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Keyboard overlay stickers improve foreign character writing support in the LRC

2011/06/17 1 comment

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:

lrc-arabic-keyboardslrc-russian-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:

 russian-keyboard-stickers-ukrainian

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. 

Categories: Arabic, audience-is-students, e-languages, Farsi, Greek (ancient), Greek (modern), Russian, student-computers, Writing Tags: , ,

Speaking dictionary/pronunciation help, Part 1–the pedagogy

2011/05/24 1 comment

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:

student_writing_mey_halffilled_selected_deskbot_merlin_cropped

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 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.

Categories: e-languages, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Speaking Tags: , , ,

Protected: How to conduct an easy oral exam with Sanako1200 (Model imitation/Question Response) – Part II: Implementation/instruction of examined students

2011/05/04 Enter your password to view comments.

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Categories: all-languages, Arabic, assessments, audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, e-languages, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hindi, Institution-is-Aston-University, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, learning-materials, learning-usage-samples, Mandarin, multimedia-recording, Polish, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, Spanish, Speaking, Student-Computers, Swahili, Videos, Yoruba Tags: , , ,

Foreign Language Character Input on Windows XP in the LRC

2011/04/14 1 comment

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: lrc-international-keyboards-cropped

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.

Categories: Arabic, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, documentation, e-languages, Farsi, French, German, Greek (ancient), Greek (modern), Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, Screencasts, small-group-work-spaces, Spanish, Student-Computers, Writing Tags: , , , ,

The on-screen keyboard (OSK) for foreign language character input on MS-Windows

2011/04/14 4 comments

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:

osk_inserting_umlaut

Easiest access, click Start, click Run, type “osk”, click “OK”. Or try this on XP: osk_menu

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, Listening-Stations, Presenter-Computer, presenter-computer, Reception-desk, small-group-work-spaces, software, Student-Computers, Writing Tags: ,

List of Maps for Foreign Language and Culture Study

2011/02/16 Leave a comment

The United Nations has a nice – even though not complete – collection of PDF-downloadable political maps of countries and regions – including some language regions – around the world:

