Say good morning in all the languages of the world multimedia language laboratory IDM PREMIUM TESTING SKILLS
COMPLETE YOUR IDM PREMIUM WITH TESTING SKILLS The Testing Skills work environment allows language teachers to completely manage every educational activity in the language laboratory. Testing Skills is a useful tool of the IDM Premium laboratory. It can be used by teachers to conduct and monitor laboratory activities directly from the instructor’s computer as well as control every lesson phase: planning, implementation, delivery to the class, collection and correction of class work (this phase can also be carried out at home) and a printout of completed work. Testing Skills features in Builder, which allows content creation, and Player, the lesson reader. Using Builder, teachers create ‘professional’ exercises with the utmost simplicity and flexibility, using a wide range of multimedia files from audio, video, images, texts and a set of complete exercises able to meet the demands of students with different language levels. With the Auto build function, teachers automatically transform any analogue audio program (such as traditional audio cassettes) into a Testing Skills library file sent in real-time to the class (the audio file can also be used in subsequent lessons). Auto build allows teachers to modify digitalised audio tracks, dividing them into sentences to ease student comprehension. The teacher decides how many student tracks to set (up to three); allowing students to practise not only by comparing their work with the master track but also by comparing their own recordings. Thanks to the Player (and without acting on his or her workstation), the student can receive the lesson and immediately start work on the set task.
TESTING SKILLS ACTIVITIES: • • • • • • • • • •
Listening Listening and comprehension Model imitation Model translation Open answers Dictation Easy dictation (missing word) Written text Written answers Single quiz or Multiple (multiple choice – true/false) • Text reconstruction (shuffled words) All these activities can be enriched with external multimedia stimulus files such as: Audio, Video, Text and Images (Using the current standard formats).
SELF-LEARNING: Students can autonomously load the Testing Skills lessons from a folder prepared by the teacher on the instructor computer/ server.
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IDM Premium IDM PREMIUM is a multimedia educational network designed to make teaching more dynamic in the laboratory thanks to the simple, effective and rational use of new communication technologies. The IDM PREMIUM teaching network is a reliable tool for multidisciplinary education and is suitable for all teaching practices, whatever the media used (audio, video, data). User friendly, it allows teachers to use the educational material at their disposal whilst offering the option to integrate them into interactive media, such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, Satellite TV, Internet, video conferencing, etc. IDM PREMIUM is strictly network hardware concerning the management of analogue audio-video. The dedicated equipment is connected outside the personal computer and is totally autonomous in terms of power and communication.
MAIN FEATURES TRAINING AND REMOTE SUPPORT Tecnilab puts in maximum effort to ensure that the labs are properly installed for intensive use. For this reason, Tecnilab, through free tools for remote connection, connects with the PC which manages the laboratory. This option allows teachers to benefit from further training and, importantly, it allows very quick upgrading of workstations connected to the laboratory.
REALTIME VISUALIZATION OF THE STUDENT’S APPLICATIONS The teacher monitors the application in use by any student. A window opens on the control panel with information on: student number, name, group and applications. This interactive service information is updated in real-time, automatically and simultaneously to all students’ work spaces. It can therefore monitor the work of each student in real-time. SIMULTANEOUS ACTIVITIES OF GROUPS With IDM PREMIUM four different activities are available for four different groups. For example, one group can work with a quiz, one group can receive an external video source, one group can practise with a written chat session and another group can work in a self-learning activity. For example, audio or video on demand which allow the students to choose the contents to practise with themselves.
STUDENTS’ ATTENDANCE AND CLASS REGISTER One of the most important functions of IDM PREMIUM is the presence / absence of students. Teachers, in a very simple way, create their own classes by sending students a window in which they have to write their names. Automatically, the teacher receives back all the students’ names and the software request to create a new register for this class. The teacher can always update the register in terms of presence / absence, and also with marks and comments given to the students and related to the activities they carried out.
TWO POSSIBLE CONFIGURATIONS WITH IDM PREMIUM IDM Premium is available for an individual student (single) or two students sharing the same Unit. IDM PREMIUM SINGLE In the individual configuration, each student possesses a computer with a monitor, mouse, keyboard and headset with microphone. IDM PREMIUM DOUBLE In the double configuration, two students possess a computer, two keyboards, two mice, one monitor split or two separate monitors (depending on the VGA card installed) and two headsets with microphones. With the double solution, the languages activity is really independent for the two students in terms of video, audio and writing.
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LABORATORY ACTIVITIES • User-friendly interface with real classroom layout reproduction. • Personalised access to the instructor software with a USB drive. • Switch ON/OFF for all the student units from the main instructor software. • Class loading with all the information stored (name, marks/comments and activities carried out). • Automatic saving of all the activities carried out. • Group creation of up to four groups with as many students as needed for each group. • Simultaneously and differentiated activity sending to each group. • Each activity or function can be executed on a single student or on a selected group of students with a simple mouse click. • Independent group creation for independent activities.
• Analogue sources sending to one student/group/ whole class. • Communication to one student/group/whole class. • Student interviews. • Sending student interviews to another student/ group/whole class. • Audio pair creation: manually, automatic and sequential or automatic random. • Student CALL with memorisation of calling time delay. • Discrete listening of the selected student regardless to the activity carried out. • Automatic discrete listening of the selected group (AUTOSCAN) with the possibility to set the autoscan time. • Intercommunication with students with automatic remote control of key board and mouse. • Remote control of the instructor program, for training and updating, also including the student’s position (requires a DSL Internet connection). • File transfers. • Automatic student attendance with automatic class register creation.
• Real-time visualisation of the application in use for each student. • Student mouse and keyboard lock. • Attention message (blank screen). • Snapshot creation and saving. • Working session concerning: • Quizzes, multiple choice – true/false. • Written chat. • Audio and video on demand (self-learning). • Multimedia session audio and video but managed by the teacher (Play, Stop, Fw. Rw., Pause). • Working session with office application (teacher sends a document, sets a working time, when the time is over, automatically receives back all the students’ documents with: the original document, students’ documents, and correction for students). • Automatic back-up wizard that guides teachers to save all the lab data, including teacher’s and students’, and including audio. • Teachers can correct students’ activities and create new contents at home with the lite software version.