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Protected: Sanako Study 1200 hangs on “changing control method”?

2013/03/13 Enter your password to view comments.

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Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, Glitches&Errors, Screencasts, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging Tags: ,

How to prevent squealing noise on the brown headphones AKA audio feedback

2013/03/13 Leave a comment
  1. Symptom:high-pitched squealing sound, usually when logged into the computers along the  wall (listening stations –other computers have different black headsets which are not as prone to this problem,) and not wearing the headset.
  2. Short answer: LRC Assistants will let the student who causes the squealing noise know:
    1. ”Turn the volume knob on the brown headset down!”
    2. “You can turn it back up once you have put the headset on”.
  3. Explanation:
    1. The brown (analog) headsets on the listening stations exhibit this squealing noise  when
      1. the students do not wear the headset
      2. AND the microphone is too close to the headphone speakers
      3. AND the headphone volumne knob is turned up to high.
    2. This phenomenon is called an (audio) feedback loop:
      1. The headphone speakers echo what is spoken into the microphone (this is called sidetone).
      2. This is an important language learning feature (helps you control your pronunciation).
      3. However, it spirals out of control when students do not wear the headset. They also need to “wear the headset!” (general recommendation in the language lab) to have the benefit of the sidetone (and then their head insulates between speakers and microphones).
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, digital-audio-lab, Glitches&Errors, Listening-Stations Tags: , ,

How a teacher can organize a student-controlled high-stakes assessment recording session using the Sanako in the LRC

2013/03/12 Leave a comment
  1. How:
    1. An initial central microphone and speaker test (animated step-by-step) is recommended. Clear the session afterwards.
    2. Recording: Have the student operate the Sanako recorder to individually record (like during a self-access assignment)
      1. For starters, teacher can display this narrated individual recordings with the Sanako Student Recorder training screencast, it auto-starts and auto-cycles):
      2. And/or explain:
        1. Red Record Button to record;
        2. Blue Stop button to stop recording
        3. Green Play Button to play their assignment for review (also use the recap button to jump back)
        4. Menu: “File / New”, if they want to redo the assignment.
        5. Button: call/envelope to call the teacher on the teacher station for help (an audio connection between student and teacher should pause  the recorder automatically)
    3. Submitting:
      1. Individually by students:
        1. Menu “File” / “Save” (opt to save as student track mp3), to save locally, once student is happy to submit.
        2. (recommended:) upload the save file to a Moodle single-file upload assignment. Requires the teacher to create a Moodle Single file upload assignment, with optional attached file first.
      2. From the Sanako tutor at the teacher station:
        1. For entire class (If you do not need the flexibility to have students end at different times). TBA
        2. Group-wise (varying (staggered) recording times):  TBA
  2. Pro’s:
    1. Less distraction from language learning by having to operate technology (editing audio rather then practicing L2) and more language-learning-specific features (sidetone, recap) than if using Audacity.
    2. Works with the Sanako Study 1200 teacher stations (e.g. automatic pause of recorder when remote connecting to student during monitoring of recording task).
  3. Con’s:
    1. noise interference with dozens of student speaking in a confined space simultaneously. Nobody wants to return to the language lab station of yore, i.e. in a cubicle. However, a teacher-controlled oral exam (sample video, step-by-step video),
      1. can play a soothing background sound to students over the headphones which insulates them from their neighbors (prevents both distraction and cheating);
      2. there is no room  for distracting unrelated chit-chat;
      3. there is no need for distracting conversation when  students do technical troubleshooting, during highly structured question/response exams.
    2. More user flexibility/control  is achieved by more individual distracting operation of computer technology, which always implies more opportunity for user error. To reduce (not eliminate!) the error ratio:
      1. Students
        1. have to have received the general digital audio lab introduction for students.
        2. have to double-check their recordings for quality before submitting.
      2. Teachers
        1. have to monitor students’ recording progress closely
          1. which the Sanako Study 1200 teacher station (link cannot replace hands-on training) greatly facilitates (provided Students use  the Sanako Student Recorder, as described above).
          2. however, even with a classroom management system like Sanako Study 1200, it is impossible to completely monitor a class size of students operating computers. Therefore teachers
        2. have to check the validity of submissions before students leave.
          1. If you use submission through Moodle, here are 2 tips how to do this quicker:
            1. how to quickly download their Moodle file submissions
          2. Whether you use submission through Moodle or collection through Sanako tutor:
            1. view end of this video for how to quickly check validity of all file submissions in a folder using Audacity
          3. are advised to have a make-up assessment plan not only for those students missing the exam, but also for those that miss to complete the computerized multimedia assessment correctly.
Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, documentation, lms, multimedia-recording, Presenter-Computer, step-by-step-guides, Student-Computers, training Tags: , , ,

How a teacher can adapt a Sanako teacher-controlled class recording activity for individual student recordings

2013/03/12 Leave a comment
  1. Pedagogical need:
    1. A teacher wants her students to record a presentation,
    2. but allow the students to move around freely in their recording afterwards, when evaluating it, and submit the best out of 3 tries:
  2. Technical implementation:
    1. Using Sanako activity:model imitation of differing for multiple groups
      1. offers maximum control, least flexibility: students have to speak their presentation linearly
      2. if you anticipate presentations of considerably different lengths
        1. first try asking your students – might be useful to them anyway to realize if theirs turns out to be much shorter than others,
        2. if students are unsure about the length of their presentation,
          1. conduct the first recording with the entire class and
          2. have students note what time their recorder time counter is at when they finish, and send you the time as text via the button:envelope
          3. group your students (grouping step-by-step) into Sessions A-F by incrementing  time according to what the student icon bubble shows
        3. then differentiate class into as many groups as necessary (if <= the 6 “sessions”A-F  Sanako Study 1200 offers) end the recording at a different time for each group
      3. for each group (one or more up to 6),
        1. choose from dropdown activity:  model imitation recording
          1. and from dropdown: source: none) with more than one group at a time,
          2. and (optionally) for not more than one group at a time (suggest choosing the biggest group for that) from (dropdown: source: file )  the  background noise to play
        2. and after each group’s allocated time (+ buffer) is up,
        3. press button:end to end the recording
        4. after collection of the recordings from students is finished, you can
        5. press button:replay image, to let each student listen to her recording (linearly, without control), and
        6. press button:free image, to let  students freely move back and forth on the timeline)
        7. eventually, press button: clear, to be ready:
      4. for tries 2 and 3: repeat above steps.
    2. using Sanako activity: self access:
      1. provides
        1. the teacher some  control (none over this turning into more of an editing than coherent language practice exercise),
        2. and students more flexibility (hence requiring prior recording training for students);
      2. students individually
        1. record
        2. move around freely in the file
        3. replay
        4. record over prior footage and/or start completely over  (menu: File / new)
        5. press button:envelope to text message the teacher that they are finished and want their (final )  recording to be collected by the teacher
      3. teacher
        1. moves signaling students into a group  (grouping step-by-step) that is
          1. dedicated for collecting recordings (TBA:does this not empty their buffer?)
          2. and button:pc control: locked (= no further or accidental changes)
        2. once an appropriate  (compromise between finished students wanting to leave and teacher not having to collect each recording individually) number of students have been added to this group, presses
          1. button: end to collect and
          2. button: clear session to clear the button
        3. assesses the recordings in the folder that opens with audacity;
          1. in case of problems, moves students  back to the group dedicated to recording
          2. else lets students leave
Categories: Arabic, assessments, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, multimedia-recording, Polish, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, service-is-assessing, Spanish, Speaking, step-by-step-guides, Student-Computers, Swahili, Yoruba Tags: ,

How teachers find their Sanako files – once they are in the right network share folder

2013/03/11 Leave a comment
  1. The beginning of the folder name with your recordings corresponds to the date/ time the exam was collected (some translation required – the date time appears in this special format yyyy-MM-dd  hh_mm) so that the folders can also be easily sorted by name, see below).
  2. image
  3. When viewing the folder, click on the column headers to sort by name (sorting by date also often works): image
  4. If you forgot when you held your exam: The exam appointment is not only in the LRC room calendar (which can get busy and takes some prior setup to be searchable), but in your own NINERMAIL calendar, so that you can check there also: clip_image003
  5. We recommend that the exams (unlike the system tests (“nametests”)  which can be collected using the computer name as filename) be collected using the student username as recording filename, you can also search the student folder for students with your username: clip_image004
  6. We also recommend that you add a memorable (to you) tag to the folder name when collecting (in this case “level2 speaking exam1”) to make it easier for you to retrieve your assessments. The best tags in this world of computers helping us find things seem to be long unique strings (think of twitter hashtags).
Categories: digital-audio-lab, multimedia-recording, service-is-assessing Tags: , ,

How teachers find their Sanako materials – even from home

2013/03/10 Leave a comment
  1. The best way (from your office)  I described here and support, for lack of any other possibilities, by getting you the desktop shortcuts and Sanako student recorder.
  2. Other ways are supported by whatever home connection to network shares ITS supports:
    1. The myfiles portal: https://myfiles.uncc.edu
      1. how the sanako looks like in DriveS DVOL1 COAS LCS LRC UNCC myfiles portal
      2. You can use the folders listed in here,
        1. except you have to translate “S:” into (1) “DVOL1”.
        2. Rest  stays the same (2).
      3. Cons’:
        1. Slower network
        2. You cannot easily save back after comment on your students audio or text (but give it a shot).
    2. VPN
      1. which I test and explain here in detail,
      2. Pro’s: it is a better experience
        1. instead of it  requiring you to do yet another path translation, you can simply click here;
        2. you can (batch) open and save files (maintaining ownership) like on your office PC (no extra upload and download operations required, and no need to manually route files to students)
      3. Con’s:  Slower network.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, e-infrastructure, grading Tags: ,

General digital audio lab introduction for student users of the LRC

2013/03/02 Leave a comment
  1. The LRC has been upgraded from use of  solely Audacity to a digital audio lab and classroom management system geared towards language learning, and teaching. The Sanako Study 1200 is a professional software suite that includes a remote-controlled dual track audio recorder with many specialized features not found in OSS audio editors and simple free web-based recorders.  It successful use, even by so-called “digital natives”,  requires, for lack of exposure, training .
  2. Archived online versions of overview training (for your review; sorry: viewing is NOT equivalent to taking the training) were published here when the Sanako was first set up:
    1. Recorded LRC Director overview training screencast
    2. Student interface overview and summary
  3. Specific tasks:
    1. How student downloads, edits and submits files sent from the teacher with Sanako Study 1200 Homework –the ultimate training summary….
    2. How students can do voice insert recordings with Sanako Study 1200 student recorder – the ultimate training summary…
    3. More student task training videos are being added continuously as time permits, check back at this link: Sanako step-by-step training videos for students.
  4. Sorry, we have no self-study online tests to check learning outcomes in digital audio lab proficiency. However, we offer interactive live trainings for classes.
Categories: animated-GIFs, audience-is-students, digital-audio-lab, screenshot-albums, training Tags:

LRC offers generating audio files from your foreign language texts

2013/03/01 2 comments
  1. Would you like to expose your student to L2 listening materials beyond the audio learning materials that come with your textbook?
    1. Materials customized to the learning needs of your classes? From current affairs maybe?
    2. Would you prefer no to send them to  internet audio that may be difficult and time consuming to integrate?
    3. Do you lack the time to record speaking cues, oral exam questions or reading models yourself?
    4. Do you need audio files that you and your students can rewind/fast forward/replay, edit and record into with voice insert?
    5. 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?
  2. The LRC now offers generating audio files from your foreign language texts in many languages.
    1. 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).
    2. 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.
    3. Technical background and samples.
    4. Languages that are available in good quality: See links under this post;  other languages: please test with me..
  3. To request an audio file generation for your class, send the following information to the LRC
    1. regular reading/listening materials: plain digital text should do;
    2. SANAKO oral exam cues: please enter the text in this MS-Word table and add information in the additional columns for exam customization.
Categories: announcements, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, English, French, German, Italian, Listening, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Spanish Tags: , , ,