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How to batch-upload learning materials, give students access in Moodle

2011/01/26 Leave a comment

To upload a set of learning materials (e.g. multiple audio tracks from a CD) at once:

  1. On your computer, browse to the files (assuming that, if your source material is on an audio CD, you have already “ripped” the audio to files on your computer)
  2. Zip the folder, e.g. using the built-in Windows right-click/context menu option “send to”/ “compressed file” (for more options, install the free 7-zip is more powerful, which is required on Windows XP if your file names contain foreign language diacritics).

In your Moodle course, Step 1 is to upload the files: click at the bottom of the left menu: “File”

  1. No need to create a folder since this is done automatically (advantage: keep files manageably together, e.g. applying student permissions to an entire folder set of files versus individual files – disadvantage: you may run into our Moodle file size limit (as of 2011-05 64MB for individual files, including the uploaded zip-file; you may ask for an increase or TBA:compress your audio files) .
  2. Enter the folder and upload, by browsing to the zipped file on your computer
  3. Wait for the upload to finish (remember you may have a single file size limit, so while it is not as convenient as uploading all files in one batch, you may have to split the files. When using Windows “Send to”, you have to manage this manually. 7-zip offers more assistance),
  4. Once the file appears in the folder, there will be a link “unzip” to the right of it: Click it.
  5. moodle-upload-zip-files
  6. moodle-upload-zip-files-unzip
  7. Once the initial files appear in the folder, you can and may  want to delete the zipped file. 
  8. moodle-upload-zip-files-unzipped

Step 2 is to to make these files accessible to your students, by wrapping them as a resource:

  1. Button: “Turn editing on.”
  2. Section / drop-down:“Resources” / “Display a directory”.
  3. Enter a descriptive Name (your folder name will not carry over).
  4. You can enter a description of the file if you want into the Summary field. This is optional.
  5. Under “Display a directory”,’ select the desired folder directory from the pull-down menu.
  6. Click “Save and Display” to check the results.
Categories: e-learning, learning-materials Tags: ,

Automatically download all documents/files/images linked from a web page

2011/01/24 2 comments

You can easily do this in FireFox with a free extension from Braunschweig (Germany): DownThemAll:

  1. Right-click on your page with the media you want.
  2. Make your choices:
  3. sdownthemall
  4. Lean back (or do something else!):
  5. downthemall1
  6. A chime will alert you when your downloads are ready for consumption. Enjoy!
  7. downthemall2
Categories: e-infrastructure Tags: , ,

One-on-one virtual language tutoring using Wimba Classroom

2011/01/14 Leave a comment

The most useful tools in Wimba Classroom for synchronous one-on-one online tutoring, apart from the basic text instant messaging, may be not the videoconferencing, but the audio tools combined with screen-sharing or application-sharing AKA desktop sharing (remote user can control the application – especially for reviewing online learning materials with automated feedback which the student may need additional help with.

A two-way audio connection is obviously useful for language learning, and incurs no phone costs. Videoconferencing is only available on the most advanced phones. And more than video even,
we thought that especially the application screen sharing in wimba would be useful, e.g. if tutor and student go through some of the online exercises together live and the tutor can answer additional questions of the student that the automated online correction has not answered).

To start application sharing, click in tab:content button:share, set the desired sharing options and click “begin sharing”

Recommended learning path:

  1. Both Wimba.com on their Wimba Classroom page and the CTL on their Wimba entry page have a wealth of learning resources on (notice that I Red heart loop inductions, learning by doing):
  2. First watch an archived session held using Wimba classroom: Both the vendor (TBA) and the CTL have archived sessions, including introductory sessions on the use of Wimba Classroom and components.
  3. Then take the student perspective:  You can anticipate student issues and learn from/with the teacher without full responsibility for the session, if you participate in a live session using Wimba Classroom., like the ones the CTL regularly offers (the next one:  http://teaching.uncc.edu/how-do-i-moodle-more-course-web-site-30-min-webinar). 
  4. Read the FAQ, to learn from colleagues with a similar background/context: Intricacies of the talk button (keep it pressed, or set the options so that you do not ; video/audio/text  out of sync may indicate slow internet connection, consider dropping video, the biggest bandwidth hog.
  5. Practice makes perfect: Once equipped with a computer, I plan to test out the Wimba Classroom instructor room, by using it for intra- and inter-office communications. There are competing platforms that I like, e.g. MS-Communicator with its strong presence and escalation features. But Wimba rooms which span students, teachers and staff – any staff member has one by default, any student can enter a room -, have the strongest network effect).
  6. Do one-on-one student support, like in tutoring or online office hours. This can serve you as a gentle introduction to doing more ambitious Wimba classroom projects:
  7. Meeting online with small student groups, e.g. when planning or reviewing student groups projects.
  8. Teaching large online classes.
  9. Before you do this and for your specialized features, you may want to review in–depth multimedia documentation: Wimba Classroom has in depth print manual for presenters and students. Screencast videos (Using Audio, Web Page Display, Application Sharing) are instructional, 1-page “cheat sheets” (Web Page Display, Application Sharing)  are perfect for putting up at your computer during your first session.
  10. Once you are experts, don’t forget that your studentsmay not have used Wimba classroom.

We can support such online tutoring

    1. in the LRC when open (not on weekends unfortunately);
  • Or in your office, with spare parts from the LRC hardware resources (headsets and webcams) which we can set up for you;
  1. Or – to gain maximum benefit from the flexibility synchronous online affords – from home: This however hinges on teachers’ (and students!) whether you are comfortable independently supporting this and if your setup can handle the requirements – – soundcard, headset  with microphone (fewer audio problems than with a microphone/speakers built-in/connected to your webcam/laptop), (webcam is possible, but not necessarily the most useful language learning feature , and but maybe contenting with more instructional screen-sharing or  application-sharing, capability of running the Java plugin in your browser, sufficiently fast computer  and internet connection

All participants must run the Wimba wizard well ahead of session, to be able to address any technical problems before entering a classroom. You can watch the Wizard at work in this  screencast video.

Categories: Distance-education-format-is-Synchronous, e-languages, e-learning Tags: , ,

Pinyin Input: An Input Method Editor (IME) for Learners of Mandarin

2011/01/13 Leave a comment

Maybe the two biggest challenges for beginning Western non-native learners of Mandarin are:

  1. Mandarin is a tonal language (like e.g. Vietnamese);
  2. Mandarin has a non-alphabetic script (mainland China “simplified” theirs, as opposed to Taiwan and other “traditional” Chinese communities, while e.g. Vietnam has Romanized the writing system).
    A common workaround, when starting to learn Mandarin, is first using only Pinyin, one of the Romanized phonetic transcription systems for spoken Mandarin which includes special markers for the most common 5 tones.

Typing the tone markers on a PC needs a special program. A number of tone marker input editors are available (see PinyinJoe’s list). I have used and supported PinyInput, which works similarly to Pinyin input IMEs used by native speaking PC users. Instead of offering, in a popup window, Mandarin script when typing with an alphabetic keyboard, PinyInput offers tone markers.

A 1-minute screencast hopefully says more than 1000*fps*duration words: Watch this PinyInput demo.

Categories: e-languages Tags: , , , ,

eRepository: How to manage multimedia learning materials? Maybe with ShareStream

2010/11/04 Leave a comment

Target language audio and video materials – as well as other textual, multimedia and/or interactive materials – are crucial assets (and should become “reusable learning objects”) in learning centers – how best to manage them?

I have worked for a number of HE institutions, up to the very recent past, that charge their students between $30.000 and $40.000 per year, while their learning materials handling in the learning center consisted of what DVDs and VCR tapes fit into a shoe carton, for a lab assistant to frantically browse through when faced with a learner or teacher request for materials. Not to mention teachers spending inordinate amounts of time scanning stacks of make-believe VCR and DVD “libraries” in the learning center.

I have blogged here before about various solutions that attempt to remedy this: from home-baked stop-gap measures to the introduction of eRepository offerings for digital asset management.

link
Learning materials management: Links (1998-2004)
Learning materials management: Textbook exercises (2000-2008)
Learning materials management: Online_resources.xls I: Intranet (2003-2009)
Learning materials management: Online_resources.xls II: E-repository (2006-7)
Learning materials management: Offline resources (2005-2006)
Language Lab Techniques for Producing Audio Learning Materials
How to distribute learning materials using the Blackboard Content System
How to distribute learning materials using the Blackboard Content System
Managing learning materials: How to use an inventory spreadsheet

If you are familiar with these issues, you will understand that I am eagerly looking for better help with managing multimedia learning materials. ShareStream claims to provide a turnkey solution addressing these needs. Its architecture – according to the Tulane pilot – consists of a ShareStream server which serves as eRepository and metadata catalogue, a streaming server, and an encoding server (for lecture-capture: YAT (“yet another tag”)). ShareStream also integrates with the Blackboard LMS.

