Screencasts | Thomas' Work Space

How to do Sanako Oral Exams with large classes, but few licenses: A workaround using partial classroom layouts

2011/09/07 plagwitz Leave a comment

When you open the Study1200 tutor, a dialogue comes up which lets you select you the “classroom layout’. What this actually means – since the physical classroom (LRC layout) is obviously immutable –, is: which computers do you want the Study1200 to connect.

The “template classroom” (this happens to be just the default name within Sanako) tries to connect all students logged in on computer in COED434 to the teacher from the “corridor” (= where Study1200 leaves all computers that it knows of, but that you do “into” want to let into the classroom; the corridor has link in the bottom center of the Study1200 teacher window, and it flashes if there is a change “in “ the corridor Stuy1200 wants to make you aware of) that the Study1200.

However, beyond the 20th client (first come, first serve), this will fail because of licensing restrictions, and a grey exclamation mark will appear in the classroom layout in the Study1200 window for these student icons.

The “left-half”and “right-half” layouts that I created load only the computers in either the left or right half of the COED434 classroom (each without the wall/window-facing computers at the very edges) into the classroom layout (other logged-in students will remain in the “corridor”, linked in the bottom center of the tutor interface, if you want to add select students – note that the student icon will not appear on screen in their approximate physical position in the classroom.

You can also bring up the dialogue from which you can choose classroom layout after the initial startup of the tutor: Go to top menu: file / classroom layout. A 45-second screencast of this switching our classroom layouts in Sanako Study 1200 is available for download (requires Windows Media player).

In the screencast, you can see how the visual layout on screen reflects the physical layout in the classroom (the number labels on top of our computer monitors appear (optionally) in seat numbers): rotate by 90% clock- or counterclockwise (I wish we would have not only more licenses, but also a higher screen resolution. Stay tuned).

This technique of splitting the classroom, unloading and loading half of it at a time, you can exploit for administering oral exams consecutively with class sizes (current maximum is 25/30, depending on level) that exceed the number of licenses we have (currently 20 + teacher).

This technique of excluding computers from connecting to the teacher we could also use to merge the listening station computers, even though they have a different audio hardware configuration (analog headsets only, no Sanako headsets with built-in sound card and disabled on board sound) into the main software image without consuming valuable licenses – not without other problems.

Categories: all-languages, assessments, e-languages, Screencasts, service-is-it-managing, Speaking Tags: licensing, maps, oral-exams, sanako-study-1200

LRC Outlook/Exchange 2010 Resource Calendaring: How to cancel meetings in OWA

2011/08/30 plagwitz 4 comments

View instead a short screencast how to cancel meeting requests in OWA.
Or: You start out with a meeting request conversation like this, showing:
1. a request send from account LRC help (example)
2. an accepted meeting response from the resource (e.g. the room) account
to cancel that meeting, you can go to your (!) calendar in OWA,
1. select (click on) the meeting and choose “delete”
  1. either from the context menu after right-click the meeting
    1. or from the ribbon after selecting the meeting
  2. if the meeting was repeating/recurring, you will be given the option to
you can also just open the meeting and choose from the top menu the “Cancel meeting” button, then press menu button: “Send update”:
1. 1. Again, for recurring/repeating meetings, you will be asked to confirm what exactly you want to cancel, the individual occurrence or the entire series of meetings:
2. You have the opportunity to include an informative note in your update before sending.
After the cancellation has gone through, this is how the results will look like in the e-paper trail:
1. “sent items”
2. a cancelled meeting conversation in your “inbox” in “conversation view”:
3. Here is a complete icon legend:

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure, Screencasts, service-is-library, training Tags: 2007, 2010, 2011, calendaring, cancelling, live@edu, ms-exchange, outlook, outlook-live, resources, scheduling

Sanako Study 1200 Workshop Fall 2011

2011/08/18 plagwitz Leave a comment

Those who wanted to, but did not make it to the vendor training by Sanako’s David Golden (who gave us a basic orientation displaying functions of teacher screen and student screen and demonstrated basic activity functions and what happens at the student screen), might want to have a look at the unedited screencast footage (for Windows Media Player on Windows, if necessary, resort to LRC) I recorded during the entire 2 1/4-hour session:

the first one recording the screen of a sample student station
1. with an explanation of the student player at the beginning,
the second one recording the screen of the teacher computer
1. have a look at the end around 2:10:00 where we connect a group of students via screensharing and audio (headsets), so that a group, dispersed across the classroom, can orally collaborate on an MS-Word document that one student types into but all students see.
2. The Sanako features used for this are from the dropdown: activity: discussion, and from the button: pc control:model student. Both can be combined with each other, and with a third feature, the capability to subdivide the class in multiple groups.
3. This application I found useful when, before reviewing materials with one half of the class, I sent my more advanced learners off to a more independent and applied group writing task. I allows any member of the class to join the advanced group, no matter where they are located. It also forces the group members to communicate all the target language aurally to the model student. Finally, it affords them access (though not individually) to the language learning tools of a computer while working on their tasks

Categories: all-languages, e-languages, Screencasts, training, workshops Tags: sanako-study-1200

Sanako Study 1200 Workshop Spring 2011

2011/08/18 plagwitz Leave a comment

Those who wanted to, but did not make it to my introductory training for the newly installed Sanako Study-1200 in LRC COED434 might want to have a look at the unedited screencast footage of the teacher computer that I recorded during this session (for Windows Media Player on Windows, if necessary, resort to LRC PCs).