  1. World
  2. [Broken:] Non-Self-Governing Territories (En.)
  3. [Broken:] Non-Self-Governing Territories (Fr.)
  4. [Broken:] Non-Self-Governing Territories (Esp.)
  5. South Asia
  6. South East Asia
  7. Central Asia
  8. Western Asia
  9. Greater Mekong Subregion
  10. Africa
  11. Africa(french)
  12. Eastern Africa
  13. Horn of Africa
  14. Horn of Africa (with Relief)
  15. South-Eastern Africa, Drainage
  16. Western Africa
  17. Great Lakes Region 1
  18. Great Lakes Region 2
  19. Great Lakes Region 2 (french)
  20. Central & Eastern Europe
  21. Baltic States
  22. South Eastern Mediterranean
  23. Middle East Region
  24. ECA
  25. ECE
  26. ECLAC
  27. ESCAP
  28. ESCWA
  29. Darfur Regional map
  30. Afghanistan
  31. Afghanistan, Regions
  32. Albania
  33. Angola
  34. Armenia
  35. Azerbaijan
  36. Bahrain
  37. Bangladesh
  38. Belarus
  39. Bolivia
  40. Bosnia and Herzegovina
  41. Bougainville Island
  42. Burkina Faso
  43. Burundi
  44. Cambodia
  45. Cameroon
  46. Central African Republic
  47. Chad
  48. Central Chile
  49. Chile
  50. Comoros
  51. Congo
  52. Costa Rica
  53. Côte d’Ivoire
  54. Croatia
  55. East Croatia
  56. Cyprus
  57. Czech Republic
  58. Djibouti
  59. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
  60. Democratic Republic of the Congo
  61. Democratic Republic of the Congo (East)
  62. Ecuador
  63. Egypt
  64. El Salvador
  65. Equatorial Guinea
  66. [Removed:] Eritrea
  67. Estonia
  68. [Removed:]Ethiopia
  69. Fiji
  70. Gabon
  71. Georgia
  72. Ghana
  73. Greece
  74. Guatemala
  75. Guatemala (Southern)
  76. Guinea
  77. Guinea-Bissau
  78. Haiti
  79. Honduras
  80. Indonesia
  81. Iran (Islamic Republic of)
  82. Iraq
  83. Israel
  84. Jammu and Kashmir area
  85. Kazakhstan
  86. Kenya
  87. Kosovo
  88. Kuwait
  89. Kyrgyzstan
  90. Lao People’s Democratic Republic
  91. Latvia
  92. Lebanon
  93. Region of Southern Lebanon
  94. Liberia
  95. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
  96. Lithuania
  97. The frmr Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
  98. Madagascar
  99. Malawi
  100. Mali
  101. Moldova
  102. Mongolia
  103. Montenegro
  104. Morocco
  105. Mozambique
  106. Myanmar
  107. Nepal
  108. Nicaragua
  109. Niger
  110. Nigeria
  111. Oman
  112. Pakistan
  113. Palau
  114. Papua New Guinea
  115. Paraguay
  116. Peru
  117. Poland
  118. Prevlaka
  119. Qatar
  120. Moldova
  121. Romania
  122. Russian Federation
  123. Rwanda
  124. Southern Serbia
  125. Senegal
  126. Serbia
  127. Sierra Leone
  128. Slovakia
  129. Slovenia
  130. Somalia
  131. South Africa
  132. Sri Lanka
  133. Sudan
  134. Syria
  135. Tajikistan
  136. Tanzania, United Republic of
  137. Thailand
  138. Timor-Leste
  139. Timor-Leste (Regions)
  140. Turkmenistan
  141. Uganda
  142. Uganda (regions only)
  143. Ukraine
  144. Uzbekistan
  145. Western Sahara
  146. Yemen
  147. Former Yugoslavia map
  148. Zambia
  149. Zimbabwe
Categories: learning-materials, second-language-acquisition Tags: ,

How a teacher grades a Blackboard audio recording assignment

2010/04/08 Leave a comment
  1. 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): clip_image002
  2. 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.
  3. To grade,
    1. you still need to click next to the green exclamation marks which indicate where there is an assignment to be graded, clip_image002[5]
    2. on the arrow keys which unfold a menu.clip_image002[7]
  4. This gets you to the grade details: clip_image002
  5. You can also listen to the student recording submission by clicking on the file linked behind “users; file”. clip_image002[5]
  6. Fill out your grade comments and grade.
  7. Instead of doing (only) written comments, you could also oral feedback grade the student recording, and re-upload this new recording.
  8. Finish by clicking button:”submit”.
  9. Next in series: How the student reviews a grade Blackboard audio recording assignments: TBA
  10. First in Series: A better way to do student homework audio recordings in the Sanako LAB 300, using Blackboard:Assignment.
Categories: learning-materials, Listening, lms, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Speaking Tags:

How a student submits a Blackboard model imitation audio recording assignments

2010/04/08 Leave a comment
  1. Access the assignment in the location of your Blackboard course that your instructor pointed you to.
  2. Download the model audio recording attached to the assignment to your desktop (if any).
  3. Right-click on the downloaded file, choose open with (something else but the Sanako Duo which you will use to record).
  4. Play and listen to the model.
  5. Imitate the model, recording yourself using the previous instruction, using pause/play as needed.
  6. Upload the recording into the Blackboard assignment by clicking “browse to local file” [i.e. where you saved your recording].
  7. Click “submit”. If you get an error “Not a valid file’, try using another web browser to open the assignment and submit the file.
  8. Next steps: see How the teacher grades a Blackboard audio recording assignments
  9. First in series: A better way to do student homework audio recordings in the Sanako LAB 300, using Blackboard:Assignment
Categories: assignments, learning-materials, Listening, lms, Speaking Tags: ,