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How a teacher can adapt a Sanako teacher-controlled class recording activity for individual student recordings

  1. Pedagogical need:
    1. A teacher wants her students to record a presentation,
    2. but allow the students to move around freely in their recording afterwards, when evaluating it, and submit the best out of 3 tries:
  2. Technical implementation:
    1. Using Sanako activity:model imitation of differing for multiple groups
      1. offers maximum control, least flexibility: students have to speak their presentation linearly
      2. if you anticipate presentations of considerably different lengths
        1. first try asking your students – might be useful to them anyway to realize if theirs turns out to be much shorter than others,
        2. if students are unsure about the length of their presentation,
          1. conduct the first recording with the entire class and
          2. have students note what time their recorder time counter is at when they finish, and send you the time as text via the button:envelope
          3. group your students (grouping step-by-step) into Sessions A-F by incrementing  time according to what the student icon bubble shows
        3. then differentiate class into as many groups as necessary (if <= the 6 “sessions”A-F  Sanako Study 1200 offers) end the recording at a different time for each group
      3. for each group (one or more up to 6),
        1. choose from dropdown activity:  model imitation recording
          1. and from dropdown: source: none) with more than one group at a time,
          2. and (optionally) for not more than one group at a time (suggest choosing the biggest group for that) from (dropdown: source: file )  the  background noise to play
        2. and after each group’s allocated time (+ buffer) is up,
        3. press button:end to end the recording
        4. after collection of the recordings from students is finished, you can
        5. press button:replay image, to let each student listen to her recording (linearly, without control), and
        6. press button:free image, to let  students freely move back and forth on the timeline)
        7. eventually, press button: clear, to be ready:
      4. for tries 2 and 3: repeat above steps.
    2. using Sanako activity: self access:
      1. provides
        1. the teacher some  control (none over this turning into more of an editing than coherent language practice exercise),
        2. and students more flexibility (hence requiring prior recording training for students);
      2. students individually
        1. record
        2. move around freely in the file
        3. replay
        4. record over prior footage and/or start completely over  (menu: File / new)
        5. press button:envelope to text message the teacher that they are finished and want their (final )  recording to be collected by the teacher
      3. teacher
        1. moves signaling students into a group  (grouping step-by-step) that is
          1. dedicated for collecting recordings (TBA:does this not empty their buffer?)
          2. and button:pc control: locked (= no further or accidental changes)
        2. once an appropriate  (compromise between finished students wanting to leave and teacher not having to collect each recording individually) number of students have been added to this group, presses
          1. button: end to collect and
          2. button: clear session to clear the button
        3. assesses the recordings in the folder that opens with audacity;
          1. in case of problems, moves students  back to the group dedicated to recording
          2. else lets students leave

LRC offers generating audio files from your foreign language texts

2013/03/01 2 comments
  1. Would you like to expose your student to L2 listening materials beyond the audio learning materials that come with your textbook?
    1. Materials customized to the learning needs of your classes? From current affairs maybe?
    2. Would you prefer no to send them to  internet audio that may be difficult and time consuming to integrate?
    3. Do you lack the time to record speaking cues, oral exam questions or reading models yourself?
    4. Do you need audio files that you and your students can rewind/fast forward/replay, edit and record into with voice insert?
    5. And would you prefer using audio in your classes that comes with aligned text, whether that audio that has been transcribed or vice versa, to create glossaries,  captions,  multimedia assignments?
  2. The LRC now offers generating audio files from your foreign language texts in many languages.
    1. The service is based on the quality voices of Google Translate text-to-speech (better (simpler) than its actual translation portion, let alone its naïve use).
    2. Unlike Google translate, the service persists longer than 100 character texts to audio files (mp3) that (and the underlying digital text) we can work with further, in your syllabus, the LMS and the digital audio lab.
    3. Technical background and samples.
    4. Languages that are available in good quality: See links under this post;  other languages: please test with me..
  3. To request an audio file generation for your class, send the following information to the LRC
    1. regular reading/listening materials: plain digital text should do;
    2. SANAKO oral exam cues: please enter the text in this MS-Word table and add information in the additional columns for exam customization.

Automating language learning listening material creation with Google Translate text-to-speech: The technology

  1. A digital audio lab heavily depends on the availability of, but does not usually come with digital learning materials (and recent exceptions are exceptions for a reason)  Some digital audio materials that come with your textbook may be adaptable. “Rolling your own” has all kinds of advantages (allows for personalization, for both teachers to express themselves, and for students to learn), but can be a chore.
  2. Can the LRC find a workaround?  Here is one attempt: making Google translate (too often abused by students in its original interface) text-to-speech (unusable for learning material in its original interface since severely crippled) usable for digital audio learning material production, provided you have a source text in the target language. image
  3. GoogleTTS can serve as the gateway to better suiting Google Translate text-to-speech features to the needs of the LRC:
    1. imageGoogleTTS allows for arbitrary-length input text (it chunks it automatically).
    2. GoogleTTS produces intermediate local audio files which we can postprocess.
    3. Google Translate’s automatic language recognition remains a sore point: it is not reliable. Unlike Google Translate, GoogleTTS has no interface to set the language manually when the automatic recognition fails.
  4. Batch-download the files from Google Translate, using MS-PowerShell: <
    $global:folder = 'G:\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5'
    $filter = '*.mp3' # &lt;-- set this according to your requirements
    $global:destination = 'G:\conf\programs\GoogleTTS\mp3'
    $global:path
    $global:path1
    $currenttimeFunction MonitorAndMoveFile{
    $fsw = New-Object IO.FileSystemWatcher $folder, $filter -Property @{
    IncludeSubdirectories = $true # ja, brauch ich für googletts i&lt;-- set this according to your requirements
    NotifyFilter = [IO.NotifyFilters]'FileName, LastWrite'
    }
    $onCreated = Register-ObjectEvent $fsw Created -SourceIdentifier FileCreated -Action { # the even monitored is file created - to force recreation of files by googletts, you may have to clear watched folder of all mp3 &lt; 100kb first
    $global:path = $Event.SourceEventArgs.FullPath
    Write-Host $global:path -ForegroundColor Magenta # this works also
    $name = $Event.SourceEventArgs.Name
    $changeType = $Event.SourceEventArgs.ChangeType
    start-sleep -Seconds 2 # The OnCreated event is raised as soon as a file is created.
    if ($global:path -ne $global:path1) # it is a createdevent on a different file from last time - just in caseon oncreated not firing clear cut, but it seems to
    {
    $currenttime = Get-Date -Format yyyy-MM-dd-hhmmss
    Write-Host "attempt copy $global:path1 to $cuurrenttime" # try copying the past file
    # Copy-Item -Path $global:path1 -Destination "G:\conf\programs\GoogleTTS\mp3\$currenttime.mp3" -Force # that worked with the last generated file, wait: the last one is the one that remaisn behind, earlier ones get overwritten
    Copy-Item -LiteralPath $global:path1 -Destination "G:\conf\programs\GoogleTTS\mp3\$currenttime.mp3" -Force # that worked with the last generated file, wait: the last one is the one that remaisn behind, earlier ones get overwritten
    # use parameter -literalPath because files in the temp folder have usually [ and ] inside the name which acts as wildcards characters
    $global:path1 = $global:path
    }}
    while (1) {
    sleep -Milliseconds 100
    write-host $global:path # this works
    }}
    MonitorAndMoveFile
    #Unregister-Event -SourceIdentifier FileCreated
    
    
  5. Merge the downloaded files (wisely numbered sequentially):
  6. image
  7. Fix minor errors in your audio editor:
  8. image
  9. Done:
    1. Here I have a lot of questions for a speaking exam in ESL, and with a much better accent than my own.
    2. Nifty, plus output sounds even better for German than for English. Note, there is no attempt to parse sentences semantically. Some languages chunk better than others (I made some little improvements in this regard to the original program). Other common problems include numbers and in German I find myself, when listening, tending to look up once in a while and shake a high school students by the shoulders, asking him: “Do you actually understand what you are reading?!” Smile– which in my eyes is an indicator to the progress made in speech-synthesis.
    3. Other examples include French,
    4. Hindi,
    5. Italian,
    6. Spanish.
  10. So can the LRC relieve teachers from recording their cue files for the digital audio lab listening comprehension and exam? Within limitiations.

Bab.la.com: Arabic–English Online Dictionary

Bab.la features:  easy lookup (1,2,3), and for each lemma: grammar information (4), synonyms (5, with lookup (6)), usage samples (7), pronunciation help (8: audio, but not IPA), reverse lookup (9).

image

And an example for the reverse lookup: image.

In short, this is a real dictionary, unlike Google Translate, which is amazing in itself, but often misused  by language learners. Unlike Google Translate, Bab.la helps with lookup by Arabic letter, but does not come with a phonetic transliteration to make it usable with a Roman letters keyboard. Fortunately, the LRC features to phonetic transliterators integrated into Windows: MS-Maren and Google Arabic Input.

Multilingual WordNet search interface

image

Covers a subset of the languages supported by the LRC. Based on Wordnet which is rather than a dictionary for human consumption, a machine-readable semantic network, but here is one of its machine-generated applications.

New keyboard shortcuts for diacritics on LRC Teacher PC

  1. The US international keyboard layout that has come with MS-Windows for many years (though – except in the LRC – not set as default, you need to enable it in the control panel) greatly facilitates typing of characters for most languages that use Roman script with common diacritical marks, but does not cover Pinyin and similar diacritical marks.
  2. Carly from Carleton, as avid a language teacher as a technologist,  had the great idea to extend Microsoft’s US-international keyboard so as to include all the Pinyin tone marks (and other accents useful for linguists). Here is the upshot, extracted  from her  instructions, but excluding  what (either shortcut or (use of common accents within Pinyin is now covered also below) purpose) has not changed from the shortcuts of the non-extended US-international keyboard  that used to be the default in the LRC:
  3. What you want Which keys you press (before comma  is “dead” key = no result until after next key) Example

    acute accent, pinyin 2nd tone

    ‘(=apostrophe), vowel

    á é í ó ú

    grave accent, pinyin 4th tone

    `(=grave), vowel

    à è ì ò ù

    macron accent, pinyin 1st tone

    hyphen, vowel

    ā ē ī ō ū

    pinyin 3rd tone

    %(=shift+5), vowel

    e.g. ǎ ě ǐ ǒ ǔ

    ü with pinyin tones

    Accent, double-quote

    e.g. ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ

    letter with dot below

    ; (=shift+period), letter

    e.g.clip_image001

    letter with double acute

    : (=shift+;) , o or u

    ő, ű, Ő, Ű

  4. We are offering the extended US-international keyboard this as an optional keyboard on the teacher and student PCs with Windows 7.
    1. To select the new keyboard layout, use the language toolbar, click on 2nd option:
    2. image
    3. To explore the new keyboard layout use the Windows On-screen keyboard which will let you peek ahead after your pressed a dead key.
    4. To bypass a special dead key (= get the normal behavior of the key), press SPACE after it.

How teachers can conduct a 1-on-1 student oral assessment in their office using Sanako Lite Recorder

  1. If you need to conduct an OPI or other one-on-one oral exam instead of class-size oral exams we offer in the LRC,
    1. we have conducted 1-on-1 speaking assessments using the Sanako headsets and Student Recorder in the LRC.
    2. However, since this setting does not offer much privacy (and also because it blocks  the LRC classroom ), we would recommend conducting such exams in faculty offices. For this scenario, teachers can use:
      1. one of the headsets that can now be checked out by faculty, and in working condition,
      2. the Sanako LITE or standalone recorder – which could not be rolled out by IT on all teacher computers, but I programmed a workaround installer – and is friendlier (for recording and listening/grading) than Audacity. Sanako recently provided a useful guide for one-on-one examinations with the Study Lite recorder here (you do not need a desktop microphone like shown here, it is sufficient to position the headphone appropriately on the desk instead).

How to record and submit a photo presentation assignment

A step-by-step explanation how Moodle/PowerPoint allow

  1. a student
    1. to create a photo album from their photos (remind them that they need to be able to download their photos onto the LRC computers), we will load this from their computers analogous to this: How to create a visual cue exam file using Insert Photo album in PowerPoint
    2. to narrate the photoalbum
      1. In the LRC with 2007: https://thomasplagwitz.com/2013/01/22/how-students-can-record-their-picture-or-photo-presentations-with-powerpoint-2007/
      2. or if they use 2010 outside of the LRC, https://thomasplagwitz.com/2013/01/17/recording-student-picture-presentations-with-powerpoint/
    3. To refine their presentation:
      1. Do not edit your audio – not  good language learning  pedagogy.
      2. Rather redo your entire presentation, paying extra attention to the weaknesses you observed when reflecting on your last recorded attempt . You will learn more foreign language this way than if you learn how to edit digital audio. Before you re-record your narration, clear the existing narration from PowerPoint, or save into a new file to be able to compare the Before/After.
    4. to submit: How a student takes a Moodle Single file upload assignment.
  2. a teacher
    1. to prepare:How a teacher creates a Moodle Single file upload assignment, with optional attached file
    2. to grade (reviewHow a teacher grades a Moodle Single file upload assignment):
      1. Save the Moodle file submission assignment
      2. Double-click the PPSX  file to play the file in PowerPoint.
      3. Use the Moodle grade book to grade and provide other feedback.