Classroom-technology | 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.

2012/06/13 plagwitz Leave a comment

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).

2012/05/04 plagwitz Leave a comment

Currently the preferred layout is Exam 2: Choose this when the Sanako starts

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:

2012/05/03 plagwitz Leave a comment

… and sent us a thick envelope chock-full of these very sweet handwritten thank-you notes.

I have twin nieces their age, so I know that it can take a bit to get them to write these notes (I am looking at you, Miss M…! Smile ).

The little man on the screen they mention, that can talk in tongues is the Microsoft-Deskbot, and the headphones they mention were connected to a Sanako Study 1200 digital audio lab.

I hope we can upgrade all this to Windows 7 this summer, and that the Language Academy will be back next spring to admire it all…

2012/04/30 plagwitz Leave a comment

View screens (best viewed side by side, but note that left and right screen are not synchronized):
1. for full slide show (note the included short links for convenient further reading), left screen
2. for Sanako interface and full audio track, right screen.
Table of contents:
1. Overview of a Sanako Oral Exam
2. Examples of Exam teachers’ exam question recordings
3. Example of a Sanako Exam
4. Loop induction
5. Step-by-Step of administering a Sanako oral exam
6. Grading Sanako oral exam student files
  1. Sanako voice insert for
    1. facilitating recording oral assignments for student without hard-coded pauses
    2. commenting on student responses during grading
7. Sanako authoring tool for providing visual on top of aural cues to students