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

2012/05/04 Leave a comment
  1. Here is a 2.5 minute screencast showing off the different ways how you can view your students’ screens using the Sanako Study 1200, .
  2. from smallest to biggest, all accessible form the button:”screensharing”
    1. first thumbnails
    2. then thumbnails in extra window
    3. finally autoscan 
  3. 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.
  4. 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).
Categories: audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, Screencasts Tags: ,

Loading the right classroom file for an exam that uses Sanako

2012/05/04 Leave a comment

exam2 Currently the preferred layout is Exam 2: Choose this when the Sanako starts

Categories: audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab Tags: ,

Sanako Study 1200 Version 5 now allows for larger student screen thumbnails, but still limits the classroom layout size

2012/05/04 Leave a comment
  1. 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.
  2. In version 5, the capability to adjust the size has been added.  In Tutor.exe, Go to Menu: tools / preferences / thumbnail-size.tutor-tools-preferences-thumbnail-size
  3. 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).
  4. 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.
  5. Upgrading to a screen with a larger screen resolution on the teacher computer would be even better.
  6. 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:
  7. IMAG0113 Stitch (7000x1468)
Categories: audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, e-learning Tags: ,

How to play a DVD from the LRC teacher podium

2012/05/04 Leave a comment

dvd av control panel

  1. On the Control panel, click on “DVD”
  2. This makes the DVD controls appear, which include play and FF.
  3. By clicking on “Advanced Controls”, you can access another screen with more controls.
  4. Or you can play your DVDs from the teacher podium computer which is more integrated with the rest of the computer use, and you do not have to walk over to the AV cabinet to insert the DVD. Read in…
Categories: audience-is-teachers, Presenter-Computer Tags: ,

Students of the Oaklawn Language Academy visited the LRC …

2012/05/03 Leave a comment

… and sent us a thick envelope chock-full of these very sweet handwritten thank-you notes.

I have twin nieces their age, so I know that it can take a bit to get them to write these notes (I am looking at you, Miss M…! Smile).

The little man on the screen they mention, that can talk in tongues is the Microsoft-Deskbot, and the headphones they mention were connected to a Sanako Study 1200 digital audio lab.

I hope we can upgrade all this to Windows 7 this summer, and that the Language Academy will be back next spring to admire it all…

Categories: digital-audio-lab, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, K12, marketing, Personal, Photos, Practice&Demos, service-is-outreach Tags: ,

How to stream video clips to students in classroom and at home, using Moodle Kaltura

2012/05/02 Leave a comment
  1. DVDs are getting a bit long in the tooth, not to mention VHS, and can form a real obstacle or time-consuming distraction in an educational setting, from handling the media to finding compatible software and/or hardware players for the media.
  2. Fortunately, there is a now a better way to make video clips available to students than uploading them to YouTube.com:
    1. university-supported,
    2. more compliant with copyright and fair use restrictions (which still apply)
    3. also requiring only a web browser (available on all campus computers, including teacher computers in classrooms, including those that have no (region-free) DVD-player installed)
    4. and a course enrolment. But access to a Moodle course can  now be considered a given, both for teachers and students.
  3. Moodle Kaltura allows for easy
    1. uploading of a video file by the teacher
    2. viewing by the student (streamed – Flash required, not different from YouTube.com).
  4. View a screencast example how easy it is with Moodle Kaltura to upload and playback a video clip from a movie DVD.
    1. Not different from YouTube.com, you still need to edit out the segment from the DVD that you want to show in your class,  uploading a full DVD I do not intend to test.
    2. From this example, you can also get an idea how long the server-side encode takes before the video an be streamed back to students: the short clip of a few minutes here starts playing back at 12:40. Naturally, a teacher would prepare their course, including all video uploads, before the term starts or possibly before the week starts, or, in extremis, before the class starts – in practice, only the – extremely unlikely – scenario where the teacher would try and upload the video during the class is not supported.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, lms, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, service-is-learning-materials-creation Tags: , ,

Spring 2012 Faculty Workshop II: Oral Proficiency testing with Audacity/Sanako

2012/04/30 Leave a comment
  1. View screens (best viewed side by side, but note that left and right screen are not synchronized):
    1. for full slide show (note the included short links for convenient further reading), left screen
    2. for Sanako interface and full audio track, right screen.
  2. Table of contents:
    1. Overview of a Sanako Oral Exam
    2. Examples of Exam teachers’ exam question recordings
    3. Example of a Sanako Exam
    4. Loop induction
      1. creating an exam question recording
      2. by taking a Sanako exam as a student
    5. Step-by-Step of administering a Sanako oral exam
    6. Grading Sanako oral exam student files
      1. Sanako voice insert for
        1. facilitating recording oral assignments for student without hard-coded pauses
        2. commenting on student responses during grading
    7. Sanako authoring tool for providing visual on top of aural cues to students
  3. workshop-2012-2-sanako-ppt-thumbnails
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Arabic, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hindi, Intermediate, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Listening, Mandarin, multimedia-recording, Polish, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, Screencasts, service-is-assessing, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Slideshows, Spanish, Speaking, step-by-step-guides, Student-Computers, Swahili, workshops, Yoruba Tags: , , ,

Checklist for hiring process of new LRC Assistants

2012/04/30 Leave a comment

Click to view or edit.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, Documents, Internal, service-is-hr-managing Tags: ,