Have a look at the demo of the pilot at Georgetown University which they gave during MAALLT 2010 and which they now also offer workshops on. One interesting thing I figured out during the question period is that they avoid breaking the Digital Millennium Act when digitizing copy-protected DVD materials by capturing to digital only the analog AV output of a DVD – a reminder that a reform of copyright is sorely needed.

Categories: e-learning, erepository, lms, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: , ,

Language-Learning-Audio-Stretcher II: Samples

2010/11/03 Leave a comment

What does the Language-Learning-Audio-Stretcher introduced in an earlier blog post do to an audio file you feed in?

For illustration purposes, let’s have a look at a segment of a news broadcast. The example is(taken from the daily Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten by Deutsche Welle: a nice service of slowly spoken news for language learners – in my experience, however, not spoken slowly enough for North-American German students.

This timeline (X axis) shows what a computer program has automatically detected as pauses of varying length (Y axis) in the audio. Depending on a (safety) threshold which the user sets (manually, or, from experience, stored and loaded from a configuration file) in the dropdown boxes of the lower dialogue, the program attacks pauses from a certain threshold value up only: Centre_overall-numerical-data-researching

The segment below consists of a single sentence about peace negotiations with North Korea. It is shown in the following screenshot.

  • 1: transcript of the original audio file
  • 1a: audio graph of the original audio file
  • 2: transcript of the stretched audio file. A new line in this transcript represents a pause inserted by the software.These pauses should aid language students in review the utterance last heard in memory, and hopefully parsing it correctly.
  • 2a: audio graph of the stretched audio file.
  • 2b: note: non-flat audio is stretched
  • 2c: note: flat lines show the pauses inserted, on top of stretching the audio.

Hearing is believing:

This software can be applied to any of numberless public domain audio books (see Project Gutenberg or Wikipedia,  audio books, as well as other free audio book sources) in mp3 or wma format (other formats can be converted). It can also can be applied to commercial audio books, if you have proper licensing.

The software comes with many options that allow you to tweak the output to your liking and needs, see prior blog post.

Categories: e-languages, service-is-programming Tags: , , , , , ,

Virtual Whiteboard in Computerized Classrooms

2010/10/22 Leave a comment

To virtualize/digitize your classroom scripts/textbooks/etc. – with all the obvious benefits (single familiar, control interface for multimedia, audio and video) and hidden benefits, like being able to link to offline (e.g. MS–Proofing Tools, MS-Text-to-Speech API) and online language learning tool (e.g. dictionaries, image libraries), use the already installed and supported hardware and software tools in computerized classrooms.

Hardware:

  1. Teacher Computer
  2. LCD Projector
  3. LCD Projector Screen
  4. Classroom Speakers
  5. Wireless keyboard/mouse

Software/Content:

  1. Textbook Scans as images – common nuisance: as ingle exercise (or a rule explanation and its practice exercise) gets spread over 2 pages that won’t fit on document camera –> right-click, open with, “Paint”, use rectangle selection, edit/cut, file/new, edit/paste to combine).
  2. my template Teacher.Dot (and additional downloaded or saved files, copyright permitting) with lookup menu:
  3. MS-Remote desktop: default enabled on all office PCs; on classroom teacher computer, click “start”-button, type “mstsc”, click “OK”, type the IP address of your office computer once, if logged in a yourself on the teacher computer, it will remember it, (you only need to access the advanced options of MSTSC if you encounter compatibility problems, like with screen resolution
  4. MS-ZoomIt:  on file server, allows you to zoom, draw + type on frozen images of your screen (access advanced options if you want to change the font settings and behavior of the mouse  scroll wheel)
  5. Blackboard: Content System <—Web folder <—> Email

Time saving benefits:

  1. Class time: prep in office; slow writing on blackboard, handling of document camera (switching, drawing), internet access
  2. Teacher time: separate steps to & handling email (<—> close file with class and be done)
  3. Student: slow note-taking (not all is mnemonic), handling email (still need to access Blackboard)
  4. More benefits could be had if students had hardware/software to share the screen. If a fully computerized classroom freaks you out, consider MS multi mouse, especially designed for resource challenged educational environments (India originally)
Categories: e-learning, Projectors