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The big LRC SANAKO “How do I…?”

2012/12/05 Leave a comment

(Work in progress).

View larger Word version than this embed:

Categories: all-languages, animated-GIFs, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, digital-audio-lab, documentation, e-languages, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, learning-usage-samples, Listening, LRCRoomCoed434, Presenter-Computer, Reading, recording-software, Screencasts, screenshot-albums, service-is-documenting, service-is-training, Speaking, Student-Computers, training, Writing Tags:

Fall 2012 Faculty Workshop II: Clinic on creating teaching materials for use with the Sanako

2012/11/22 Leave a comment
      1. (Being planned and scheduled, therefore this post is a work in progress, please stay tuned: ).
      2. As a continuation (and practical application ) of our previous Intermediate Sanako Teaching Techniques Workshop (and a repetition of our Learning material creation Clinic from the summer), we will create learning materials.
      3. Bring some ideas and materials. The Sanako and entire LRC infrastructure aims to lower the technical authoring requirements.
        1. We can record remotely, all authoring teachers at the same time, your source (model/question material) which you will be able to distribute as easily (“ loop induction”)  from the Sanako teacher station. Bring some questions your students should be able to respond to in L2, and be prepared to read some text that you want them to repeat, for pronunciation practive
        2. We can author hand-outs for so-called “homework” (actually reading and writing, with supervision and collection by the teacher as easy as the handout): It just takes opening one of our customized LRC MS-Word templates. I will hand out (more loop induction) “homework” files to aid your work. Bring some texts and essay writing tasks
        3. PowerPoint exam files with visual cues: bring some ideas for vocabulary quizzes.
Categories: announcements, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, documentation, e-languages, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, learning-usage-samples, Listening, LRCRoomCoed434, Reading, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Speaking, workshops, Writing Tags: , ,

Fall 2012 Faculty Workshop I: Intermediate Sanako Teaching Techniques

2012/11/22 Leave a comment
  1. (Being planned and scheduled, therefore this post is a work in progress, please stay tuned: ).
  2. Using the Sanako classroom management system for training (“loop induction”),
  3. we will present learning usage models, based on the work done by our language teachers in the LRC Sanako this term.
  4. We will then provide you with hands-on practice how you can do the same with the Sanako system.
  5. This will hopefully give you some ideas for for writing LRC visits into your face-to-face teaching syllabus next term.
  6. To facilitate this, we will continue with a follow-up Workshop II: Clinic, where we will help you prepare your Sanako-based learning materials for next term.
  7. You can review our past Sanako Workshops (online screencast).
Categories: announcements, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, documentation, e-languages, Listening, LRCRoomCoed434, Reading, service-is-applying-learning-tools, service-is-training, Speaking, workshops, Writing 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 type accented characters with US International keyboard – the ultimate training summary….

2012/11/01 Leave a comment

…using animated GIFs. Slower? Click 025sec,0.5sec, 0.75sec, 1sec, 1.5sec, 2sec, 3sec, 4sec, 5sec, 6sec, 7sec, 8sec, 9sec, 10sec.

us-international.

Or how do you like this one? us-international.

Categories: animated-GIFs, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Writing 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 to switch the input language in Respondus Lockdown browser, e.g. to Arabic

2012/10/23 Leave a comment
  1. Short answer:
    1. Right-click the Language bar on the taskbar and choose “Restore the  Language bar”, like so:
    2. language-bar-restore
    3. This makes the language bar a floating toolbar on top of the screen, like here: image. This floating toolbar you can still access when in Lockdown browser.
    4. The language bar can be temperamental, you may need to bring it up again, try switching back and forth between input fields.
  2. Long Answer:
    1. Respondus Lockdown browser blocks many functionalities, including the shortcut combination to change input languages (usually LEFT ALT + SHIFT) and access to the Language bar on the task bar.
    2. This is not an issue when your quiz is in a western language and you have US- international keyboard layout configured as your default (which lets you type most Western diacritics without need for keys blocked by Respondus Lockdown browser )
    3. It is an issue with e.g. Arabic. You cannot even temporarily set Arabic to your default input language before starting lockdown browser, since then you cannot log in (with MS Maren IME, you can override the Arabic default to enter your username in western characters, but not the password. Respondus Lockdown Browser is built on Internet Explorer, but it does not share the cookies, so being logged into your LMS in Internet Explorer does not carry over to your Lockdown Browser session).
    4. Workaround: See above.
Categories: Arabic, audience-is-students, Farsi, Greek (ancient), Hebrew, Hindi, Korean, Listening-Stations, lms, Mandarin, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging, Spanish, Writing Tags: