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How to distribute learning materials using the Blackboard Content System

2009/09/22 Leave a comment

I needed to make a large set of textbook mp3 files accessible to myself in the classroom, as well as to students and myself from dorm/home.

The Blackboard Content System makes this easy, while observing copyright restrictions.

Below is a 6-minute narrated screencast on how to set up and use the Blackboard Content System to easily (work on batches of files on the web, just like on your computer, access from office, classrooms or home office) and securely (allow access only to qualified students)  handle multimedia files

The example involves numerous mp3 files from a Textbook Audio CD previously only accessible from the LLC computers)).

This would work as well with your self-created teaching materials, from text handouts to video recordings.

If you need better management (many files, reuse across terms) than the standard course document upload can provide.

See the video file name for a brief table of contents:

blackboard_content_system_create_webfolder_add_files_grant_permissions_to_students-add-content-collection-to-course.wmv

If the teaching material item is already in the content collection, to publish it to a new course:

  1. add a new item to a content area of the course,
  2. follow the numbered steps 1-4 in this screenshot:
  3. then click submit twice: first close the content system window with , to automatically give your students access to the files: , then finish adding
Categories: e-learning, erepository, Institution-is-Loyola-University-Maryland, lms, Screencasts, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: , ,

Digitization of the SAVILLE analogue Conference interpreting recording facility: Lecture/Floor recording and CCTV streaming

2009/09/08 Leave a comment

The original conference interpreting lab setup had no provision for digital video recording of the lecture/floor. A workaround used on of the booth VCRs for analogue recording, with video form an ELMO dome cameras and audio from a lectern microphone – an audio installation which ran in parallel to the main DSI conference interpreting facility (and covered only the lectern, not the conference table).

A home-brew add-on was based on a consumer handheld digital camera for video. Experiments with different add-on microphones for audio from the lectern and floor were less than successful.

The DIS system however provides an audio out of the lectern an/or floor audio, as well as the capability for the conference administrator to open or mute floor microphones and for the technical administrator to set the maximum number of open microphones, and control their gain.

For the digitization of this system, I used

  1. an already retired standard university student lab computer
  2. to which I added an old spare ATI All-in-Wonder video card
  3. to which I connected a TEVION home TV switch as a poor man’s (~5£) video splitter into which I fed
  4. the (hitherto unused) DIS audio out balanced stereo, using an RCA adapter, as well as
  5. the ELMO video, using  a coax to RCA adapter (video signal was split into the ATI as well as back into the original SAVILLE Kramer AV switch).

While originally coming with its own digitization software, the ATI All-in-wonder also works well with Windows Media Encoder.

Two wme configuration files were created:

  1. capturetestaticomposite_pal-l_480x320works.wme(find this file on the computer connected to the central rack, then double-click it in order to start Windows Media Encoder, then click the Record button in the top menu – no custom GUI was deemed necessary for this non-student operated recording)  for recording to files that can be played with Windows media player, whether on Windows or on Mac OS X.
  2. streamtest480x320_15fps_pal.wme (again, simply find this file on the central rack computer, then double-click it) for streaming CCTV live to the back office. An onsite admin office was one of the usual features of a teaching lab which was missing in this installation. CCTV allows to keep an eye on teaching activities in the conference interpreting lab, proactively spot support needs ands absorb feature requirements which instructors tend to have problems articulating (or even seeing the need for articulating). A (lower quality archived stream is created on the side and can be picked up, post-processed and archived at TBA).

    

Categories: e-infrastructure, Institution-is-London-Metropolitan-University, Interpreting, MGB-36, service-is-documenting, service-is-it-managing, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: , , , ,

Building interactive exercises for language learning on subtitle corpora

2009/07/31 Leave a comment
Categories: e-languages, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Digital videos on network share

2009/02/24 Leave a comment
  • interpreting mock conference speech videos are now available in an improved format
    • small file size -> portable: videos compressed to the equivalent of 360mb/hr, which makes them easily accessible
      • wherever you can access the local network (classrooms, your office, library: I uploaded all 6 videos in 2 minutes)
      • or copy to a USB stick to take home (or, in the future, go into an Weblearn e-repository)
    • widely compatible:
    • searchable teaching material eRepository (poor man’s version):
      • filename of video contains date, speaker, language
      • catalogue of videos in the spreadsheet online_resources.xls
        • students can read,
        • instructors [if you do not have access, request it from ictservicesdesk for \\lgu.ac.uk\lgu$\multimedia%20student) can write (in green cells, to provide “metadata” to students for searching: topic, exercise types, difficulty rating), or else request write permission  from x4444
        • catalogue layout is subject to review. 17/04/2009: I updated, the metadata columns, following the example of SIMON, the “Shared Interpreting Materials Online” Database that ETI is developing:
        • title
          speaker
          date
          venue
          modality
          language( combination)
          (progression) level
          (particular) skill (trained)
    • have your students access the videos through the blog link here.
  • we could also collect recorded satellite tv in this form (see Spanish video sample from TVE in spreadsheet online_resources.xls – and probably should, especially if you want flexibility in adapting the materials pedagogically and reusing them -, both
Categories: assessments, erepository, Institution-is-London-Metropolitan-University, Interpreting, service-is-assessing, service-is-learning-materials-creation, service-is-library, Spreadsheets, Translation, Videos Tags: , , , , ,

Auralog Tell-me-more Demo Screencasts

2008/09/17 Leave a comment
Categories: 4-skills, audience-is-any, documentation, e-languages, learning-materials, Screencasts, service-is-learning-materials-creation, software Tags:

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

Automating Auralog Tell-Me-More with AutoIt. Presentation at EUROCALL 2008

2008/08/14 Leave a comment

Auralog Tell-Me-More is a leading language learning software system which provides a vast amount of content in an advanced technical infrastructure that we found lacking in usability within an higher education language learning environment.

AutoIt is a programming language for GUI automation which I used to better integrate the Auralog software into the higher education language learning process, including

  1. programmatic creation of courses and accounts
  2. programmatic extraction and digital repository management for over 30.000 learning units.Click to view a work sample from my portfolio
  3. programmatic creation of 10,000s of learning paths,

Results were presented (screencast) at EUROCALL 2008: “Automating Auralog (pdf)”:

    1. cpurse and account creation

creates 100s of courses , creates and enrols up to 2,000 student accounts every term,

  1. content extraction produces files for adding search and spreadsheet for sort/filter functionality:
  2. learning path creation.

More detailed background information here: plagwitz_auralog_accounts_project_pub.pdf, plagwitz_auralog_project_pub.pdf

Categories: 4-skills, audience-is-IT-staff, audience-is-teachers, conferences, documentation, e-languages, learning-materials, service-is-learning-materials-creation, service-is-library, service-is-programming, software Tags: , , , ,

MS-Office Templates for the computerized Foreign Language Classroom. LLAS-sponsored Workshop2Go.

2007/07/31 Leave a comment

An LLAS-sponsored workshop held at Aston University in Birmingham and University of Nottingham. This is a raw unedited screencast of the former from the presenter screen (sorry, the video of demonstration screencasts played during this screencast do not get recorded due to hardware acceleration – I’ll insert them if I get around to cut this screencast).


workshop announcement

Categories: e-languages, Institution-is-Aston-University, Screencasts, service-is-learning-materials-creation, service-is-programming, service-is-training Tags: , ,