classroom-management-system | Thomas' Work Space

Classroom Management Systems deemed a necessity in Higher Education computer labs

2012/06/18 plagwitz Leave a comment

As seen in a teaching lab of a top-20 US university.

Categories: classroom-management-system, e-infrastructure, mental-notes Tags: netsupport-school

Using NLP tools to automate production and correction of interactive learning materials for blended learning templates in the Language Resource Center. Presentation Calico 2012, Notre Dame University

2012/06/13 plagwitz Leave a comment

Categories: audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, conferences, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, learning-materials, office-software, Screencasts, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Writing Tags: 2012, calico, nlp

How you can view the computer screens of your class using Sanako Study 1200

2012/05/04 plagwitz Leave a comment

Here is a 2.5 minute screencast showing off the different ways how you can view your students’ screens using the Sanako Study 1200, .
from smallest to biggest, all accessible form the button:”screensharing”
1. first thumbnails
2. then thumbnails in extra window
3. finally autoscan
There will always be tradeoff on the teacher computer between size of individual student screen and overview over class.
1. for as long as the teacher screen resolution is nowhere near the combined sizes of the student screen resolution;
2. having the same screen resolution is also desirable, for projecting the teacher screen to the students; multi-monitor teacher stations are a nice compromise.
However, as you can see in the screencast, there a number of nice options that make switching between large size and overview (drilling in and moving back out) easy.
1. The newer versions of the Sanako (here 5.2) allow you to choose many different student screen sizes.
2. The newest version of the Sanako (5.4) also allows to fit many students screens on a teacher screen by implementing by letting the teacher scroll through the classroom layout).

Categories: audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, Screencasts Tags: sanako-study-1200, screensharing

Sanako Study 1200 Version 5 now allows for larger student screen thumbnails, but still limits the classroom layout size

2012/05/04 plagwitz Leave a comment

The capability of increasing the size of the student thumbnails, to be able to easily read the MS-Word writing student exercises template that I had programmed for Sanako Lab 300 was sorely missed in version 1 and 2 of the Sanako Study 1200 software.
In version 5, the capability to adjust the size has been added. In Tutor.exe, Go to Menu: tools / preferences / thumbnail-size.
Now, however, the 20 licensed student seats we have, already fill up the entire Teacher software’s screen estate since the software window cannot be spanned across our multi-monitor setup (The Sanako software seems to have this single-screen limitation built-in. Our unusual asymmetric (1280 and 1024) dual-monitor system may have something to do with it).
Fortunately, in the newest version 5.42 for of Sanako Study, scrollbars appear and allow for panning the classroom layout window if there are more student icons/thumbnails than will fit on the screen.
Upgrading to a screen with a larger screen resolution on the teacher computer would be even better.
We hope to teach up to 30 students (class sizes seem to be constantly increasing, but the LRC also caters to visits of merged class sections which may be even larger than 30 students) in this large classroom setup:

Categories: audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, e-learning Tags: sanako-study-1200, screensharing

Protected: Sanako Study 1200 Final oral exam for advanced Business Spanish: A Job interview

2012/04/19 plagwitz Enter your password to view comments.

Sanako Study 1200 controlled web browsing–strict policy

2012/04/18 plagwitz Leave a comment

View an 80-seconds screencast showing how a teacher can set up a student activity where students are only allowed to access on web site.
In this example, the website is a common dictionary: http://www.dict.cc which the student will be allowed to access during an exam (in lieu of a paper dictionary policy).
Never mind that the voiceover is partially in German – the video should be self-explanatory. If not, here is a written step-by-step on Sanako controlled webbrowsing.

Categories: audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, documentation, e-learning, Presenter-Computer, Screencasts, Student-Computers Tags: sanako-study-1200, web-browsing-activity

Protected: Spring 2012 Faculty Workshop I: How to ease your end-of-term oral assessment burden with the help of the LRC Moodle Kaltura and Sanako Study 1200 oral assessments

2012/04/06 plagwitz Enter your password to view comments.

Sanako Study 1200 student in-class web browsing activity caveats, errors&glitches

2012/03/01 plagwitz Leave a comment

If we put the full URI of the website (e.g. http://www.dict.cc), we experience the student web browser not opening up (either hanging at "verifying access" dialogue or empty browser window and definitely no table of contents browser window). Workaround: put just e.g. http://www.dict.cc.
CAVEAT: make sure you actually know which sub-pages will be loaded (and thus need to be allowable) during your web browsing activity
1. the address-bar is misleading when a your pages are loaded within a frameset. like in this example: . In this example, allow all links in the left menu.
2. your list of allowable pages should cover the entire workflow, including feedback pages that the student may receive
3. TBA: it is sufficient for a web page to be allowed/blocked if its URL string contains your listed URL as a substring
We have observed `the following issues:
1. that the sanako web browser may hang, on startup or later, but a common workaround is closing a hanging sanako web browser which will reopen it on the table of contents page.
2. that the “verifying access rights” window can disappear quickly, but may delay web browsing for a considerable time before your students are allowed to browse to a web page – please allow time for that (we are investigating whether the size of the class or the type of allow/deny list or individual allow/deny links cause this delay).
3. that the sanako web browser on some computers (despite them have identical software images?) arbitrarily opening new windows which muddies the waters considerably – and also seems to require more time for the verifying –, but does not make the exercise fail: