I’m pleased to announce yet another Flash Interactive Multimedia Learning Application to add to the suite of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) software for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).

What is a C-Test?

A C-Test is a type of language test in which learners read a brief paragraph in the target language. The first two sentences are left intact. Thereafter, every other word is left intact but for each alternate word, only the first half of the word is written and the second half is represented by a blank space, e.g. every oth _ _ _ word i_ left int _ _ _. Learners’ ability to fill in the blank spaces indicates their language proficiency according to the reading difficulty of the paragraph used in the test.

How good are C-Tests at determining learners’ language proficiency?

Christine Klein-Braley published a paper titled Theory of C-Test Processing in 1996. In her introduction she wrote:

In virtually all the studies thus far reported, the C-Tests have been shown to be highly reliable, with alpha coefficients very often higher that .9, and to have high correlations with whatever other measure was used to represent language proficiency: teacher ratings or judgements, self-assessment procedures, and other language tests and language testing procedures. These validity coefficients have regularly reached .7 and higher. Such high validity coefficients are unusual for any type of test.

Esmat Babaii and Hasan Ansary published a research paper at Shiraz University in Tehran on an objective evaluation of the C-Test.

What’s different in this version?

Whereas the original version of the C-Test was paper-based and simply put an underscore for each missing letter of the words, e.g. mis _ _ _ _, this version uses a “traffic light” interactive colour coding feedback system which guides learners towards the correct answer, thereby preventing it from becoming a spelling test. It’s also particularly easy to deploy C-Tests using this application since all it needs is a paragraph of text in order to generate the test. It accepts paragraph text as XML files or as FlashVars, both of which can be written using a free text editor, through the Moodle SWF Activity Module settings wizard. The C-Test application sends the overall time taken and grade to Moodle’s grade book.

What’s next?

I am currently in the process of creating a new Moodle course for the Multimedia Interactive Learning Applications (MILAs). This course will include working examples, documentation and tutorials. Watch this blog for further announcements.

I’m pleased to announce the full public release of the SWF Activity Module for Moodle 1.9. It’s no longer in beta phase and is safe to install in public Moodle 1.9 installations.

Followers of this blog and my elearning projects will be well aware of the SWF Activity Module and what it does. If you’re new to this site, then check out the project home site on Google Code (See the link at the end of this article).

I’ve tested the module extensively and addressed all reported bugs. I’ve also had invaluable feedback from learners, teachers and developers that has shaped the development of the module since its conception. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to making this module a success.

Calling all Flash developers and designers…

One of my main goals from the start was to make the SWF Activity Module as useful, flexible and compatible as possible, particularly for deploying 3rd party Flash learning applications and to encourage Flash developers to create learning applications for Moodle 1.9. Judging by the results of Google Analytics and feedback from developers who have tried the module, uptake has come from far and wide.

And this is where I’d like some more feedback from people who are already using the SWF Activity Module. I’ve created a Showcase wiki page on the module project site where developers can showcase their Flash learning applications that can be deployed with the SWF Activity Module. Developers and organisations can contact me directly or post their entries in the comments section of the Showcase wiki page. I’ll endeavour to keep the Showcase page links up to date so that elearning organisations can quickly and easily find developers who can supply them with the Flash learning applications that they need. It’ll also help me to develop future enhancements to the SWF Activity Module if I can see how people are using it.

Calling all Moodle developers…

If you have used the SWF Activity Module and have made any special modifications to the source code, I’d love to see what you’ve done with it. If you’ve made some changes that would benefit other users, with your consent, I’ll include those in future versions of the module. Also, if any developers are interesting in contributing to the project and helping me out with it, I’d love to hear from you. I’m very keen for this to become a group project with a wide variety of interests and support.

For details about the SWF Activity Module, what it does, how it works, downloads, installation instructions and source code, please see the project home page.

I’ve just completed a new Flash learning application aimed at EFL/ESL learners and teachers which I believe is a good solution to many of the problems facing those who want to use phonetics in teaching English as a foreign or second language.

What does it do?

It can display any number of phonetic symbols which appear in groups as coloured buttons (see illustration).  When users click on one of the symbol buttons, a list of example words appears with the phonetic spelling and a play button next to each one so that they can listen to audio recordings of the example words.

The example on my Moodle deploys the symbols in a typical arrangement. They’re in columns of corresponding short and long vowels, dipthongs, corresponding voiced and unvoiced consonants and finally the remaining consonants.  By editing an external XML file, you can arrange and group the set or subsets of the phonetic symbols any way you like. For example, the past simple of regular verbs ending in /-id/, /-d/ and /-t/.

