How you can reuse your speech profile even on deepfrozen Language resource center computers
- “A [Windows Speech] profile is basically the collection of all settings and information about how to recognize your voice when using Windows Speech Recognition. Before changing the language used or letting other persons use Windows Speech Recognition it is best to create a new profile so that your current one will remain unaltered”.
- To be able reuse your effort training the computer to recognize your voice speaking in your study language – even though the LRC Windows 7 computers get reset when restarted -, you can backup, and later reload, your Speech Profile, preferably to your H:-drive.
- The Microsoft tool that allows you to do that has been put on WSRProfile.exe desktop of the LRC Windows 7 PCs. I can copy these instructions directly from the Microsoft blog page:
- Double-click WSRProfile.exe to start the WSR Profile tool wizard.
- To back up a speech profile using the WSR Profile tool, select Backup my speech profile.
- In the Select your Speech Profile dialog box, choose the speech profile you wish to back up and then click Next.
- The wizard will prompt you for a filename and location to save the file. When you have entered this information, click Next. The WSR Profile tool wizard will start the backup process of the selected speech profile.
- After the backup operation successfully finishes, click Close .
- In the Select your Speech Profile dialog box, choose the speech profile you wish to back up and then click Next.
- To restore a speech profile using the WSR Profile tool, select Restore my Speech Profile.
- On the File to Restore wizard page, click Browse and locate the backed up speech profile, and then click Next.
- Choose the speech profile you want to restore to.
- Select Use the current speech profile if you want to overwrite the current default speech profile.
- Select Create a new speech profile if you want to restore to a new speech profile. If you choose to restore to a new speech profile you will be prompted to provide a name for the new profile.
- After the restore operation successfully finishes, click Close.
How students upload a video file to Moodle using Kaltura
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My closest related instruction so far has been for teachers, and the CTL also seems to have only instructions for how teachers upload videos for students. However, instructions for students are very similar, follow these steps:
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Open the kaltura assignment and click “Add video submission”:
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Under left tab “Upload”, Click “Browse”:
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Browse to your video file (note the “files of type”allow only the upload of certain extensions) and click “Open”:
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Click “Upload”
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Wait for the upload to complete:
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Click “Next” :
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Add at least a “title”, and fix any errors you might get:
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Click “Next”:
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Click “Submit”:
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Look for the success message:
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You will have to wait for the video preview to become available:
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If you refresh the page, the wait time gets updated, take the amount with a grain of salt. Here I could already view…
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Be aware that your video resolution will likely be downscaled (my 1280*1024 screencast in this example ended up pretty grainy).
Setting time zone for all and for all misconfigured OWA users
live@edu/Office365 Exchange in the cloud does not seem to allow setting a default time zone, but rather leaves it to the user to change the time zone (defaulting to the time zone the cloud server is in that the user happens to hit) on first login – in the world I operate in, большая ошибка!
How to use the cmdlet set-MailboxRegionalConfiguration with parameter TimeZone to change the time zone of all your mailboxes is nicely explained on the blog How Exchange Works here, including screenshot and PowerShell command.
Unfortunately such an operation is reported to have needed 3 days for updating all mailboxes in an educational live@edu installation with 30000 users… You can restrict the mailboxes touched by examining first which are not in your local time zone (consult the MS TimeZone table for syntax, e.g. US “Eastern Standard Time”):
$mymailboxes = get-mailbox
ForEach ($examinedmailbox in $mymailboxes){
$regionalconfig = get-MailboxRegionalConfiguration –identity $examinedmailbox.identity
if ($regionalconfig.timezone -ne “Eastern Standard Time”){
Set-MailboxRegionalConfiguration -identity $examinedmailbox.identity -TimeZone “Eastern Standard Time” -confirm:$false
}
}
Computer-aided scheduling in HE
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Trados translation memory from TMX
- Open Trados studio professional 2011
- choose from the menu: file / new / translation memory
- in the create translation memory dialogue
- choose source and target language (the same as in the file name of the TMX files which follow the source-target naming convention)
- select “Allow multiple translation for the same source segment”
- choose as name for this translation memory the file name of the TMX files you are going to import (some include a year)
- click button: “create”,
- choose from the menu: file / import
- in the “import” dialogue window
- select “large import file”, “keep most recent”, “add to setup”
- click button “ok”
- select “large import file”, “keep most recent”, “add to setup”
- and in the dialogue “open import file”
- select as file type TMX 1.4b, if this does not work, 1.4, if this does not work, 1.1
- browse to C:\Temp\Trados to select one file (after the other)
Example 7: Exercise dictating in German to an LRC Windows 7 computer
How can we get language students more speaking practice with qualified, but affordable feedback ? Native speaker contact remains difficult to organize even in the days of online conferencing. The LRC hosts language tutoring, but numbers are limited. Enter speech recognition, the holy grail of iCALL, much easier for learners to relate to than the voice graph that digital audio can be broken down to, and thus for a long time a standout feature of costly second-language-acquisition packages like Auralog Tell-me-More (speech recognition in English tested here) – but now the LRC has Windows 7 Enterprise (and its free add-on language packs), and another crucial prerequisite: headphones with excellent microphones.
We are setting up the new Windows 7 computers in the LRC to allow for speech recognition in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. Here is an example of me using this facility for a practicing my German during a dictation exercise:
Granted, German is my native tongue; but the example text is from the online component for the final chapter of the “Treffpunkt Deutsch” 1st-year textbook in use here, which sends the readers to the website of the Swiss (-German) employment agency.
Apart from infrequent words ("Archiven") and Lehnwörtern ("Bachelor" etc.), Windows 7 speech recognition accuracy seems quite impressive. The above example was actually my first dictation, except that immediately beforehand, I invested a few minutes into the standard Windows 7 speech recognition training (aimed at training the user, although may behind the scenes teach the computer a few things about the speaker already also) and a few more minutes of voice training (this one is meant exclusively for the computer, but the user can also see it fail and why). The – rather simple trick to boost speech recognition results – certainly accessible to our students – seems to be to speak not only clearly, but also slowly, with short pauses between most words.
Speech recognition in these languages is a feature of the Windows 7 (Enterprise/Ultimate version) “language packs” that we installed and switched to – that is why the entire computer interface appears in German. Practicing the L2 with (computer—operating) “voice commands” (instead of with a mouse) is also possible, simpler than replacing the keyboard (mostly) by voice, but not as easy to devise homework exercises for.
Tips for designing exercises using speech recognition: As the example shows ("Archiven") , doing all corrections by voice can quickly become tedious. But there is no pedagogical need to have your students’ bang their heads against this wall. Instead, just ask your students to correct their automatically recognized words manually at the end of their video, after their dictation. This way both you and your students get a clear summary of what they achieved – even clearer if they dictate in MS-Word with the spell and grammar check for the language (automatic with the switch to the language pack for the language) and (using key combination CTRL+SHIFT+E) track changes. We will show you later TBA:how we now enable students to easily record their screen and TBA:upload their screencast into Moodle Kaltura.
How to peek inside your MSI files with LessMSI
In spite of a few typos in the (generally very helpful) descriptions (and the pun at the cost of poor Victor), this seems a very useful tool that gives you an overview of what you are embarking on when installing software, like so:
LessMSI allows you can even extract individual files to investigate further:
Moreover, it is extremely easy to install using chocolatey after which it is going to be in your PATH, to be called as “LessMSI.bat”.
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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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