recording-software | Thomas' Work Space

Can speech recognition tools be soundly applied for speaking practice in second language acquisition programs? Paper at SLRF 2014

2014/10/26 plagwitz Leave a comment

For your convenience, I provide two versions of this presentation: the slide deck:

And a screencast of my presentation:

(Unfortunately, PowerPoint 2013 seems to have introduced a bug in alignment of narration and video. If they fix it, I will republish),

2013/10/17 plagwitz Leave a comment

Similar to grading video recording assignments with Moodle Kaltura, You can enter in 2 ways:
1. By clicking on the assignment like your students:
2. Or by clicking on Activities: NanoGong Voices
Before you make it to the assignment page and can see the NanoGong plugin, you may have to bypass some Java warning dialogues.
On the assignment page:
1. Click (1) speaker symbol for the recorder control to show up.
2. You can also
  1. enter (1) feedback
  2. or (2) re-sort the submissions – we had to click this once for the recordings to actually shows up (seems to refresh the page).
  3. I have not had the chance to see the results in the Gradebook, but here are some screenshots from blogs of users that have:

2013/10/17 plagwitz Leave a comment

The rich HTML editor recorder plug-in is supposed to make it easier for the teacher (than other recorders that require the teacher to save to file and upload the file to a Moodle activity). Here is how it can work:
Add an activity which includes the rich HTML editor plugin, e.g. a page.
Click on the loudspeaker icon denotes NanoGong among the editor tools.
A window will open that includes the recorder JAVA applet (you may have to bypass Java warnings):
Click the red record button and speak.
When done, click insert.
Result:
Note, however, that so far I have run into issues actually displaying this teacher-added NanoGong recorder content.

2013/10/17 plagwitz Leave a comment

Once, when submitting, I got this error? But other teachers managed to test the NanoGong recording assignment application successfully when working as a “permitted student”? That may be related to using a project site.
If you try to use NanoGong in a browser not fully supportive of Java, you can get easily stuck:

Firefox which has not been explicitly configured to allow JAVA applets – you will get stuck w/o the option to bypass warning dialogues.
Chrome is not very forgiving either (here for the HTML editor plug-in):
, but you can get past it: .
I am running into more problems using the rich HTML editor recorder plug-in which I supposed to make it easier for the teacher to provide their own audio to their students:

IE8 does not display the content at all.
Chrome 30 spits out raw code, and when you locate and click on the loudspeaker icon, I only get this : .
IE8, on the other hand, draws a blank:

2013/10/17 plagwitz Leave a comment

NanoGong is primarily meant for submitting audio recordings to the teacher and fellow students.
However, it can also serve as a simple audio recorder that can save a recording to a files:
1. accessible anywhere where you have internet access (on a JAVA-capable device. I have not tested NanoGong’s compatibility with smartphones or tablets, though) and a microphone – provided you/your teacher have added a NanoGong activity to the Moodle Course.
2. Might be useful for collecting recordings as pieces for your language learner ePortfolios.
To use NanoGong as an audio recorder: Instead of (or on top of/before) submitting your recording to the course, click the rightmost button: :
1. and you can save your recording to a file
2. ,
3. in a variety of formats (compressed WAV is likely most compatible),
4. including in the different speeds: that you de/increased the playback speed here: .

2013/10/17 plagwitz Leave a comment

You may be prompted to update JAVA – likely a not a bad idea:
Click “RUN”:
Check (1) “Accept”and Click (2) “Run”:
Click “Don’t Block”:
Even more annoying when warning dialogues do not come to the foreground, and your computer/web browser simply seems to be stuck. Check your task bar/dock for blinking/jumping JAVA notifications, like here: .
You have to bypass these dialogues only once – per session (lab) or possibly per computer. Choose the right answer, for university assignments, it is safe to “Allow! Allow! Allow! (“run”, “don’t block:”, update”, what ever – use common sense).
Remember, thinks could be worse, – like if you try to use NanoGong in a Firefox that has not been explicitly configured to allow JAVA applets – read more on our troubleshooting NanoGong page.