Archive
International TV on the Internet
http://wwitv.com/portal.htm, lists 2244 online TV stations, by topic and “country” (note that this does not equal “language”).
How do I make a video out of my PowerPoint Presentation?
- Many streets may lead to Rome, but here is the "One Microsoft way”, built into PowerPoint 2010: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint-help/turn-your-presentation-into-a-video-HA010336763.aspx: You can essentially “save as” video, including recorded narrations. You have to have your media inserted in 2010 format. Here is a walk-through:
- under “file”, “save&send”, use “create video”
- if you get a compatibility error like so:
- follow the instructions given;
- watch the progress bar:
- Takes over 60 minutes with on average over 50% CPU of an Intel i5 with 8 GB Ram, to produce a 75MB file of 920*760 and less than 18 minutes in length. But this video streams from MS-SkyDrive.
Trying out the new Moodle layout options by integrating my blog via an RSS block
- Running a blog? Feeding a twitter account? It could be worthwhile narrowcasting your (teaching-related) postings (presumably more substantial than tweets about tardiness for class) by integrating it with your Moodle course, via RSS.
- As of today, UNCC-Moodle offers new layout options, including putting blocks into the content (center) column, as a “sticky” post underneath the header.
- This is timely, since I have created a Moodle site for the LRC staff and have been wondering how I can use it to quickly update the LRC staff on new technological opportunities or issues and solutions around the LRC.
- Moodle’s RSS block – linking to the feeds that my blog feed/Twitter hash tag for LRC staff emit – makes that easy.
- Except that up until now, outside the center column, there has not been enough space to display also the teaser of blog posts – an area I invest some thought in, in accordance with age old publishing principles transferred into the internet age.
- The layout options upgrade allows me to fix that – here is how:
- After pressing button: editing on, choose from the dropdown “blocks”: remote RSS feeds
- Don’t be confused by the inability to add your feed source – you need to change to the tab: “manage my feeds” first:
- if you make your feed a “share feed”, it becomes an option for all institutional Moodle sites.
- Validate your feed so that Moodle doe not outright refuse to display (the linked validator will give you error information that can help you fix your feed).
- After moving your feed to the center with the “left arrow”, you can
- You can see more of the Moodle RSS block results here.
Adjust the settings: for me it is important to display descriptions.
Quia Options for Grading in course or book or exercise
- The instructor workstation features prominently the tab : options.
- if you go into grading, you see that not all options can be changed from here.
- However, when customizing your book, you may have already found the options next to each individual exercise that allow you to change Spelling/Case sensitivity
- However, if you go to the tab: book, you will find more options there, including how you can change Feedback and Spelling/Case sensitivity for the entire book instead of individual exercises:
Centro/Quia student access problems at term start: What OneKey?
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Our Pearson/Prentice Hall textbook comes with online component, access to which is purchased in the University bookstore.
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The textbook comes with a setup brochure (OneKey, yellow) that states: “Go to www.prenhall.com/onekey, click OneKey for Students, then click Getting Started, and select CourseCompass. Follow the on-screen instructions to register for CourseCompass”.
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This page is unresponsive und forwards to http://www.pearsonhighered.com/
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Cute but I have no idea how to continue from here.
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if you try to enter the “CourseCompass Access Code” by browsing manually to www.coursecompass.com, you will read: “CourseCompass is now MyLab and Mastering If you had a CourseCompass account, it works with MyLab / Mastering. Sign in now.” Maybe this change broke the entire signup process?
- 100000s of these packages must have been sold by now, each costing 100s of dollars. Why do students and teachers have to waste entire class hours, each worth also 100s of dollars, on banging their head against this pay wall even after they paid?
- When reading the instructions, I found it necessary to highlight the steps our students need to take:
- CourseCompass Access Code
- CourseCompass Course ID
- Account username and password
- Quia Student Book Key
- Quia Course Code
- Wow! With my teacher login, I can see that the online content which is protected by this pay wall is still the same literally translated print lab manual/workbook material. Must be decades old now.
Moodle Metacourses, part III: The support workflow: File-renaming
We discussed file renaming utilities in an earlier post. Here are some more practical tips:
Limitations: While both utilities can accept Windows Search Result sets, drag-drop seems limited to fewer than 256 files at a time (on my Vista 64-bit – but that is not an OS limitation, since MS Expression Encoder can accept a drag-and-drop of all over 3.5k files that need reencoding).
Workaround: both utilities have a folder-select, and Renamer in addition accepts file masks, which can mimic some basic searches:
![image_thumb[2]](/Users/trp/AppData/Local/Temp/WindowsLiveWriter1286139640/supfilesB79F19A/image[6].png "image_thumb[2]")
Bulk Rename Issue: While it allows for “Select from Clipboard” which you can use with the Windows “Copy as Path”/”Send to Clipboard as Name” feature which works with search result sets. However, I could not get this feature to work (neither with the default “” around the path nor, after removing them manually, without).
Renamer, Issue: rule, clean up, strip-out-content-of-brackets-does-not-what-it-should:
Renamer-translit-anglicize-foreign-language-diacritics: unfortunately still recommended for technical reasons; Renamer has presets, e.g. German here: TBA
Only one preset can be inserted add a time (overwrites previous) – but you can build your list with copy/paste from/to this text box and persist it to disk to load it later, just like the search rules – an extremely handy feature.
Moodle Metacourses, part IV: The support workflow: Transcoding audio learning materials
The MS-WMA-Voice codec features very acceptable audio quality for spoken language learning materials in a highly compressed format. It allowed me to reduce our existing audio files collection size by about 50%.
Expression Encoder 3 crashed a few times during encoding this queue of 3.500 audio files. In addition, it took a long time to reload the .XEJ project files of such a size. It is, however, easy enough to inspect the XEJ in an XML editor:
And even easier to delete the finished media files form the queue using a text editor:
I am wondering whether this queuing could be streamlined (recovery automated, and the need for human interaction be reduced) using the PowerShell Module for Automating Expression-Encoder, but so far the process is good enough.
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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
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