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How to play Windows media on the MAC OS platform

2012/11/12 Leave a comment

LRC-provided Windows Media encoded audio and video learning materials files can easily also be played on the MAC, since Microsoft supports Windows Media also on the Mac-platform.

Mac users can download wmv/wma support for the Mac OS X version 10.3.9 or later, QuickTime version 7.0 or later) from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx for free. In this download from Microsoft, Windows Media® Components for QuickTime are  now “new & improved”.

Categories: learning-materials, software Tags: , , , , ,

Protected: Our assessment results after 1.5 years with Sanako Study 1200

2012/11/09 Enter your password to view comments.

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Categories: audience-is-administration, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, learning-usage-samples, marketing, Metrics, recording-software, reports, Screencasts, service-is-assessing, Speaking, Spreadsheets, Writing Tags: ,

Announcing new MS-Word templates for writing assignments during face-to-face-classes in the LRC

2012/11/08 Leave a comment

Screenshot - 11_8_2012 , 10_30_25 AM

  1. Benefits
    1. MS-Word is technology that has become “transparent”for most users:
      1. Have teachers focus on assignment pedagogy, not authoring technology.
      2. Have students focus on the target language, not authoring technology.
    2. Document is protected (for restricting formatting to predefined Word-styles):
      1. Have students focus on form or content, but not on distracting formatting issues.
      2. Styles are designed to facilitate teacher monitoring students’ work using Sanako screensharing, like so:
    3. Take advantage of MS-Office Proofing tools (templates are preset for your target language).
    4. Take advantage of easy assignment file management with Sanako homework activity.
    5. Take advantage of internet lookup process, especially pedagogical if you combine with Sanako controlled-web-browsing activity
  2. Requirements:
    1. Teacher
      1. The easiest is to save the writing template for your language in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033 (or if your run 32-bit MS-Word on a 64-bit Windows, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033)
      2. Then base your writing assignment document on the template (e.g. by double-clicking the template in the folder you saved it to).
      3. Then save your writing assignment to your class material folder on the Sanako network share (from the office or in the LRC).
      4. In class, launch the Sanako homework activity.
    2. Student: none other than downloading and submitting the Sanako homework. image
Categories: announcements, audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, e-languages, office-software, Presenter-Computer, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, service-is-learning-materials-creation, service-is-programming, Student-Computers, Writing Tags: , , , , , ,

How to mix SANAKO- recorded individual students’ audio tracks together

2012/11/05 Leave a comment
  1. If the students’ audio tracks are not already time-aligned, first use audacity: "time shift tool" to align individual tracks  image (with this tool selected, you can move individual tracks back and forth, to the left or right).
  2. If/ When they are time-aligned, use audacity/ menu: tracks/"stereo track to mono".
Categories: audience-is-teachers, Back office, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, multimedia-recording, recording-software, service-is-applying-learning-tools, Speaking, Student-Computers Tags: ,

MS Windows Media Encoder, your free audio and video encoding utility

2012/11/02 Leave a comment
  1. Benefits
    1. Free
    2. Can cut and convert
      1. video
        1. Makes screencasts also.
        2. can capture video
      2. audio
        1. including pause removal.
    3. can stream
  2. Limitation: Outputs only to MS media formats (WMA, WMV) (
  3. Download here. There is also a 64-bit version.
    1. Officially supported on
    2. Windows 2000 and XP. I use it on Vista and Windows 7 (both 64-bit) also (for audio; no guarantees).
    3. f I remember correctly, Windows Media Encoder has a built-in limit to support only up to 4 CPU cores, you may have to limit CPU usage if you run on more advanced hardware platforms).
  4. a bit of config:
    1. For good quality video and audio, put a  prx file like this in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Media Components".
    2. Put a wme file like this anywhere and start by double clicking the file, then press green “Record” button.
Categories: Media, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, service-is-learning-materials-creation, software Tags: , ,

A few tools for speech transcription

2012/10/30 Leave a comment
  1. For teacher (research, learning material production etc.) transcription tasks (as opposed to language learner tasks, for which we can use the Sanako),
  2. if you have
    1. no switch (foot pedal) hardware (which usually comes with its own software), :
    2. no budget (a professional, but not free tool described here earlier is Swift-TX)
  3. available freeware tools that can speed up your transcriptions tasks are:
    1. Simple enough, but functional for the occasional transcription task: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ebreck/code/sscriber/.
    2. More oriented towards research and large-scale (corpora) transcriptions:
      1. http://transag.sourceforge.net/;
      2. LDC’s http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/tools/XTrans/.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, service-is-learning-materials-creation, software Tags:

Use SharePointDesigner here to quickly and cleanly edit legacy static web pages

2012/10/23 Leave a comment
  1. Confronted with the need to have faculty classify my variable speed animated GIF collection of Mandarin characters linked from static HTML pages, I find:
  2. SharePointDesigner is a FrontPage derivative, but still beats dealing with the special markup MS-Office tends to smuggle into your legacy web pages.
  3. And you can download it for free from MS here, install and open a file by right-clicking it and “Open with”, like so: image .
  4. User then can e.g. select a pinyin word, right-click it, access the font-dialogue, like so: image, and, to align this alphabetic pinyin list to the progression in the syllabus if the Chinese language program, assign a heat-scale like so: image. E.g this would denote an easy character for Chinese 101: image.
  5. Note 1: Do not use SharePointDesigner 2010,, this doe not allow easy editing of single web pages anymore: image.
  6. Note 2: The CSS style markup that SharePointDesigner puts in smartly for  the font color change is ignored by Internet Explorer 8 (Huh?!), so we will have to TBA:ask students to use Firefox instead.
  7. Note3: Why not just use MS-Word as HTML-Editor. Even if you save as and choose “Web-page filtered, like so: image, to avoid MS-Office specific markup, MS-word puts spurious markup in that makes it not only slow down the road to open the file, but also difficult to post-process them with regular expression (I have a few hundred copies to make for different animation speeds). Compare the file sizes here:
  8. image
Categories: audience-is-teachers, Back office, e-infrastructure, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, Mandarin, service-is-learning-materials-creation, software, Writing Tags:

How teachers can use MS-Word Mail merge with filtering and if-then-else to quickly provide personalized feedback based to students depending on grade

2012/10/18 Leave a comment
  1. Intelligence is adaptation to feedback. Providing personalized feedback to students depending on their performance could make student development much more successful.
  2. Intelligence is expensive. How can the teacher provide personalized feedback time-efficiently? Likely by blending artificial intelligence with her own.
  3. Sounds like Sci-fi? A great practical example, using existing familiar IT infrastructure, you can find here:  MS-Word’s (2010; 2007 works the same) mail merge feature, on the basis of a downloaded Moodle gradebook with student results, can customize semi-automatically your reusable feedback email message template to individual recipient’s performance and needs:
  4. Step-by-step instructions:  http://teaching.uncc.edu/moodle/grade-book/how-to/using-mail-merge-grade-book.
  5. Screencast of the webinar instruction: http://mt202.sabameeting.com/SiteRoots/main/User/GuestAttend.jhtml?pb=true&s_guid=0000018151460000013a0a22cfb39443&domain=/Customers/uncc&domain=/
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-learning, grading, lms, office-software, Screencasts, step-by-step-guides Tags: