Proposal For Ll Software Based - Multi Platform

Technical Proposal & Write Up On Interactive Language Lab Solution For

2

(Client) Seller Restrictions

This data shall not be disclosed and shall not be duplicated, used, or disclosed in whole or in part for any purpose.

If a

contract is awarded to HCL as a result of or in connection with the submission of this data, the client or prospective client shall have the right to duplicate, use, or disclose this data to the extent provided in the contract. This restriction does not limit the client’s or prospective client’s right to use the information contained in the proposal if it is obtained from another source without restriction.

The data subject to this

restriction is contained in all marked sheets.

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HCL PROFILE HCL Infosystems Limited is one of the pioneers in the Indian IT market, with its origins in 1976. For over quarter of a century, HCL has developed and implemented solutions for multiple market segments, across a range of technologies in India. HCL has been in the forefront in introducing new technologies and solutions, now HCL is amongst the top 20 business houses in India with 14000+ employees spread across 38 countries and revenue of around 14 billion US dollars. HCL Infosystems Ltd. is the Internet Infrastructure initiative of the HCL group, India’s premier information technology group. Through the pioneering presence of the HCL group companies the vast experience of the markets, HCL Infosystems has propelled itself to the path of “Total Technology Integration”. HCL Infosystems has established state-of-the-art ATM / Frame-Relay IP based network infrastructure across 43 cities in the country and offers an entire range of managed services. Its portfolio of services includes Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), Broadband Internet access; Hosting Co-location Services; Designing and deploying Disaster Recovery

4 solutions and Business Continuity solutions; Application services; Managed Security services and NOC services. All these services are delivered with a turnkey approach that includes delivering Infosystems’s core services, third party hardware and network provisioning, maintenance activities and project management. HCL Infosystems comes with the promise of delivering the committed ‘Quality of Service’ backed by significant investments in infrastructure, network management solutions and its round the clock centralized Customer Support Call Center. This holds even more when we consider the

leverage

Infosystems

draws

from

its

parent

company’s

unparalleled experience in networking.

Interactive Language Lab Solution HCL Infosystems Limited is providing one of the leading Interactive Language Lab (IIL) in the market. In our solution we had given more importance to improve the pronunciation, communication skills, fluency, accent and facial expression, which more important in any language conversation.

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HCL’s Customer Support We have the highest regard for our esteem customers, and to meet this, we have geared up ourselves with following services across the country: •

We organize customer’s meets all over the country to have the first hand interaction, which enable us to interact with our customers and review their feedback one to one. We also strive to

improve

our

services

standards

for

more

customer

satisfaction. •

We have the key-client concept, where in we constantly monitor the upkeep of our products, being used for achieving highest level of service standards. The parameters governed by this (viz. Up-time, Preventive Maintenance Schedule etc.) are appraised by

6 specialized team at the regional office and Head office. Further, these

clients

are

provided

with

an

Up

Time

Certificate

authenticated by the respective user department and these are sent by the President & CEO himself. We have across the country – Number of Machines

50,000

Number

photocopier) 10,000 (Telecom products alone) 1,000

of

Software

(All

products

including

Solutions Number of Professionals Number of Trained

14,000 5,000

Engineers Number of Offices Number of Service Centres Customer Satisfaction ISO Certification

170 cities 360 9 out of 10 * ISO 9001:2000 & ISO 14001:2004

* Survey done internally by HCL Infosystem directly to its customers.

With trained engineers around 530 locations around India, we are able to provide better customer support and reach well above the industrial customer

satisfaction

level

standards.

HCL is itself synonymous with customer satisfaction, we are proud to offer the best solutions and services anywhere in India. HCL Infosystems is awarded the best in the “Corporate Users expectation and Satisfaction Survey 2003” conducted by Voice & Data Magazine.

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HCL’s Presence in India

8

Requirement at, (Client) (Cleint) want a successful solution for language teaching solution, where interaction between the students and teacher is at the maximum level without interfering or disturbing the progress of the class. Solution should be language independent, i.e. solution should not be bound / bind to one particular language. Group discussion in groups or pairs will help teachers to check live performance of students and guide them improving the pronouncing, etc. Teachers can also monitor the video and audio conversation, etc. Students or Teachers can record session so that the same can be replayed again. Different format of files likes .avi, mp3, wav, powerpoint presentation, audio files can be easily shared. HCL’s ILL support all different file format. Personal Computer with inbuilt DVD/VCD player can be played without using any extra hardware like VHP / DVD player, etc.

Services at, (Client)

(gets from clients apart from the

stated below) (Client) take language learning classes at it’s institute at (Location). The following points to remember:•

Class has strength of 30 numbers

•

One Teacher

9

Institute

is

looking

for

following

endeavours o Assisting teachers in preparing class presentation/lectures, etc o Preparation during active class session o Recording of lesson in teacher’s voice o Transfer of the recorded lesson to the students console/PC’s o Forming group / pairs for discussion o Monitoring activities performed by students o Student’s can clear their doubts online with the teacher o Language independent solution o Different can languages can be easily incorporated with the software •

Problems/Issues Faced by (Client) Common Problems As faced by teacher o Students from different backgrounds o Impossible to constantly monitor individuals in class o Difficult to Provide a validated platform for comparison o Create Individual Lesson plans for students o Motivate the students for improvement What needs to be done? o To train students for improving oral(Spoken) /aural( Listening) abilities o Introduce them to Phonetics , Speech Sounds ,Intonation, Stress , Rhythm

10 o To provide student facility to practice and assess his own performance. o a multimedia infrastructure can aid in learning finer Nuances of language and monitor student individually

Objectives & Requirements HCL’s Interactive Language Lab solution will be able to provide you complete solution for your institute. The ILL will not only provide software and hardware but also software/books for learn different language, etc.

LangLab PASSPORT At a Glance What it is and isn't LangLab PASSPORT is a suite of software modules that help students acquire aural, oral, reading, and writing skills as well as cultural knowledge—or other kinds of knowledge, in courses other than language courses—through active use of lessons teachers design. Teachers can use existing multimedia or text resources and new resources they create. Students log in and choose their course from a menu. A course can have any number of lessons, and a lesson can have any number of "items" or activities. Students choose lessons from menus, click to go from item to item, and resources are available— teachers don't waste time finding files and sending them to students. Lesson activities can involve both tools "internal" to modules and additional multimedia instructional materials on Web sites or in file form. Teacher’s link resources to items, and students simply click on buttons to access them. Internal tools include the following:

11 o sound clips that teachers record themselves or import o recording of oral responses, including during recording pauses. Responses during recording pauses are combined with the original sound clip as a new file, so that comparing responses to model utterances is very easy and doesn't require switching between tracks. o small pictures that pop up automatically when a student is using an item o a configurable scrolling text window for instructions, text material, written questions, and response boxes for entering answers to multiple-choice, fill-in-the blanks, or essay questions. External tools a teacher can link to items of lessons include anything in file form—video clips, pictures, maps, drawings, and other images, longer audio clips, Powerpoints, documents, etc.—or any Web page. Activities can call for viewing video, images, and documents in conjunction with listening, recording, reading, and writing. The ability to combine these functions in imaginative ways enables teachers to teach all skills together in an integrated manner, so that for a particular aspect of language, the multiple impressions a student receives help the student learn faster and retain knowledge longer, and an activity focusing on one skill reinforces related activities focusing on other skills. With this rich toolkit, the teacher can hold students' interest by introducing extraordinary variety—reflecting the myriad

circumstances

of

language

use—in

diagnostic

testing,

instruction, and assessment of proficiency. Students can work alone in a drop-in lab or outside, and a whole class of students can work individually. Students can also work in pairs or groups, using a special module that lets a group listen to and view

12 materials as a basis for discussion (with the discussion recorded if desired). A teacher can listen to students and guide them while they work, in a real or virtual lab. Afterward, the teacher can analyze their work and provide feedback by inserting comments in recordings or by adding corrections and comments in a word processor to a file of written work. LangLab PASSPORT itself isn't a general-purpose classroom-control system for multimedia broadcasting. Such systems are valuable but are usually usually limited to giving students passive exposure to very large units of material. Most also lack the authoring and asynchronousfeedback tools LangLab PASSPORT provides, don't support remote use, and run only under Windows. LangLab PASSPORT provides more structured and interactive exposure to multimedia materials, using them in smaller units to elicit frequent oral or written responses from students and to help learners master language skills methodically. Where

classroom-management

capabilities

are

desired,

LangLab

PASSPORT can run within the framework of very affordable classroommanagement software, such as our partner GenevaLogic's awardwinning Vision product. Using these products in combination gives a teacher additional instructional tools (e.g., watching a student do written work in LangLab PASSPORT, or sending one student's voice or LangLab PASSPORT screen to others), and can let a teacher improvise lessons quickly. The total cost of ownership of the combination is still far less than what other vendors charge for language-lab systems with classroom-control capabilities.

Using LangLab PASSPORT o Students can go through lessons as their schedule permits.

13 o Teachers can review and insert comments in students' recordings at their convenience. o Teachers can bring up a file of written work and add corrections and comments. o A teacher can monitor and assist a class as students work. o A teacher can see at a glance which lessons and items students have finished and how much time any student has spent on each one. o Time teachers spend preparing lessons is an investment that pays off for many years, since teachers no longer have to prepare classes in which those lessons are going to be used. LangLab PASSPORT gives an educational institution or business engaged in language training the flexibility to accommodate different needs and experiment with different instructional techniques. LangLab PASSPORT makes it easy to track students' progress over time, measure

their

achievement,

and

adjust

the

curriculum

to

accommodate the needs of individual learners.

Why Choose LangLab PASSPORT? It's pedagogically superior and produces measurably better results o Students learn languages better and faster. LangLab PASSPORT maximizes exposure to authentic native speech and culture, while eliminating effort in locating lesson materials and time lost in switching from one kind of instructional resource and device to another. (Teachers who still face the burden of dealing with cassettes will love the convenience of digital media and instant access to a particular point in files.) o LangLab PASSPORT increases instructional time by making distance learning possible.

14 o LangLab PASSPORT supports integrated training in all language skills, facilitating activities that combine skills in mutuallyreinforcing forms of instruction. o LangLab

PASSPORT

increases

student

interactivity

with

multimedia materials, creating the active engagement needed to develop fluency in a language. o LangLab PASSPORT makes it easy to organize lessons in ways that help students progress step-by-step through new material and gradually increasing difficulty—from completely structured responses to the more free-form interactions that reflect how a language is really used. o LangLab PASSPORT's flexibility makes it easy to create lessons for different learning styles. o Students use their time more productively. They can work individually, practicing what they need to practice (but LangLab PASSPORT also gives them the opportunity for pair or group conversation to practice skills in a social context). o Teachers use their time more productively. Unlike systems in which teachers have to act as human file-servers, finding and dispatching files to students, LangLab PASSPORT lets teachers organize everything in advance, so that students have materials available to them and the teacher can concentrate on listening and helping. o Teachers guide students individually. LangLab PASSPORT lets teachers see who needs help and provide it in a way that optimizes use of the instructor's time. It's a complete package

LangLab PASSPORT does more than listen-and-record. It provides

15 o

structured access to a wealth of multimedia materials on the Web and in file form. LangLab PASSPORT lets you present instructional resources in easily assailable units that elicit a desired type of oral or written response from students, for both diagnosis and timed testing or practice and mastery.

o real-time monitoring and communication with students - Mere digital recorders and file-exchange systems don't have this capability, nor do CD-ROM materials for individual autonomous learning without teacher evaluation and guidance. o tools for pair and group conversation, with the ability to use textual and audiovisual materials as a stimulus for discussion, and easy recording of conversations for review by students and teachers afterward. These tools provide not only a means for practicing aural/oral skills in a social context but also a vehicle for collaborative testing as an alternative to individual testing. o authoring (lesson creation) that expands pedagogy - Even expensive

classroom-control

systems

usually

lack

LangLab

PASSPORT's tools for creating lessons. LangLab PASSPORT lets you import and edit existing audio materials or record new clips; link images to activities; link virtually any instructional resource that is a Web site or accessible file to a lesson item, as background for the response requested in the item; and incorporate textual materials, written questions, and answer boxes for testing of aural discrimination, comprehension, and writing skills. o asynchronous

feedback

-

Digital

recorders,

file-exchange

systems, and classroom-control systems cannot match LangLab PASSPORT's easy way for teachers to review students' recordings and written work and insert comments at any point.

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It's easier for students to compare their responses to a model o LangLab PASSPORT integrates the student response with the original utterance - it avoids cumbersome switching back and forth between tracks. o LangLab PASSPORT allows for a number of utterances in the same item - it's more convenient for practice than systems that allow only a single utterance and response per item.

It's simple to use for students as well as teachers o Intuitive and easy-to-use modules provide the core functions uncluttered by rarely-used features. o LangLab PASSPORT has been designed by experienced language teachers who understand how to make use obvious for students, and who know what special-purpose tools teachers need to get the most out of existing instructional materials.

It's a cross-platform solution LangLab PASSPORT runs on both Macintosh and Windows PCs. Even when all school computers use Windows, choosing LangLab PASSPORT means schools won't keep students and faculty with Macs who can't or don't want to run Windows from being able to work from home. For those institutions using Linux to save money, LangLab PASSPORT is the only compatible solution of its kind.

It costs vastly less than competitors' solutions Because LangLab PASSPORT is a fraction of the price of solutions from major competitors, school districts can stretch budgets to cover several times more schools.

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How it works LangLab PASSPORT has six modules, including the two Let'sT@lk modules (one for students, another for the teacher) for pair or group conversation. It is possible to purchase licenses for selected modules rather than the full suite: e.g., for the four basic modules but not the Let'sT@lk modules. In addition, there is a special utility module (PassportUtilities, not shown) used for installation and for obtaining or managing licenses. It contains a Color Chooser program that lets an institution customize colors used for parts of module screens. Below we describe what the main modules let you do. Click on the name of a module in the list below or in the menu bars above to see its screen(s) and an explanation of its functions.

The Client module (the only one students use when working individually) o listen to an audio clip

o record either during recording pauses of an audio clip or without an initial audio clip o read instructions, textual material, and written questions in a configurable scrolling text window (a teacher can choose fonts, colors, etc.) o enter answers to multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, and freeresponse questions in response boxes in the text window o view small pictures or other images that pop up automatically when a student uses an item with one o click a button labeled with the URL (location) of a Web page or an instructional resource of some kind in file form, and have the resource displayed or played by a browser or other appropriate tool. Resources can include video clips, other audio clips, image files, Powerpoints, .pdf documents, etc.

18 o do these things in a computer room or lab (or in a classroom, using a laptop and wireless networking), as well as a dorm room on a campus LAN, or elsewhere (e.g., at home), over the Internet o store students' recordings and written responses automatically as easy-to-retrieve files.

The Monitor module o monitor students and talk with them as they work o create a virtual lab, with the teacher and students all in different locations.

The Teacher module o lets teachers listen to students' recordings when they choose, even from an office or home o shows the answers students entered in response boxes o lets teachers record comments at exactly the right place in the file, put in new recording pauses for the student to try something again, or cut out things that were satisfactory and don't need to be redone o shows the teacher a report indicating which lessons and items each student has completed and how much time was spent on each o lets the teacher view a report showing all students' written work for a lesson or export it to a word processor for adding corrections and comments

The Admin (authoring) module for creating new courses and lessons

o prepare sound clips for lessons by importing/capturing and editing existing sound sources, digitizing tapes, or recording new clips

19 o link a picture or other image "internally" to a lesson item, so that it pops up automatically when a student comes to the item o create text instructions for lesson items o include longer reading material (including by copy-and-paste) in an item o add written questions to an item o put answer boxes in an item for entering answers to questions and other testing o configure the appearance of the text window by choosing background color and font characteristics o put in recording pauses of the right length or adjust existing pauses to give students enough time to respond o link Web pages, video clips, other audio clips, documents, Powerpoints, and other "external" instructional resources to an item, so that students can simply click a button labeled with their location and bring up a browser or other tools to display or use them o hide a lesson for later use as a test, make it accessible to students when the test begins, and hide it again afterward o change item order and delete items or even lessons o create or import a class roster with student passwords o set up new courses and specify necessary information like the sound file format and where course files will be stored.

The Let'sT@lkClient module o talk with one or more other students, record the conversation, and replay it afterward o choose a group, join it (unless the teacher assigns groups or has the computer do so) and quit a group o see who else is in the group one has joined

20 o use the tools of the regular Client module described above to listen to, view, or read materials designed to serve as a basis for discussion o

The Let'sT@lkMonitor module o join a group of student conversing in order to see how they are doing, participate in the discussion if desired, and help them o choose the size of groups, so that a group will have 2, 3, or 4 students o let students choose their own groups or assign students to groups—either by putting students in groups oneself or by letting the computer assign them to groups randomly o pre-assign students to groups to save time (as when giving a test for which students will work in pairs or groups) o save a set of group assignments and use it again later o talk to the entire class at the same time, if desired o

DIFFERENT MODULES IN DETAILS Client (Student) Module Students can work with or without a teacher monitoring them. Students log in, then select their course and the desired lesson from the pull-down menus.

Lessons o Each lesson is a sequence of items (activities or exercises) with instructions telling students what to do. o Items have visual or sound material of some kind—short or long —that the student views, reads, or listens to: clips or images,

21 audio clips, written instructions, documents (perhaps a section of a textbook), Powerpoint presentations, etc.—and call for an oral response the student records or a written response the student enters in answer boxes (by clicking on checkboxes for true-false and multiple-choice answers and typing in fill-in-the-blank boxes or larger boxes for free-response or essay-type answers). o Items usually have audio clips with recording pauses for responses, but some may simply ask a student to record— describing a picture or asking questions of someone shown in one, for instance, summarizing or commenting on something presented in a video clip or document, or recording text the module displays or that the student has written. o Some

items

may

be

listening-comprehension

or

aural-

discrimination activities with response boxes but no recording. Others may be entirely text-based, with reading and writing but no sound clip or recording. o Items may also feature other combinations of video, an image, a Web page, a sound clip, recording, written questions, typed answers, etc. Combinations of functions and resources allow integrated teaching of all skills (including knowledge of the civilization), with one resource of an item that targets one skill reinforcing other elements that target other skills. LangLab combines recorded responses with the model utterances of the item for easy comparison— no switching back and forth between tracks is required. Lessons are flexible: o They can have as many items as desired.

22 o Audio clips can be short or long. They can have a single prompt and recording pause or many prompts and recording pauses, for practicing some aspect of phonetics or grammar. o Items can ask students to respond by clicking on checkboxes or typing answers rather than by recording. o They can also ask students to record something without listening to something first: a poem, song, or prose displayed in the text window. When students can sit together, they can use a standalone microphone to record a conversation divided into segments (items). LangLab's Let'sT@lkClient module, however, supports pair and group discussion for students who cannot sit together and share a microphone, and the Let'sT@lk modules give an instructor far more flexibility in forming pairs or groups. o The text window may display just a brief instruction telling students what to do, or it may display questions and answer boxes, or a longer text students read, such as a passage from a novel or a scene from a play. As students type answers to questions, the window scrolls automatically. The teacher can use fonts and colors to draw students' attention to key elements in the window. o Small pictures linked "internally" to items pop up when a student comes to the item and disappear when the student goes to another item. o External materials (video clips, larger images, documents, Web pages, etc.) linked to items pop up when the student clicks on the URL button. The student can replay the original clip or the recording with responses as often as desired. A progress bar shows the student where in the clip the current point is and where recording pauses occur. With a single mouse click it's possible to jump forward or back in a clip to practice

23 something. A recording light with a time counter tells students when to record and how much time is left to respond. Lessons are automatically retrieved from a server and the students' recordings are automatically saved on the server. Teachers can easily retrieve a recording by choosing the student's login name, the lesson, and the item from menus. Teacher/Student Interaction and Feedback The client module includes a call button allowing students to call and speak with their instructor in real time. The teacher can also record and insert comments directly into a student's recording. A message notifies the student whenever a teacher has inserted comments in the student's previous recording for an item. The teacher can similarly comment on the student's participation in pair or group recordings (using the Let'sT@lkClient module), and the Client module will notify the student who uses it to listen to the conversation afterward if the teacher has inserted comments in a segment.

Monitor Module The Monitor module lets teachers and students communicate in real time. Keep an eye (and ear) on your students A teacher can use any computer in a lab or outside the lab to monitor a class and can change computers in mid-session. The teacher selects the course to monitor, and only students in the lab who are in that course are affected. Students in other courses can work in the lab without interfering with monitoring and without being disturbed themselves.

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The main Monitor panel shows the teacher which lesson and item each student is working on and whether the student is just listening or is recording. For a large class, the window scrolls to show all students. Interact easily with your students: o Listen to any student as the student works; o Interrupt and have a private conversation with a single student or talk with the entire class. o Intervention by the teacher pauses students' work automatically, so that they can resume it afterward at the same spot. o See right away when a student wants your help. (The Called button blinks.)

Teacher Module The Teacher module's pull-down menus let the teacher easily retrieve and evaluate a student's recording, for both individual recordings and recordings of pair or group conversations in which the student has participated. The Teacher module also displays in the text window any answers the student has entered in response boxes. Inserting Comments

The teacher can insert audio comments at any point in the recording and can also put in another recording pause for the student to rerecord something. The Client (Student) module tells a student when there is a version of the item with the teacher's comments on what the student has previously recorded. The Teacher module includes tools to help the teacher assess the student's work and find the spot to insert comments: o Select part of the sound clip and play just that portion;

25 o Click the Step button to go through the sound file one-fifth of a second at a time. It lets the teacher make any part of the file louder or softer, or delete it.

Reports and maintenance

The teacher can bring up a report showing which lessons and items each student has finished and how much time a student has spent on each. The teacher module also makes it easy to delete student recordings no longer needed, after a course is over. The SAVE STUDENT ANSWERS button lets the teacher view a report of all students' written work for the lesson. The report can be saved as a file that the teacher can bring up in a word processor. The teacher can then add corrections and comments, extract the portion for each student, and give it to the student.

Admin Module Lesson Management

o The Admin module lets teachers create new lessons, including quizzes and tests, and edit exiting lessons. o Teachers can hide tests and make them available to students only when needed. Audio Creation and Processing

o It's easy to import existing sound files into LangLab (from CDs accompanying textbooks, etc.), digitize tapes, and record new material for lessons.

26 o Standard cut, copy, and paste functions make it easy to assemble and edit an audio clip or modify loudness of selected parts. Linking Items to Video Clips, Web Pages, Images, Documents, etc.

o You can link to an item of a lesson any Web page or virtually any instructional resource in file form, on a server or on the student's own computer (including on CDs or DVDs that a student inserts in a drive). o The URL (location) of the resource appears on a button in the Client module (the one students use), and all they have to do is click on the button to launch a browser or other program (e.g., a media player) for display or use of the file. Designing Lessons

o Create an unlimited number of items, short or long, for each lesson. o Change the order of items as needed. o Put in text instructions for each lesson item and even longer texts for students to read in the scrollable text window. o Configure the text window: choose background colors, fonts, and font attributes to draw students' attention to key elements in it and provide visual variety. o Find and link an image file to the item, so that the picture pops up automatically when a student using the Client module comes to the item. o Add written questions and use a simple command to create checkboxes and response boxes of arbitrary length that students can use to answer true/false, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, or essay questions.

27 o Type or copy and paste in the URL field the location of a Web page or external instructional resource in file form, or simply click a button to navigate to the file and choose it: video, documents wih text and images, larger image files, Powerpoints, etc. o Use the Show/Hide toggle to specify whether a lesson will be accessible to students or off-line and hidden for later use as a quiz or test. o Easily add or delete lessons or items in them as needed. Pauses

o Insert recording pauses for students to respond. o Quickly see how long the pause is and change it. o Select which pauses trigger the recording light when students use an item—keep the very common pauses for emphasis in commercial materials (not intended for recording) from doing so. o Lengthen all pauses in an item in one step, solving the problem of commercial audio materials with many pauses that never allow enough time for students to respond. Course and System Administration

o The LangLab Administrator uses this module to set up new courses, specifying parameters such as sound file format and where files are stored. o Teachers use this module to enter the class roster for a course, with student login names and passwords. o Import

LangLab

PASSPORT

developed elsewhere.

Let'sT@lkClient Module

courses

or

individual

lessons

28 This module lets students converse in pairs or groups of three or four. It greatly resembles the regular Client module because it has almost all the same functions, so that a teacher can have students listen to an audio clip, read textual material and questions, view a video clip or images, or use other resources as a basis for the discussion. Conversations can be recorded and students can replay them afterward. A teacher can also use LangLab PASSPORT's Teacher module to listen to these recordings and insert comments on any student's participation, as with students' recordings made using the regular Client module. A small window in the left portion of the screen shows who is in the student's group, and the Manage Group button above it brings up an extra screen that lets the student join or leave a group, if the teacher has students choose their own groups. Using the Let'sT@lkMonitor module, the teacher can also form groups manually (including assign students to groups before class) or let the module assign students to groups randomly. o As with the regular Client module, students can work with or without a teacher monitoring them. (The Let'sT@lkMonitor module lets the teacher join groups, but the teacher can also use Let'sT@lkClient and do so.) o Conversation classes are lessons divided into items, just like other LangLab lessons. o A teacher's comments are much easier to find in a segment of a conversation than they would be in one long conversation. o A segmented conversation lends itself much better to use in collaborative testing than would one long conversation.

29 When students are tested in pairs or groups, different materials can provide the stimulus for each item. o Students usually enjoy a series of short conversations more than one long one. Topics can change, and students can even change groups from item to item. o When the teacher lets students choose their own group, each student simply clicks on Manage Groups to bring up the grouping panel, then clicks on one of the groups to join it. If there are already enough people in the group, the student can click on QUIT GROUP and try another group. o In Let'sT@lk, the Record button is only for recording the pair or group conversation, since an audio clip in an item is only for listening—a stimulus or source of background information for the conversation. To simplify putting together two or more students' contributions in one file, students in a pair or group agree to start recording and do so at roughly the same time. o The Replay button is the one with the arrow bent around. After students record their conversation, they can simply click on this button to listen to it.

Let'sT@lkMonitor Module This module lets the teacher organize, monitor, and participate in conversations students have in pairs or groups. o Clicking on the button showing two people together brings up the small Manage Groups panel shown below the main screen. o The teacher can choose who will be in which group or can let the computer do so randomly, after indicating the target size of groups. (To avoid possible problems from network congestion, the limit is four students in a group.)

