Archive
Archive for the ‘Study-program-is-any’ Category
The big LRC SANAKO “How do I…?”
2012/12/05
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(Work in progress).
View larger Word version than this embed:
Categories: all-languages, animated-GIFs, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, digital-audio-lab, documentation, e-languages, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, learning-usage-samples, Listening, LRCRoomCoed434, Presenter-Computer, Reading, recording-software, Screencasts, screenshot-albums, service-is-documenting, service-is-training, Speaking, Student-Computers, training, Writing
sanako-study-1200
Pictolang, another flashcard site for vocabulary learning
2012/12/05
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- Distinguishing mark: Pictolang is based on the Culturally authentic Picture Lexicon. Here is an overview of the currently available languages and imagery:
-
Language Region # Images German 2631 Mandarin China 2336 ESL North America 2074 Russian 1420 French France 1231 Spanish Southern Cone 1022 Spanish Mexico 1000 Spanish Central America & Caribbean 872 Spanish Peninsular 579 Arabic 287 Special Collections 151 Ukrainian 139 Japanese 106 French Canada 47 Arabic Oman 11 - You can focus vocabulary your study on specific topics, which will likely integrate it better with your core textbook material (often divided into topical chapters).
- Suitable for self-study, the use of CAPL makes this an especially interesting tool for preparing work/study/travel abroad. It also allows for playing a classroom flashcard game in language culture and area studies, where the teacher can provide context and background information in the images from the target culture.
- Example o the Word Match Game right answer feedback:
- Wrong answer feedback:
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Arabic, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, English, French, German, Intermediate, Japanese, Mandarin, Photos, Russian, Spanish, Vocabulary, websites
flashcards, pictolang
How to use MS-Skydrive with your university account here
2012/11/29
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- One of the benefits of live@edu is institutional access to file storage space in the cloud. You need not set anything up for that. Just go to http://skydrive.com and log in with (1) your university account, here is what you get:
- You can create (or upload) folders and files (this one is from a long time ago, since I briefly could log in when live@edu was first introduced. Students always could log in).
- 7 GB of free space in the cloud should be plenty, including
- for teachers looking for a convenient way to bring files to the classroom beyond the limitations of the H: –drive “ My documents”
- for film students misplacing they backup hardware. No more hogging of checked out cameras just since you did not bring your portable hard drive. Just upload your clips to skydrive.com, access them from home.
- If you install the optional free Skydrive app (available ofr Windows Vista and up and MacOS X.7)
- the file size limit is expanded from 100MB to 2GB.
- files can be automatically synchronized between your classroom and home computer.
- To access files on classroom computers without the skydrive app, just use skydrive.com
A classroom-management-system-based emporium to improve tutoring support for Hybrid Spanish students
2012/11/26
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- “[T]o bridge the gap between students’ demand for introductory Spanish courses and adequately staffing”, UNC-Charlotte – using, among others, a UNC-Chapel Hill pilot as a model, which, however, served a different student population and was soon faded out again – introduced a hybrid model for 1st year Spanish:
- Weekly contact hours were cut in half (effectively doubling student numbers per teacher ) ,
- and attempted to be replaced by more extensive assignment of homework exercises/quizzes from the online textbook component
- for lack of own technical resources (p.54), not that the components were designed for a hybrid purpose – but always nice to see language teachers adopt technology for ROI in creative ways when they have to.
- for the same reason of incapability of “adequately staffing”, so that teachers do not have to operate the computers, only those activities from the online components were chosen that could be automatically graded (while the continued reliance of online quizzes on right/wrong black/white schemes instead of at least considering editing distance (maybe reasonably also for foreign language diacritics), not to mention attempts on a truly semantic understanding of student input, makes one wonder if this subset of assignments could effectively and should be left to auto grading).
- and other, auxiliary syllabus guidelines, like:
- taking more advantage of the online textbook component for
- heavier formative testing
- outcome testing
- requiring “oral testing administered two or three times a semester” (p.46, 64)
- increased focus on taking advantage of contact hours by communicating, what is now often deemed flipped classroom pedagogy and used to be called homework preparation
- taking more advantage of the online textbook component for
- tutoring, for students that could not handle the cut in face-to-face time with teacher (note, tutors were from the grad student teacher pool – not all teachers were grad students)
- face-to-face:
- online, during off-hours (weekends):
- seems a welcome extension, and a convenient time-saver
- however, little adoption
- additionally, hindered by a technology change from Wimba to Centra.
- also hybrid? The LRC
- could be host to an emporium like Virginia Tech’s: computerized for access to online assignments, but under tutor guidance;
- could provide the Sanako classroom management and digital audio lab system for making this learning experience even ore efficient. The tutor on teacher station can monitor many students (simultaneously or automatically cycling through student stations at an interval of choice, while stopping interactively where desired) via screen sharing. Interact with any student computer via remote control, with the student over headphones, without disrupting,
- easily escalate presentation of tutor or model student screen and audio discussion of endemic problems to either student group as a whole or subset (meaningful as long as 2 or more students overlap in their assignment activity and have similar issues) via the Sanako – and of course also use the classroom projector.
- Hybrid Spanish clearly constitutes a radical program change, dictated by shortness of funds and requiring measures to efficiency and effectiveness of instruction, upholding of standards, and management of attrition.
Use SharePointDesigner here to quickly and cleanly edit legacy static web pages
2012/10/23
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- Confronted with the need to have faculty classify my variable speed animated GIF collection of Mandarin characters linked from static HTML pages, I find:
- SharePointDesigner is a FrontPage derivative, but still beats dealing with the special markup MS-Office tends to smuggle into your legacy web pages.
- And you can download it for free from MS here, install and open a file by right-clicking it and “Open with”, like so:
. - User then can e.g. select a pinyin word, right-click it, access the font-dialogue, like so:
, and, to align this alphabetic pinyin list to the progression in the syllabus if the Chinese language program, assign a heat-scale like so: 
. E.g this would denote an easy character for Chinese 101: 
. - Note 1: Do not use SharePointDesigner 2010,, this doe not allow easy editing of single web pages anymore:
. - Note 2: The CSS style markup that SharePointDesigner puts in smartly for the font color change is ignored by Internet Explorer 8 (Huh?!), so we will have to TBA:ask students to use Firefox instead.
- Note3: Why not just use MS-Word as HTML-Editor. Even if you save as and choose “Web-page filtered, like so:
, to avoid MS-Office specific markup, MS-word puts spurious markup in that makes it not only slow down the road to open the file, but also difficult to post-process them with regular expression (I have a few hundred copies to make for different animation speeds). Compare the file sizes here: 
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Other ways to find help
If you cannot find it here, look there: 5,500 Language-Learning Links and Programs for learning or teaching 150 languages
Shortcuts:Our Lists, Our Maps, LRC Staff Moodle Site,LRC Project Moodle Site, 49erexpress, UNCC Moodle, Student Recordings: s:claslcslrcsanakostudent
Learning usage samples: Sanako oral exam, Kaltura webcam presentation, Dictation with speech recognition, Sanako written exam, Chinese and Japanese interactive stroke-order practice
Test the Sanako Installer, Webbrowser Popup Konfigurator for XP, or Windows7, faster LRC TeacherPC Log-in Let MS facilitate diacritics writing by installing for you US-International keyboard layout
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