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How to identify graded participants in Moodle Course Activity Reports using Vlookup

2012/02/23 Leave a comment
  1. Having a chart of full names, Moodle id # and usernames would be useful (e.g. for debugging with the Activity Reports that in some cases do not resolve Moodle id# so Excel vlookup has to rescue the day once again…)
  2. The Moodle “Participants” affords the instructor a convenient list, with paging, sort, filter (by role), and different detail-level views.
  3. However, the overview does link course and student id #, but not institutional username while the detail view contain the username as part of the email, but is not truly tabular (consists of an array of tables, each containing one user; at least you can avoid the paging).
  4. Enter grepwin to extract the emails:

    grep-emails

  5. and copy paste them into the Excel created from the tabular overview:
  6. lookupIs there an easier way?
Categories: lms, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging Tags: , , , , , , ,

Blackboard: Content System: Permissions, Roles and Gotchas

2010/03/24 Leave a comment
  1. The “Course user list“ refers to courses.
  2. The “Organization user list” refers to departmental groups. The subdivision is meaning list for our department.
  3. The “Institution user list” adds the most global group level.
  4. Finally, you can make files available to the “Public”. Note, however, that this seems to effectively bypass the more fine-grained permission checks. E.G. if you give read access to the public, users who open your files will not receive an authentication challenge, so if you try to give some of the users write access to your files, that will not trickle through. Workaround:  Do not use “public”.

Categories: e-languages, lms, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging Tags: , , , ,

Quia Audio Files in Internet Explorer

2009/11/16 Leave a comment

Quia.com contains “Play audio” links to mp3 audio.

You may experience this, when you first try to access the audio with Internet Explorer.

If you cannot read the instruction in the information bar, resize the window so that you can, like here:

After clicking “trust Microsoft” and  “Run ActiveX” in the following dialog, the “Internet Explorer cannot display this webpage” may appear. Ignore this, close the window and reopen it by clicking again on the “Play” link  in the parent window.

This time you will (hopefully) see this:

You need to do this only once  – per PC? per user? Let me know in the comments.

Categories: e-languages, Institution-is-Loyola-University-Maryland, learning-materials, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging Tags: , , , , ,

How to configure a re-imaged (syspreped) Sanako Lab 300

2009/09/17 1 comment

1.    On each of the 30 student computers in the main lab MH441, log in as user “llc-staff”.

2.    In the Windows taskbar, click “start”, “run”, type: “c:\Program Files\Sanako\Lab\Lab300\duo\config.exe”, click “OK”.

3.    In the “Media Assistant Duo” window that opens, change the field “Workstation number” to the last (one or two: omit leading zeros) digit(s) of the white label at the edge of the monitor that you are working at:

4.   

5.    Click button “Finish”, then restart the computer.

Bonus hint:

If your lab goes down again in the middle of the term, check whether your IT department has set up new computers on the sub-network whose network names conflict with the Crossroad naming scheme of the Sanako Lab 300, as seen in the above dialogue and set in the Lab 300 crossroad settings dialogue. 

Categories: e-infrastructure, service-is-documenting, service-is-it-managing, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging Tags: , , , , ,

B-languages for Relay interpreting in European Parliament Plenary Video (2009)

2009/04/28 Leave a comment

You can do relay interpreting from European parliament plenary videos by selecting one of the b-languages which the parliament interpreters provide.

The (3) video download control for videos older than 20080711 allows for the recording of only one language-track in the video. You can download, from a link emailed to you, either the a- (e.g. (1) Italian here) or one b-language (e.g. (2) German here), as you can see below:

Given that software tends to always get impoved, is is rather surprising that one does not seem to have a similar choice in the new video downloader – however, the improvement is just a bit hidden.

For Videos newer than 20080710, all language-tracks are automatically contained within the downloaded (how? see here) video file. To switch between a- and b-language or between b-languages, in Windows Media Player, go to menu (if the menu does not show, right-click left from the “Now playing”button””: file / play / audio and language tracks / [now choose your language].

E.g. if you do not want to listen to Ferrero-Waldner not speaking her native tongue, choose like pictured below:

And she does not really speak “Zulu” which seems to have been chosen by the European Parliament technicians as the designator of the original a-language, there being no such concept in windows media player. Çan’t have it all. Pretty close, though.

Categories: e-languages, English, French, German, Greek (modern), Interpreting, Italian, learning-materials, Media, Polish, Portuguese, service-is-documenting, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging, Spanish Tags: , , , , , ,

Passing around European Parliament Plenary Video Clips & Transcripts

2009/04/21 Leave a comment
  1. European parliament video clips are quite big and it would be easier not to have to pass them around. But how to communicate to somebody else which video clip to watch if the clip selected is not reflected in the browser address bar? The flash application unfortunately forces you to provide the “bibliographic” information in pieces (start url, date, possibly video format, debate title, speaker name). But in the end you get a direct link which you can pass on to save others from having to jump through the same hoops: If you just need the direct link, skip to step 7. Otherwise: Start with the calendar interface: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/wps-europarl-internet/frd/vod/research-by-date?language=en, find your (1) date, e.g. “Wednesday 14 January 2009”,
  2. The window with the recording of that date will come up; now you CAN (2) change the video format  – wmv (should work on most Windows PCs, free upgrade for MACs here:http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx) or mp4 -, an option that will show in the browser address bar. If you must, change format this first, as it seems to rewind the video to the beginning of the session.
  4. Click on your (4) speaker, e.g. “ 15:16:50 Benita Ferrero-Waldner 00:13:12 15:30:02”
  5. Instead of watching online (e.g. if you find the stream quality lacking), you can (5) download the video (in the format you have chosen, either wmv or mp4). UPDATE: The web site added a disclaimer that you have to 1.read, 2.check before you can 3. download, as illustrated below:
  6. Note: you can (6) change the b-language (for relay interpreting) when streaming. Plus, when you download the video, all the b-languages are downloaded together with the a-language. See here how to select the desired b-language when playing the downloaded file.
  7. Easier than providing all bibliographical information (calendar URL, date, debate and speaker) is the direct URL of the download clip. Right click on “Download this Speech”, select (7) “Copy shortcut” from the context menu. Then paste this, e.g. http://vod.europarl.europa.eu/nasvod01/vod0301/2009/wm/VODUnit_20090114_15165000_15300200.wmv or if you chose mp4 format: http://vod.europarl.europa.eu/nasvod02/vod0301/2009/isma/VODUnit_20090114_15165000_15300200.mp4, into the calendar event for the exam – completes your checklist for the exam, and at the beginning of the exam, you can download the link from here onto the students’ computer. Or, for assigning materials to students or passing them to external examiners, email this direct link.
  8. Unfortunately, it appears that the transcripts, unlike the audio channels, do not include the relay languages and have to be accessed from a different (calendar-)interface here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/plenary/cre/calendar.do?language=EN: “The verbatim report of proceedings of each sitting (often referred to by its French abbreviation, CRE) is published (Rule 173 of the Rules of Procedure) and contains the speeches made in plenary, in the original language.”

 

Appendix: The file size of these videos is about 10MB per minute. If you feel you need to save the videos locally, use an appropriate location (where you have sufficient space, the file will not be erased, only appropriate users have access – consider this before using a public network share, personal drive). Not really more “local” is saving the video clip on the http://hale-interpreting.groups.live.com Skydrive which can also hold clips larger than 50MB[ doubled to 100MB on June 20,2011] if you pre-process them like described in the zipping instruction.

Watch a 5-minute narrated video-clip that demonstrates the above steps.

Categories: e-languages, English, French, German, Greek (modern), Institution-is-London-Metropolitan-University, Interpreting, Italian, Listening, Polish, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging, Spanish, Speaking Tags: , , , , ,

Help with playing videos

2009/02/13 Leave a comment
  1. Some videos require special codecs to display properly/ at all.
  2. Here is info on the H.264 codec.
  3. Often, it is best to try, instead of Windows Media Player (which may be the default player that opens when you (double)click on a video, but not be able to display it without manual configuration),
  4. the free VLC player which you can download here, if you must, and install, if you are permitted. Then right-click video, “open with”, “VLC media player”, like here:
Categories: Back office, e-infrastructure, learning-materials, Media, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging, software, Translation Tags: , , , ,