Why is it an advantage to make it dynamic?

Traditional phonetic charts (also known as phonemic charts) are fixed, static items that you cannot change. In most English courses, learners are presented with a single, very general, one-size-fits-all chart for the entire course. Such charts typically have a small, fixed set of vocabulary for learners to view and listen to and, more often than not, it bears no or little relation to the vocabulary being studied at any particular moment in the course. See this example on Oxford University Press’  New English File site or this example on the British Council’s BBC Teaching English site.

Making any Flash web application dynamic gives one very important advantage. Anyone can edit it without having to buy expensive software. In fact, all you need is a text editor and a little familiarity with XML  which is human readable and relatively easy to learn. Any teacher or course content developer can create any number of vocabulary sets and deploy them in Moodle along with the related course materials, giving learners specific pronunciation support for the target language in a particular module, unit or activity. Did I mention that it’s also very easy to correct any typos that you find?

Secondly (the technical bit), the Flash learning application contains no text or audio itself, all of that is loaded externally, making it only 12Kb in size which is less than half the size of the containing Moodle web page (a similar sized photo would be around 50 – 200Kb). This means that it appears almost instantly. The application then loads the words and phonetics as an XML file (XML is the de facto file format for dynamic learning content). The audio files are loaded as and when users play them. Typically, audio files tend to be quite large and so only loading them as required means that the application starts faster and only uses the internet bandwidth that is absolutely necessary – ideal for users with slow or intermittent connections.

How is using Flash an advantage over normal web page based phonetic charts?

Phonetic symbols have always been a bit of a problem on the internet, well actually, text and fonts in general. In order for a web page to be displayed with the correct font, e.g. Times New Roman, that font must be installed on users’ computers. If it isn’t, a substitute font is found automatically. The trouble is that not all fonts contain phonetic characters, in fact very few do, so what works perfectly well on one computer may be unreadable on another if it hasn’t got the correct font installed.

Flash resolves this issue by allowing developers to embed (include) fonts within their Flash applications. This means that the application carries the required fonts with it and will work on any computer regardless of whether it has any fonts installed or not. This is especially important with phonetic characters since so few fonts contain them. Problem solved!

Try the demo:

As always, I’ve deployed a demo of the chart, with 445 example words, on my Moodle demo course (Login as a guest). (Currently not available)

In this article, I’m going to give you an introduction to the new Media Player module for Moodle. It’s a flexible, robust and feature-rich method of deploying video in Moodle as an activity.

The Media Player module for Moodle using Searchbar and Playlist features

In November 2009, I started the FLV Player module for Moodle project. It was a way of deploying video in Moodle that was robust, standards compliant and above all easy to use for non-developers. It’s been a great success and I’ve have a lot of feedback from teachers, course content developers and admins. As a result of this, I’ve decided to update the module and include a number of new features. I’ve developed this new version as a separate and distinct module to avoid teachers and course content developers having to redeploy existing instances of the FLV Player module due to conflicts between the old and some of the new module’s settings.

You can already deploy video in Moodle. Why create a Module for it?

Moodle already has media filters that automatically convert HTML links to video files into instances of video player plugins, including Flash, QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Video. These work well for basic video deployment but don’t allow users to:

• Decide which video player plugin to use
• Control how the video player looks and behaves
• Allow you to deploy streaming video from a media server
• Do anything other than basic video playback functions

The Media Player module uses a single, extremely well developed and supported Flash video player (JW FLV Player) which effortlessly and gracefully handles the majority of web video formats, including FLV and F4V (Flash video), M4V and MOV (Quicktime) and MP4. It also supports the new and popular H.264 (Blu-ray) video CODEC and of course the most asked for feature in web video players, a variety of playlist formats.

Also, the only way to deploy captions with video is to hard-code them into the video file which is inflexible, doesn’t adjust when the video is scaled and doesn’t support multiple languages. External captions, on the other hand, are very flexible, easy to edit and easy to read at any magnification.

Obviously, many teachers and course content designers would like to do much more than basic video playback deployment for e-learning purposes and that’s where the Media Player module comes in.

But video is a resource. Why is Media Player an activity module?

If you only deploy video and nothing more, then it isn’t interactive and it would be unreasonable to call it an activity. The Media Player module includes options that have quite a high degree of interactivity such as Snapshot and Searchbar. As you’ll see while you read this article and try out the demos, it’s much more than a video player and will continue to support more features as they become available.

So what can I do with the Media Player module?

There’s a lot you can do with it and you can also use all of these features in combination with each other. The features are difficult to describe and I think it’s much better to see them demonstrated. See the links at the end of this article for some demos.

Here’s a list of the available options:

• External captions files: Supporting the popular SMIL and SubRip captions standards which allow very detailed control over how captions are displayed. You can also deploy the same video multiple times with different captions that play in the same playlist. Learners can immediately see what captions are available and there is no screen refresh when they select different ones. The captions can also be turned on or off at any time during playback.
• High and normal definition video files: You can deploy two versions of the same video, one normal definition and the other HD. Users can switch between the videos according to the speed of their Internet connection. If you use a streaming media server, you can also use automatic bandwidth checking so that the video player automatically finds the optimum definition of video to play.
• Info box: A consistent way to display information about the video being played (title, description, author and date deployed). An easy way to comply with copyright and licensing requirements.
• Livestream: This one if for live video broadcasts from media servers. Normally, users have to keep checking manually and refresh the web page every few seconds to see if a live broadcast has started. This feature automatically checks at defined intervals to see if the broadcast has begun without refreshing the web page and then plays the video so users are free to do other things while they’re waiting.
• Logobox: Include a logo with videos and also a link. It also supports Flash animation files so you can have an animated logo. The link could be to a web page or to a downloadable ZIP file.
• Metaviewer: Displays metadata information of the video files being played. It’s a convenient way for teachers and course content developers to find out essential information about the video file such as the exact width, height and duration.
• Playlists: By far the most asked for feature on video players is the ability to deploy several videos in one player. For example, if you have a video which is very long, it’s necessary to split it up into shorter (5 – 10 minute) sections or chapters and deploy them in order in one presentation. It supports thumbnail images, titles and descriptions for each item on the playlist. This means that users can easily return to a video and carry on watching from more or less where they left it. It’s also much easier to find a particular section without having to download the entire video. It supports several standard playlist formats including those produced by YouTube.com and iTunes.
• Search bar: Allows users to perform keyword searches on sites such as YouTube.com or, if you have a custom search script, anywhere you wish to define. It’s useful if you’d like users to do research without leaving your site.
• Snapshot: Allows users to take snapshots of frames of the video being played. The snapshots are stored in the course files directory and a link returned to the user. They could use this to post snapshots in course forums or blogs. The ability to store snapshots is controlled by creating a special directory in the Moodle course files directory for each user. To protect your server and users’ computers, the Snapshot feature follows the Flash Player security model and only allows users to take snapshots of videos hosted on the same site as the Moodle. It’s possible to enable other sites but only with a correctly configured crossdomain.xml policy file.
• Use YouTube.com as a video hosting service: Play videos directly from YouTube.com without any annoying advertising or popups and without users accidentally “clicking through” to the YouTube.com site. Only a small unintrusive YouTube.com logo appears in the bottom right of the screen. A cost-effective solution if you don’t mind making your video content publicly available and has the additional benefit of promoting your e-learning courses to a huge audience.

How can I start using it?

The Media Player module plugin for Moodle is open source and available to download and install from the project site hosted on Google Code. Please use the project Issues Tracker to report any problems or requests.

Can I see a demo?

There’s an HD (1280 x 720) video tutorial, deployed using the Media Player module, demonstrating how easy it is to deploy video with it here (login as a guest).

There are more demos of the various features on my Moodle here (login as a guest).

In a previous article, I announced a developer preview of the SWF Activity Module for Moodle 1.9. This is a brief announcement to developers who are interested in trying out the developer preview.

This Flash learning application generates word searches as activities in Moodle courses. The word searches are automatically generated are are unique every time a user interacts with them.

What does the word search do in Moodle?

• It’s quick and easy to deploy
• It’s fully integrated with Moodle
• It’s XML driven
• It pushes grades, elapsed time and feedback into Moodle’s grade book

Where can I download it from?

Download the Flash learning application called “xml_word_search.swf” from the SWF Activity Module project downloads page. There’s instructions and an example XML file that you can copy and paste on this SWF Activity Module project Wiki page.

Other possibilities…

A possible extension of this learning application is to use the SWF Activity Module’s AMFPHP Flash Remoting library to pull vocabulary lists from other database tables in Moodle, such as Wikis and Glossaries, or 3rd party web services such as on-line dictionaries and encyclopedias.