Translate text-to-speech (better (simpler) than its actual translation portion, let alone its naïve use).
- Unlike Google translate, the service persists longer than 100 character texts to audio files (mp3) that (and the underlying digital text) we can work with further, in your syllabus, the LMS and the digital audio lab.
- Technical background and samples.
- Languages that are available in good quality: See links under this post; other languages: please test with me..
- To request an audio file generation for your class, send the following information to the LRC
- regular reading/listening materials: plain digital text should do;
- SANAKO oral exam cues: please enter the text in this MS-Word table and add information in the additional columns for exam customization.
Looking forward to the Digital Humanities Unconference at UNC Charlotte
- Why I come to THATCamp Piedmont:
- I am looking for practitioners of NLP in a language and literature teaching context since I am working on Using NLP tools to automate production and correction of interactive learning material (presented at Calico 2012)
- for the Learning Exercise Creation Engines (presented at EUROCALL 2007) I developed.
- A little about myself:
- My Ph.D. thesis expanded the close reading of textual variants in the German editorial schools of Hans Zäch and the use of the computer-generated textual concordances in the interpretation and selection of textual variants into a corpus linguistic-inspired approach, that traced Leitmotifs in the work (partially first digitized by myself) of the foremost Swiss-German classic as a digital corpus using Regular Expressions programming.
- I have since applied my corpus linguistic approach to
- the use of machine translation software
- the automation of learning material creation (glossing, question generation, differentiation) on the basis of natural language processing of textual (film subtitles, news) corpora.
Questions? Read the About. Or just ask me a quick
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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.
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