Categories: all-languages, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, Screencasts, software, training, workshops Tags: sanako-study-1200

Our Office 2010 & Office365/Live@Edu/Live not yet @Edu/Ninermail Upgrade: A running log

2011/08/11 plagwitz 1 comment

Just logging some notes, observations, issues, step-by-step instructions…
Office 2010ff install (office2010-full-install-labadmn.wmv [all links are to the folder only, choose screencast by name):
1. 0:00-2:00: you can easily install Office 2010 from the ISO file without physical CD media, if you first install the free Magic Disc, then from the system notification tray, mount the ISO file to the , open the pseudo-drive from Explorer, which starts the installer through Autorun
2. 2:00-4:00: since we do not want frozen imaged lab computers to ask for the installation media “on first run”of Office features, we choose button:customize, tab:installation options: “run all from Computer” (top – level selection is sufficient, rest of video is looking around), then button:upgrade
3. Lots of waiting ensues…
4. At the end, 28:55, “Microsoft office professional plus 2010 encountered and error during setup”, also the installer complains once about another instance running, then 38:12 asks for rebooting,
Office 2010 first run (office2010first-run-excel-web-app-test.wmv):
1. after reboot, the installation seems to have completed
2. changing Office update policies seems to be not allowed
3. file /save&send / save to web / windows live / log in / browse to a folder / give a filename:
4. type something, save and exit
5. in web browser, open windows live:
  1. log in, go to menu:SkyDrive, browse to the folder, find the file, click on it to view in browser,
  2. from top menu, choose edit in browser, type something, save,
  3. from top menu choose edit in excel, wait for download to open, type something, save&close,
  4. go back to web browser, open the update document from the right users (lab staff).
sharing with windows live
Natural language features testing in MS-Office 2010 is being logged here.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, documentation, e-infrastructure, office-software, Screencasts Tags: 2010, live@edu, ms-office-365, office-software

QuickNotes: For ELTI 201/202/501 Student Recordings with Sanako Study1200

2011/07/29 plagwitz Leave a comment

This is 20 students class doing a model imitation for English phonetics and grammar – use right half of classroom plus 2 rightmost columns of left half.
Have a couple of spare student computers logged in as labadmn (not as presenter: has no permissions to s-drive to save recordings) for emergencies.
Your students will log in, then take their break. Wait until entire class shows up in the Sanako Classroom layout. Then you can lock their keyboard and mouse – but remember when computers go into locked mode, Sanako cannot control them
See http://plagwitz.org, upper right corner “Quick links” for the path to copy/paste. Or, on the teacher computer in LRC 434, in folder C:\Temp, you can find a shortcut to the Sanako folders
1. “media” with teacher audio (to be prepared with pauses and beeps once it has been recorded and sent; you can easily prepare it yourself: download and view how with Windows Media Player);
2. “student” with student recordings
You can download and view with Windows Media Player the (unedited) screencast of our summative walkthrough here.

Categories: all-languages, assessments, documentation, e-languages, English, Screencasts Tags: model-imitation, sanako-study-1200

Moodle metacourses, part V: The support workflow: Uploading

2011/06/17 plagwitz 2 comments

In Windows Explorer, sort file by name. Select as many files as to make a meaningful content unit (e.g. a component, like lab audio, of a textbook), but not more than 64MB (if Windows Explorer Status bar does not keep count for you, right-click with multiple files selected and choose Properties from the context menu).
Right click on the selection and from the context menu, use 7-zip or the in-built windows Send-to zip-files (neither has a move-files-into-archive option like InfoZip’s command-line zip, so you have to keep track of files completed manually). In 7-zip, you can use “store” which is faster and, unlike attempts of further compressing the already highly optimized input files, should not result in an increase of the file size of the archive. See zipping screencast.
In the Moodle Resource course corresponding to the language of the file upload, go to lower left corner menu: files, “make a folder”, the name of which identifies the component you are uploading, enter the folder, “upload” the zip file into the folder, next to the file uploaded, click “Unzip”, when done, delete the zip file (to save space). See uploading screencast
Repeat for all resource files (audio and non-audio ) for all languages
see also here on how to batch upload into Moodle