sanako-study-1200 | Thomas' Work Space

How you can view the computer screens of your class using Sanako Study 1200

2012/05/04 plagwitz Leave a comment

Here is a 2.5 minute screencast showing off the different ways how you can view your students’ screens using the Sanako Study 1200, .
from smallest to biggest, all accessible form the button:”screensharing”
1. first thumbnails
2. then thumbnails in extra window
3. finally autoscan
There will always be tradeoff on the teacher computer between size of individual student screen and overview over class.
1. for as long as the teacher screen resolution is nowhere near the combined sizes of the student screen resolution;
2. having the same screen resolution is also desirable, for projecting the teacher screen to the students; multi-monitor teacher stations are a nice compromise.
However, as you can see in the screencast, there a number of nice options that make switching between large size and overview (drilling in and moving back out) easy.
1. The newer versions of the Sanako (here 5.2) allow you to choose many different student screen sizes.
2. The newest version of the Sanako (5.4) also allows to fit many students screens on a teacher screen by implementing by letting the teacher scroll through the classroom layout).

2012/05/04 plagwitz Leave a comment

The capability of increasing the size of the student thumbnails, to be able to easily read the MS-Word writing student exercises template that I had programmed for Sanako Lab 300 was sorely missed in version 1 and 2 of the Sanako Study 1200 software.
In version 5, the capability to adjust the size has been added. In Tutor.exe, Go to Menu: tools / preferences / thumbnail-size.
Now, however, the 20 licensed student seats we have, already fill up the entire Teacher software’s screen estate since the software window cannot be spanned across our multi-monitor setup (The Sanako software seems to have this single-screen limitation built-in. Our unusual asymmetric (1280 and 1024) dual-monitor system may have something to do with it).
Fortunately, in the newest version 5.42 for of Sanako Study, scrollbars appear and allow for panning the classroom layout window if there are more student icons/thumbnails than will fit on the screen.
Upgrading to a screen with a larger screen resolution on the teacher computer would be even better.
We hope to teach up to 30 students (class sizes seem to be constantly increasing, but the LRC also caters to visits of merged class sections which may be even larger than 30 students) in this large classroom setup:

2012/01/09 plagwitz Leave a comment

Interesting article on how audio comments (which save grader time) get through through to students better, by an language teaching practitioner in the EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine 2011.
Using simple standard and readily available tools: your version of Adobe Acrobat Professional is ready for your use under Novell Applications.
Thinking through the observation that students tend to read only the bottom line grade of a returned paper, and do not even bother looking at the teacher’s comments, and that forcing them to the latter by assigning them to revise their papers is less popular, leads one to the question: what more advanced technology is available to take advantage of the teachable moments when writing? Maybe a blend of automated corrective feedback by natural language processing tools like the MS-Office proofing tools and – for the demise of the advanced real-time online collaboration platform Google Wave – a face-to-face writing tutorial emporium where a tutor monitors the writing progress of many students using screensharing applications of classroom management systems like NetOp School or Sanako Study 1200, like here (in a better resolution than this thumbnail, obviously, but you get the idea):