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Instant language services support on office and classroom IT lab computers. Part I: Initial Setup

2009/02/08 Leave a comment
  • If you have Windows XP on your office computer, we can use MS-Messenger (ver 4.7) “Application Sharing”  to provide immediate live assistance with computer problems in remote parts (also useful for collaboration with colleagues on documents, including web pages, when a phone call is too little and a meeting is too much).
  • click “Start”, “Run”, type (or copy/paste): “C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe“, click “OK”
  • Initial setup (you have to do this only once)
  • “Add a .net passport to your windows xp user account”:
  • Email account
  • Users of http://hale-translation.groups.live.com/, http://hale-interpreting.groups.live.com/, or the  Interpreting online calendar (http://calendar.live.com) can re-use their windows live account
  • Other users can use existing hotmail/windows live accounts or create a new hotmail/windows live  account (you may want to create a separate account for work related messaging)
  • On your office computer, also check the checkbox to “Associate your account with your windows user account”, like here: , when asking for help on a student computer, uncheck this
  • Add “Thomas_plagwitz” at “hotmail.com” as a contact (initially, I will have to accept this before you can contact me):
  • Click on “I Want To … Add A Contact” (green plus sign)
  •  Once set up with Messenger like described here, go to PART II.

 

Categories: Distance-education-format-is-Synchronous, e-infrastructure, Institution-is-London-Metropolitan-University Tags: , ,

Instant language services support on office and classroom IT lab computers. Part II: Usage

2009/02/08 Leave a comment
  • Once set up, if you have Windows XP on your office computer, we can use MS-Messenger “Application Sharing” to provide immediate live assistance with computer problems in remote parts (also useful for collaboration with colleagues on documents, including web pages, when a phone call is too little and a meeting is too much).

 

Click “Start”, “Run”, type (or copy/paste): “C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe“, click “OK”.

  • Start a conversation by double clicking on the user icon (“Thomas Plagwitz” or whoever) in your contact list.
  • Right Menu: Section: “I want to” / “Start Application Sharing”
  • All is well if the other party has “accepted your invitation”, like above – allow some time for the screen sharing to start up on old computers.
  • When a dialogue comes up which asks you which application to share, use “Desktop”, like below  – this will allow the other party to see your screen. 
  • At the end of the session, “Unshare” your desktop, or simply end the “conversation”.
Categories: Distance-education-format-is-Synchronous, e-infrastructure, Institution-is-London-Metropolitan-University 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:

Pedagogical rationale of timestretching audio for differentiating instruction

2008/09/06 Leave a comment
  1. Context: Higher Education in the UK has made considerable investments in digital lab infrastructure to improve second language instruction in times of deteriorating language take-up in the secondary sector, including widening participation. Digital language labs, apart from generic digital media, suffer from a lack of custom-made teaching materials that take advantage of the pedagogic features of the lab: grouping for personalization of teaching and learning. Pedagogical integration and development is needed to achieve the original intentions. A project to timestretch audio language learning materials for the digital audio lab promises integration software, pedagogical materials and, above all, a model of effective digital language lab use in teaching.
  2. Problem: In times of uneven language provision at the secondary school level and of shrinking language program sizes in HE, increasingly language teachers find themselves confronted with uneven language proficiency in their courses. Digital lab technology can help them to overcome the  “one size fits all” approach and personalize the students learning experience, for a greater inclusiveness in language programs and an increased proficiency boost for both the below and above average proficiency student groups.
  3. During my work with the language programmes at an English university, I could witness – and had to record – that the least proficient students, seeing themselves confronted with what was nowhere near “comprehensible input” (Krashen) for them, not only let the communication break down, but appeared so distressed that, despite being fully aware that their language output was being recorded as an assessment for the teacher to evaluate, started to curse and swear (in their native tongue) – while at the same time the upper portion of the class breezed through the exercise without any apparent difficulty.
  4. Proposed Solution:
    1. Technology to the rescue: The slowing down of digital audio – without pitch alteration –has been, while not a perfectly accurate representation of natural slow speech output, a popular benefit of digital technology in the language learning field for several years now (cf. e.g. Calico 2004), and I myself have experimented with it in the digital audio lab (Model imitation and Question – response exercises) and in publications (cf. Plagwitz, Karaoke in the Digital Audio Lab (2006)).
    2. What seems lacking are
      1. both an application that automates (by monitoring one of the network share directories that are part of the digital lab system) the slowing down (and speeding up) of audio for instructors (e.g. in 5% increments from 70% to 120% of original input) that are too time-pressed for producing materials, or even seeking out recordable on-air sources, and
      2. a model implementation in the digital audio lab (using dynamic grouping of students through the digital lab software) that creates exercises that would create exercises that can benefit from this approach (and can be shared), that applies them in a number of suitable (interpreting, ab initio language learning) modules and that assesses the proficiency improvement with this approach (using the outcome exam and a control group).
  5. Benefits: Greater fluency of both the least and most proficient students is to be expect after they were exposed to – as deemed fit by their instructors – slowed down/sped up exercises – ca. 20 exercises in the ab initio language learning module, practicing a small set of suitable new structures and vocabulary compared, with 2 control groups, and five interpreting rounds of 20-30 minutes. We will operationalize this by reusing regular assignment grading and use a control group, also of module-size, which must also use the digital audio lab, but with “one size fits all” audio.
Categories: all-languages, audience-is-teachers, classroom-activities, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, Institution-is-Aston-University, Interpreting, Listening, projects, proposals, service-is-applying-learning-tools, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, service-is-programming Tags: , ,

A syllabus integrating language learning technologies into iLearning

2008/09/05 Leave a comment

iLearning means more intelligent

Categories: animated-GIFs, assessments, assignments, classroom-activities, e-languages, flowcharts, service-is-applying-learning-tools

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

Example 8: Auralog Tell-Me-More Speech Recognition Test

2008/08/29 1 comment

How usable is the Auralog Speech Recognition for language learning? This test, by a non-native speaker of English, gives some authentic data points.

image

The test shows: Auralog Speech Recognition

  1. can be easily tripped up; however, by errors that  a non-native language learner would not normally make
  2. more concerning is that the built-in AI, instead of e.g. escalating to additional feedback or help, like the pronunciation waveforms (which in itself seem to encourage only repeated attempts to mimic a given intonation, while not being fine-grained enough to spot mispronunciations on a word, let alone letter level) – lowers the requirements when a speaker repeatedly fails (which in extreme seems to amount to “waving through” any utterance).
  3. the preset dialogue – only few exercises including wrong answer options, most exercises testing only a comprehensible pronunciation of a given reading text which makes the exercise much easier for the built-in speech recognition, but also much less realistic and useful for a language learner (or more of a reading exercise).
Categories: e-languages, English, Institution-is-Aston-University, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, Speaking Tags: ,

Language Lab Techniques for (Self-)Evaluation and Grading of Student Recordings with Audacity

2008/08/18 2 comments

This quick and dirty (not narrated and uncut: time is money, and storage cheap…) video demonstrates a technique in (the free audio editor) Audacity with which instructors and students can more easily (self-)evaluate parallel recordings from (be it model imitation, question-response, or consecutive interpreting exercises in) the language lab (in this case the output of a Sanako Study1200, which automatically gets stored in a folder on network share):

When?

What?

0,00

how to load 10 student files à 5mb = 2:30min (but as a batch, allowing you do something else in the foreground instead of waiting)

2,50

how to select a part of the timeline to play

3,00

how to move tracks up to more easily work with them and the menu

3,30

how to play all tracks simultaneously (choir, normally not very useful for evaluation)

3,40

how to play only one track (solo): evaluate & compare
Categories: Advanced, e-languages, Interpreting, Screencasts Tags: , , , , ,