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How to easily upload, distribute, share and play large multimedia files with Google Apps

2012/05/11 Leave a comment
  1. Tired of burning, lugging around, inserting, ejecting, or forgetting, losing, scratching and replacing CD- and DVD- media, or hard- and thumb drives to handle your large multimedia files? Do you have internet and web browser where you need to access and play your files? Then you can use UNCC Google Apps  instead.
  2. Go to your UNCC Google Apps (you have to log into UNC)
  3. Click on the Hard-drive-icon in the upper left uploadand on “files”, select a video file:
      1. upload-file-dialogue (many formats and underlying codecs supported, including Flash, MOV, AVI, WMV, MPG. File size limits: currently “every user is given 1GB of free storage space for files” (not enough for much HD footage, but difficult to upload, and didn’t Google Drive just increase this limit to 5GB, or does this not carry over to Google Apps? Stay tuned for updates), click “Start upload”..
  4. Wait until upload is finished, upload-progress and then, depending:
    1. if you want to share the file with colleagues, click on “share” (appears after “cancel”) and fill out the dialogue. You can share your file both
      1. inside the university community and share
    2. outside of the university community: share-outsideshare-outside1
    3. if you want to share the files with students in your course, there is a better way using Moodle Kaltura video upload;
    4. if you just want to play the file yourself (including to your students in the classroom), you are already done.
    5. Go to your files playand click on the file in the list to play the video: play1
    6. Also, you can always “get your file back” by “Download”: download (and note you can also prevent users from downloading the files. This is useful if you only want to temporarily share it, but later revoke permissions).
  5. More help is available from the  from the  source
    1. How save files to your Google Docs
    2. How to play back video files in Google Docs
Categories: e-infrastructure, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, learning-materials, service-is-applying-learning-tools, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: ,

MS-Office Communicator: Getting Started

2009/10/13 Leave a comment

https://thomasplagwitz.com/2009/11/13/collaboration-using-ms-office-and-network-shares/Click , click , type “communicator”, click .

To adjust options, click (1), (2) and (3) here:

To start communicator with Windows, select (1).

To have Outlook automatically show you as busy during calendar appointments (e.g. your classes), select (4).

To get your contact list up to speed, select all the contacts in the to-address line of a mass email  and drag them to your communicator window, see this screencast here: communicator-email-contact-drag.wmv.

Microsoft has a useful “Getting Started”  web-based training here:

To use the advanced features of Live Meeting, you can either use the context menu of the contact, or within an existing messaging session, escalate to Live Meeting by using the upper right hand corner menu, like in these 2 screnshots:

Categories: Distance-education-format-is-Synchronous, e-infrastructure, Institution-is-Loyola-University-Maryland, Screencasts, service-is-applying-learning-tools, step-by-step-guides Tags: , ,

Pedagogical rationale of timestretching audio for differentiating instruction

2008/09/06 Leave a comment
  1. Context: Higher Education in the UK has made considerable investments in digital lab infrastructure to improve second language instruction in times of deteriorating language take-up in the secondary sector, including widening participation. Digital language labs, apart from generic digital media, suffer from a lack of custom-made teaching materials that take advantage of the pedagogic features of the lab: grouping for personalization of teaching and learning. Pedagogical integration and development is needed to achieve the original intentions. A project to timestretch audio language learning materials for the digital audio lab promises integration software, pedagogical materials and, above all, a model of effective digital language lab use in teaching.
  2. Problem: In times of uneven language provision at the secondary school level and of shrinking language program sizes in HE, increasingly language teachers find themselves confronted with uneven language proficiency in their courses. Digital lab technology can help them to overcome the  “one size fits all” approach and personalize the students learning experience, for a greater inclusiveness in language programs and an increased proficiency boost for both the below and above average proficiency student groups.
  3. During my work with the language programmes at an English university, I could witness – and had to record – that the least proficient students, seeing themselves confronted with what was nowhere near “comprehensible input” (Krashen) for them, not only let the communication break down, but appeared so distressed that, despite being fully aware that their language output was being recorded as an assessment for the teacher to evaluate, started to curse and swear (in their native tongue) – while at the same time the upper portion of the class breezed through the exercise without any apparent difficulty.
  4. Proposed Solution:
    1. Technology to the rescue: The slowing down of digital audio – without pitch alteration –has been, while not a perfectly accurate representation of natural slow speech output, a popular benefit of digital technology in the language learning field for several years now (cf. e.g. Calico 2004), and I myself have experimented with it in the digital audio lab (Model imitation and Question – response exercises) and in publications (cf. Plagwitz, Karaoke in the Digital Audio Lab (2006)).
    2. What seems lacking are
      1. both an application that automates (by monitoring one of the network share directories that are part of the digital lab system) the slowing down (and speeding up) of audio for instructors (e.g. in 5% increments from 70% to 120% of original input) that are too time-pressed for producing materials, or even seeking out recordable on-air sources, and
      2. a model implementation in the digital audio lab (using dynamic grouping of students through the digital lab software) that creates exercises that would create exercises that can benefit from this approach (and can be shared), that applies them in a number of suitable (interpreting, ab initio language learning) modules and that assesses the proficiency improvement with this approach (using the outcome exam and a control group).
  5. Benefits: Greater fluency of both the least and most proficient students is to be expect after they were exposed to – as deemed fit by their instructors – slowed down/sped up exercises – ca. 20 exercises in the ab initio language learning module, practicing a small set of suitable new structures and vocabulary compared, with 2 control groups, and five interpreting rounds of 20-30 minutes. We will operationalize this by reusing regular assignment grading and use a control group, also of module-size, which must also use the digital audio lab, but with “one size fits all” audio.
Categories: all-languages, audience-is-teachers, classroom-activities, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, Institution-is-Aston-University, Interpreting, Listening, projects, proposals, service-is-applying-learning-tools, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, service-is-programming Tags: , ,

A syllabus integrating language learning technologies into iLearning

2008/09/05 Leave a comment

iLearning means more intelligent

Categories: animated-GIFs, assessments, assignments, classroom-activities, e-languages, flowcharts, service-is-applying-learning-tools

Producing and managing language learning content

2008/09/05 Leave a comment

produce-manage-content

Categories: animated-GIFs, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, flowcharts, service-is-applying-learning-tools, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Slideshows

Integrating technology into face-to-face language learning classes

2007/07/05 Leave a comment

Integrating-technologies-into-Face2Face-teaching

Categories: animated-GIFs, assessments, assignments, audience-is-teachers, classroom-activities, e-languages, flowcharts, service-is-applying-learning-tools, Slideshows

Auralog Tell Me More Language Learning Software : Making Content Searchable & Automating Customization

2007/06/29 Leave a comment
Categories: e-languages, lms, projects, proposals, service-is-applying-learning-tools, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, service-is-learning-materials-creation, service-is-programming Tags: , ,