Archive
Successful test of the new streaming video recording assignment for language proficiency assessment in Moodle.
- Video recordings allow for a more authentic assessment of spoken language proficiency. Today, we could test a new Moodle video assignment type for Almut’s Summer II Elementary German II class: Preparing a natural sounding statement on one’s favorite holiday. This Moodle assignment type is an extension to students of the teacher video upload tool using a service Kaltura – we hinted at that earlier.
- Teachers, when editing their Moodle course, can find this assignment type in the dropdown: Activity as “Video”.
- The assignment options: Note that creating a video assignment is pretty much the same as creating other assignments in Moodle, and so is grading, except instead of reading, you view the submission, right within the web page.
- An example of guiding questions for a recording assignment is here (topic: holiday, language: German):
- Here is how the teacher sees the student submission in the gradebook.
- Caveat: in Safari, we were not able to close the video popup, after viewing it from the class roster, and could only back out of the entire gradebook. Instead, from the roster, first open the page with the individual student submission, and review the video there on that page:
- For the student experience, see here.
- Further reading: The CTL has a number of step-by-step instructions which we recommend for further reading: Student Video Assignment, and specifically for students: Upload a Video for a Video Assignment; for instructors: Grading Video Assignment Submissions.
- The LRC had originally prepared to record the students with our old, handheld mini-DV cameras, import the movie into iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, then find a way to get the files (with easily identifiable submitter names) to the teachers. Hitherto, our best option was compression of the video to to fit into the Moodle 64MB file upload size limit (which, even if you decide to shoot and produce your video elsewhere and bring it as an uploadable file to the assignment , does not apply to the Video assignment either).
- Preliminary testing seems to indicate that video recording of pairs/dialogues is also possible with the LRC’s webcam setup . However, because of the angle restrictions, capturing such sessions will be less natural.
- Overall, the new Moodle video assignment seems a major improvement for all parties – students, teachers and support –, and can help with more authentic assessment of
Keyboard overlay stickers improve foreign character writing support in the LRC
Some non-western, but character-based languages benefit from having keyboard overlay stickers installed. Here is a list of what the LRC has:
| Amount | Languages | installed@ |
| 3 | Arabic | 1 list. station, 2 rightmost computers in the front row of the left (teacher perspective) half of the main classroom |
| 2 | Farsi | 2 rightmost computers in the middle row of the left (teacher perspective) half of the main classroom |
| 1 | Greek | 1 list. station |
| 3 | Russian | 1 list. station, 2 rightmost computers of the rear row of the left (teacher perspective) half of the main classroom |
Here are photos of the Arabic and Cyrillic keyboards:
We installed the stickers, so that they reflect the software layout of the keyboard that you get when choosing the respective language from the international toolbar. Note that the letters marked in red on the Cyrillic keyboard picture below are not supported by the Russian keyboard layout:
Since only one set can be added to any existing physical keyboard, the teacher computer keyboard can not have an overlay. The student computers with overlays are the listening stations and computers 6,7,12,13,18,19 on the LRC layout map.
Remember that the On-screen-keyboard software remains accessible at all PC’s through clicking “Start”, “Run”, typing “OSK”, clicking "OK".
Example where you can get your own keyboard overlay stickers.
Speaking dictionary/pronunciation help, Part 1–the pedagogy
On the LRC PC’s, you can copy foreign language text to the clipboard (or with non-western languages to an MS-Word file) and have a wizard (right click, choose: “Read Clipboard”) pronounce for you, like so:
The following languages are supported:
| Language | Demo |
| American English | |
| French | Le Monde |
| German | |
| Italian | |
| Japanese | Japanese |
| Korean | |
| Portuguese (Brazilian) | |
| Russian | Gazetta |
| Spanish | El Pais@10:34 |
Note 1: In reality, the audio quality is smoother than in these demos which needed to be recorded over the network using MSTSC, because of Windows Media Encoder not being able to capture the special video overlay of the MS-Agent technology.
Note 2: Deskbot has problems understanding the Windows clipboard text encoding of some non-western languages. For these languages, instead of simple double-clicking the deskbot wizard to have him read out the clipboard (which would result in gibberish), paste your text into a MS-Word document and have deskbot read this document for you instead: Use the Deskbot option “Read Word document” (allowing Word to translate the character encoding into a format Deskbot can understand enough to aurally (even if not visually) display).
Listen to the Deskbot’s self-introduction when you log in to learn how to change the default language to the language you study.
You can also change other settings (in the LRC automatically limited to your current user session) by right-clicking the deskbot notification-area icon 
Or if you want to configure your own Windows XP computer to support foreign language text-to-speech, the procedure and settings we recommend are documented in Part 2.
Protected: How to conduct an easy oral exam with Sanako1200 (Model imitation/Question Response) – Part II: Implementation/instruction of examined students
Foreign Language Character Input on Windows XP in the LRC
The LRC offers the following foreign language characters writing support:
| American English | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Arabic | Google;MS;MS-maren;fontboard | maybe later, now osk | demo |
| British English | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Dutch | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Farsi | Google;MS | maybe later, now osk | demo |
| French | us international | not needed | us-int |
| German | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Greek | Google;MS | maybe later, now osk | demo |
| Italian | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Japanese | MS | not needed | |
| Korean | MS | maybe later, now osk | demo |
| Mandarin | MS;pinyinput | not needed | pinyin |
| Portuguese (Brazilian) | us international | not needed | us-int |
| Russian | Google;MS | maybe later, now osk | demo |
| Spanish | us international | not needed | us-int |
The support is best accessed from the “international toolbar”, like so: 
You can also use the windows on-screen keyboard to input non-Western characters on a computer that has not the corresponding keyboard overlay stickers. In the small-group workspaces, which have writing pads, you can also use the MS-Handwriting IME for East-Asian languages.
The on-screen keyboard (OSK) for foreign language character input on MS-Windows
A little known, but useful tool for non-western languages which can not be represented by the us-international keyboard layout, when no hardware keyboard is available:
The Windows on screen keyboard reflects the soft keyboard installed via Control panel / Regional and language options / Text input languages. and selected via the language toolbar, like so:
Easiest access, click Start, click Run, type “osk”, click “OK”. Or try this on XP: 
How a teacher grades a Blackboard audio recording assignment
- Switch to interactive view, if your vertical scrollbar does not show up, and thus the assignment column is hidden (or reduce the font size in Firefox, e.g. by holding CTRL and rolling the mouse scroll wheel):
- Once you see the assignment column, you can either download all submissions as a zip file, open it with the built-in zip tools in Windows (XP or newer). This is especially practical if you want to then select all recordings and drag and drop them into an audacity window, for doing easy to comparative grading of student submissions, as described earlier.
- To grade,
- you still need to click next to the green exclamation marks which indicate where there is an assignment to be graded,
![clip_image002[5]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/clip_image0025_thumb.gif?w=569&h=465 "clip_image002[5]")
- on the arrow keys which unfold a menu.
![clip_image002[7]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/clip_image0027_thumb.gif?w=593&h=483 "clip_image002[7]")
- you still need to click next to the green exclamation marks which indicate where there is an assignment to be graded,
- This gets you to the grade details:
- You can also listen to the student recording submission by clicking on the file linked behind “users; file”.
![clip_image002[5]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/clip_image0025_thumb.jpg?w=600&h=488 "clip_image002[5]")
- Fill out your grade comments and grade.
- Instead of doing (only) written comments, you could also oral feedback grade the student recording, and re-upload this new recording.
- Finish by clicking button:”submit”.
- Next in series: How the student reviews a grade Blackboard audio recording assignments: TBA
- First in Series: A better way to do student homework audio recordings in the Sanako LAB 300, using Blackboard:Assignment.
![clip_image002[5]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/clip_image0025.gif "clip_image002[5]")
![clip_image002[7]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/clip_image0027.gif "clip_image002[7]")
![clip_image002[5]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/clip_image0025.jpg "clip_image002[5]")
How a student submits a Blackboard model imitation audio recording assignments
- Access the assignment in the location of your Blackboard course that your instructor pointed you to.
- Download the model audio recording attached to the assignment to your desktop (if any).
- Right-click on the downloaded file, choose open with (something else but the Sanako Duo which you will use to record).
- Play and listen to the model.
- Imitate the model, recording yourself using the previous instruction, using pause/play as needed.
- Upload the recording into the Blackboard assignment by clicking “browse to local file” [i.e. where you saved your recording].
- Click “submit”. If you get an error “Not a valid file’, try using another web browser to open the assignment and submit the file.
- Next steps: see How the teacher grades a Blackboard audio recording assignments
- First in series: A better way to do student homework audio recordings in the Sanako LAB 300, using Blackboard:Assignment
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Other ways to find help
If you cannot find it here, look there: 5,500 Language-Learning Links and Programs for learning or teaching 150 languages
Shortcuts:Our Lists, Our Maps, LRC Staff Moodle Site,LRC Project Moodle Site, 49erexpress, UNCC Moodle, Student Recordings: s:claslcslrcsanakostudent
Learning usage samples: Sanako oral exam, Kaltura webcam presentation, Dictation with speech recognition, Sanako written exam, Chinese and Japanese interactive stroke-order practice
Test the Sanako Installer, Webbrowser Popup Konfigurator for XP, or Windows7, faster LRC TeacherPC Log-in Let MS facilitate diacritics writing by installing for you US-International keyboard layout
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