software | Thomas' Work Space

Software-based laser pointer in PowerPoint

2014/03/26 plagwitz Leave a comment

You can activate software laser pointer in PowerPoint by pressing CTRL and P (= Pointer) while displaying your slideshow. Then you can draw on your show to highlight points, just like with a laser pointer – but unlike that, it cannot run out of battery power!
Other keys you can press:

Erase = E (unlike with a laser pointer, you have to),
deActivate = CTRL and A.

Other advantages: unlike some other screen drawing tools that freeze the screen (MS-ZoomIt notably), the software laser pointer:

allows you to proceed through the PowerPoint presentation normally;
can be saved as ink annotations, and will show up if you convert your PowerPoint to a video or play it with narrations.

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, office-software Tags: ink-annotations, ms-powerpoint, pointer

Save the web, with Clip to OneNote

2014/03/26 plagwitz Leave a comment

No, I don’t mean save from proprietary vendors or from spies Smile – I mean: save it to your personal storage during web browsing, like so:

The essence of http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/17/onenote-clipper-clip-the-web-right-to-onenote/. https://www.onenote.com/Clipper/OneNote should be useful not only for personal research on the web.

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-learning, office-software, websites Tags: clip2onenote, ms-onenote

Common commands in Speech Recognition for all languages supported

2014/03/17 plagwitz Leave a comment

(I cut a corner and left out the language variants ZH-TW and EN-UK, sorry, we do not teach those here):

Categories: audience-is-students, e-languages, English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Operating-system, Spanish, Spreadsheets, Vocabulary Tags: 7, ms-windows, speech-recognition

Why meeting organizers should cancel meetings from their calendar and not by email

2014/03/17 plagwitz Leave a comment

Because cancelling from the calendar like in video2 here sends the meeting participants not only a (0)message, which includes a handy “Remove from calendar” button,
but also – in case they fail to see the message – a (1) “Cancelled” indicator on their calendars,
while third parties who want to schedule a meeting with the meeting participants, see those participants (including an Rooms that “participate”) as (2) free/available during the time slot of the cancelled meeting,
as you can see in this example:

Categories: e-infrastructure, office-software Tags: calendaring, delegatescalendaring, live@edu, ms-exchange, office365, outlook

Faculty Workshop Spring 2014: "Mira, mamá! Sin manos!". Practice speaking L2 with automatic intelligent feedback by operating LRC PCs through speech recognition instead of keyboard/mouse

2014/03/13 plagwitz Leave a comment

When: March 28, 2:15-3:15, April 4, 2:00-3:00
Where: LRCRoomCoed434
What: Language learning speaking practice assignments with automatic intelligent feedback using Windows Speech Recognition
1. As part of the foreign language tools we installed with Windows 7 this past Fall, we got speech recognition on the LRC PCs for 6 languages (English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Spanish ) representing over 85% of our enrolment.
2. Unlike the speech recognition that comes with learning content packages like Auralog or Rosetta Stone
  1. which had to be purchased, for individual languages, but stopped functioning on the server on a long time ago,
  2. was limited to built-in content ,
  3. was restricted by a separate account system,
3. Windows Speech Recognition is
  1. free (with the operating system), runs on the local lab pcs, and should be a bit more robust,
  2. content agnostic and hence can integrate flexibly with your curriculum and contribute meaningfully to your students’ progression,
  3. can be integrated with the existing user accounts.
4. We combine Windows speech recognition with the new LRC screencast software, MS-Office and Moodle to offer a simple self-access assignment type that
  1. is available on all 45 LRC PCs (= scales even to large enrolment languages and 1st-year classes that cannot use the 24-seat Sanako for face-to-face speaking proficiency training)
  2. and blends the “artificial intelligence” of speech recognition with human intelligence to provide students with immediate automated feedback during pedagogically sound speaking practice, with minimal grading overhead for the teacher (= grade secure assignments by looking at the very end of a student-submitted screencast).
5. This workshop will show actual speech recognition usage and assignment samples
  1. so far in English, French, German;
  2. if you want to bring your own samples to this workshop – there might still be time- , or to an upcoming faculty showcase, I can help you during my biweekly LRC clinics (see LRC main schedule, or schedule your own).
6. We will step you through – hands-on, including tips&tricks – a sample voice training and assignment completion: Better than my made-up assignments would be if you could bring one or more concrete tasks to be solved using speech recognition that we could prepare assigning to your students. Here are some parameters for that:
  1. Speech recognition can replace mouse and keyboard when operating the computer. Voice commands are simpler than sentences, so this could be a beginner task, as long as you have students study the (limited) command vocabulary (which I will make available during the workshop).
  2. Speech recognition can replace any writing task with dictation. Suggestions for proficiency levels:
    1. I have dictated a web page assigned for reading comprehension in a textbook used in 1200 or even a as a false beginner.
    2. However, a one-time training helping the computer recognize an individual’s voice is required and comes sentences that vary in complexity between languages
      1. English: very easy, Beginner level;
      2. German, French: let’s have a look together, I’d say 1202 level;
      3. Japanese: 3000 level, I was told;
      4. Please test with me during the workshop: Spanish, Chinese.
Download the SlideDeck (too big too embed)

Categories: audience-is-teachers, English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, os, Slideshows, Spanish, Speaking, workshops Tags: 7, ms-windows, speech-recognition

How to resolve error “Speech Recognition could not start because the language configuration is not supported”

2014/03/12 plagwitz Leave a comment

Problem: I have seen this error ,
Root cause: when the display language and speech language do not match (the latter is set to default to the former in the LRC, but it seems they can get out of sync), as you can witness here (English display does not match Chinese speech recognition):
Solution: Follow the instructions in the error message, i.e.

Access the Speech recognition control panel here:
Then change the speech recognition language to match the display language, like I am doing here:

Quick workaround: Not sure about how quick, but in the LRC, you can also just try and restart the computers, they are “frozen” to a default configuration in display and speech recognition language (English/English – matches).

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, Glitches&Errors, Operating-system Tags: speech-recognition

Have patience if you see “No free/busy information could be retrieved” on Room mailbox

2014/03/12 plagwitz Leave a comment

When trying to schedule a room, I am now seeing this:

When ctrl-right clicking: , I get this as my connection status:

Becomes available after a long while:

What can I tell my users how long is the wait currently usually is?

Categories: e-infrastructure, Glitches&Errors, office-software Tags: calendaring, live@edu, ms-exchange, office365, outlook

Mapping of Language Student Locations using PowerView

2014/03/09 plagwitz Leave a comment

What do our language students call home? Based on a pivot-table that counts zip codes, let PowerView tell you, which is can now distributed as a free add-in for Excel 2013 Prof, but you need to enable it (under File / Options / Add-Ins).
Comes with a nifty zoom:
Click, then Hover a data bubble for more info;
Like with Bing Maps Visualization, the weighting is surprising: