service-is-learning-materials-creation | Thomas' Work Space

How to use the MS-Office Labs Community Clips Screen Capture Tool

2012/05/31 plagwitz 7 comments

I seem to remember this initiative of having MS-Office users sharing tips and tricks using screencasts has been faded out – but the screen capture tool is still available, and it is not restricted to recording MS-Office applications.
After download and install (here on Windows 7),
click the community clips system tray icon to easily start a screen capture:
Or access the context menu with advanced options:
including restricting recording to specific windows:
It does not start up very fast:
It flashes a frame around the recorded area.
This is a test…
The preview starts automatically:
About the file quality:
Both the save and the email option work, only the built-in upload fails, likely due to the demise of MS-Soapbox: , but can be easily uploaded to other services, e.g. MS-SkyDrive
Unfortunately, like the Windows Media Encoder clips, it won’t preview without download on SkyDrive – unlike the (newer) MS-PowerPoint 2010-recorded screencasts:
Still, the MS-Office Labs Community Clips Screen Capture Tool seems to have a friendlier interface than Windows Media Encoder, and is as free.

Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure, multimedia-recording, service-is-documenting, service-is-learning-materials-creation, software, Student-Computers Tags: ms-community-clips

Java IDE for NLP with DkPro – A running log.

2012/05/19 plagwitz 2 comments

UPDATE: dkPro has been updated, see the comment below by the dkPro Project Lead.
MyLyn Web Connector 3.8 for Eclipse Indigo

I next got an error (“Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found.
Software being installed: Mylyn Incubator SDK (Incubation) 3.8.0.I20120414-0402 (org.eclipse.mylyn.experimental_sdk_feature.feature.group 3.8.0.I20120414-0402)
Missing requirement: Mylyn Tasks Connector: Web Templates (Advanced) (Incubation) 3.8.0.I20120414-0402 (org.eclipse.mylyn.web.tasks_feature.feature.group 3.8.0.I20120414-0402) requires ‘org.eclipse.mylyn_feature.feature.group [3.8.0,4.0.0)’ but it could not be found
Cannot satisfy dependency:
From: Mylyn Incubator SDK (Incubation) 3.8.0.I20120414-0402 (org.eclipse.mylyn.experimental_sdk_feature.feature.group 3.8.0.I20120414-0402)
To: org.eclipse.mylyn.web.tasks_feature.feature.group [3.8.0,4.0.0)”), but starting over and updating my MyLyn installations form menu: Help / Install Updates fixed that.
Show Task repositories window:
Error: “Query Synchronization Failed _______ Q Failed to parse RSS feed: “Invalid XML: Error on line 114: The element type “meta” must be terminated by the matching end-tag “«meta>”,””
. Well, the Google Code integration is anyways only for users that cannot run Maven. Maybe I can
Install Fails also (“Missing requirement”, again: this time it is “org.sonatype.m2e.subclipse.feature.feature.group 0.13.0.201107071330”), and here we are up the creek with no paddle: You do not want to read a thread on the developer site that ends in ”this must be a bad joke”.
Then there are the heroes (as opposed to process) who make it work nevertheless: To bring back back the SVN SCM handler, extract this to your Eclipse dropins folder.
Unless of course you suffer from extremely bad timing:
Now to the real getting started

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-manager, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: DkPro, eclipse, ide, java, m2eclipse, maven, nlp, programming, subclipse

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

2012/05/11 plagwitz Leave a comment

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.
Go to your UNCC Google Apps (you have to log into UNC)
Click on the Hard-drive-icon in the upper left and on “files”, select a video file:
Wait until upload is finished, 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
2. outside of the university community:
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 and click on the file in the list to play the video:
6. Also, you can always “get your file back” by “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).
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: audio, videos

How to easily merge MP3 files

2012/05/11 plagwitz Leave a comment

There are many ways, including many that are easier than doing it manually in Audacity.
MergeMP3 is a free and easy one that worked here:

Categories: assessments, documentation, e-languages, reviews, service-is-assessing, service-is-learning-materials-creation, software Tags: advanced-placement, audio, merging, mp3, placement

How to stream video clips to students in classroom and at home, using Moodle Kaltura

2012/05/02 plagwitz Leave a comment

DVDs are getting a bit long in the tooth, not to mention VHS, and can form a real obstacle or time-consuming distraction in an educational setting, from handling the media to finding compatible software and/or hardware players for the media.
Fortunately, there is a now a better way to make video clips available to students than uploading them to YouTube.com:
1. university-supported,
2. more compliant with copyright and fair use restrictions (which still apply)
3. also requiring only a web browser (available on all campus computers, including teacher computers in classrooms, including those that have no (region-free) DVD-player installed)
4. and a course enrolment. But access to a Moodle course can now be considered a given, both for teachers and students.
Moodle Kaltura allows for easy
1. uploading of a video file by the teacher
2. viewing by the student (streamed – Flash required, not different from YouTube.com).
View a screencast example how easy it is with Moodle Kaltura to upload and playback a video clip from a movie DVD.
1. Not different from YouTube.com, you still need to edit out the segment from the DVD that you want to show in your class, uploading a full DVD I do not intend to test.
2. From this example, you can also get an idea how long the server-side encode takes before the video an be streamed back to students: the short clip of a few minutes here starts playing back at 12:40. Naturally, a teacher would prepare their course, including all video uploads, before the term starts or possibly before the week starts, or, in extremis, before the class starts – in practice, only the – extremely unlikely – scenario where the teacher would try and upload the video during the class is not supported.

Categories: audience-is-teachers, lms, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: kaltura, moodle, videos

Spring 2012 Faculty Workshop II: Oral Proficiency testing with Audacity/Sanako

2012/04/30 plagwitz Leave a comment

View screens (best viewed side by side, but note that left and right screen are not synchronized):
1. for full slide show (note the included short links for convenient further reading), left screen
2. for Sanako interface and full audio track, right screen.
Table of contents:
1. Overview of a Sanako Oral Exam
2. Examples of Exam teachers’ exam question recordings
3. Example of a Sanako Exam
4. Loop induction
5. Step-by-Step of administering a Sanako oral exam
6. Grading Sanako oral exam student files
  1. Sanako voice insert for
    1. facilitating recording oral assignments for student without hard-coded pauses
    2. commenting on student responses during grading
7. Sanako authoring tool for providing visual on top of aural cues to students