30 o The teacher can also assign students to groups in advance, to avoid

taking

class

time

to

do

so

(for

instance,

when

administering a collaborative test). o After groups have been assigned, the teacher can still move any student from one group to another, simply by clicking on the group to which the student should be in and on the name of the student. o A set of group assignments can be saved and imported for later use, in order to have the same groups continue a discussion from a previous session. o If a teacher is controlling group assignments, the panel for choosing groups in the module students use is turned off. o The teacher can join any group, either simply to listen to the conversation or to speak with the students in the group. o The teacher can change group assignments whenever desired. Students do not have to remain in the same groups for every item of a lesson.

LangLab PASSPORT and Pedagogy Using LangLab PASSPORT, a school or business can better approximate actual immersion in a language. It can create lessons that o provide realistic exposure to native speakers of the language o keep students involved by eliciting frequent oral and written responses to questions and cues o combine aural and visual experiences to familiarize students with important aspects of the culture. Some systems are designed primarily for teachers to broadcast large blocks of pre-existing materials in a synchronized way to all students, regardless of their skill levels and individual needs--a kind of instruction that fosters passivity rather than engagement and true

31 learning. LangLab PASSPORT, in contrast, lets teachers organize lessons that break down learning into manageable, incremental steps, so that students can progress systematically—in all four skills—from lesser to greater difficulty, and from completely structured drills to freer, integrative responses--repeating what they need to until they achieve mastery. The supreme flexibility of LangLab PASSPORT—the almost unlimited ways in which teachers can select and combine instructional resources in lesson activities of various types and lengths--supports the diversity of learning styles teachers actually encounter in their students, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Systems that require teachers to find and send files to groups of students suffer from a fundamental pedagogical flaw. By making the teacher into a human file-server, they present the teacher with a dilemma: to keep students responding often enough to stay engaged, the teacher can send them relatively short files, but to keep doing so the teacher is generally too busy acting as a file dispatcher to listen to and help the students. On the other hand, if the teacher sends them longer files, to keep from having to find and send out files as often, the students wind up having a largely passive exposure to the material. With LangLab PASSPORT, teachers do not have to find and send out files on the fly. LangLab PASSPORT's Admin module is a lesson-planning tool that lets teachers find and link files to lessons in advance, within an organized structure of items that offers far more flexibility than the "bookmarks" of competitors' solutions. It may take a bit more time to plan and structure a lesson beforehand, but it's far more effective use of the teacher's time than finding and dispatching files in class, the lessons are usable for individual learning as well as for teacher-centric learning, and the results speak for themselves.

32 Although many teachers remain wary of introducing technology into the classroom, technology can actually reproduce many kinds of social interaction

with

greater

authenticity

than

standard

classroom

exercises. Furthermore, the convenience and flexibility of languagelearning technology can maximize the student's contact with the language and ensure that both the teacher's time and the student's time are used optimally. You can use LangLab PASSPORT within the framework of classroomcontrol software to make doubly sure that students stay on task. ELangLab partners with GenevaLogic, the leader provider of such software, and can now offer clients GenevaLogic’s award-winning Vision®6 product for this purpose. Vision®6 can let you do additional things with LangLab PASSORT, including quick lesson creation.

System Requirements LangLab PASSPORT is written in Java. It's a cross-platform application that runs on PCs using Windows, Macs using OS X, and under Unix, Novell, etc. Computers students and faculty use get files from another computer a server - and put new files on it. The server can be the same computer teachers use to monitor a class, but it can also be a different one. A teacher using the Monitor module on one kind of computer can monitor and talk with a student using the Client module on another kind of computer. Here is what you need to run LangLab PASSPORT:

33 o CPU: a PC with at least a Pentium III/700MHz CPU inside or a Mac that is at least a G4; i.e., any computer except the most Neolithic machines o RAM memory: RAM 256 MB. LangLab PASSPORT actually can be used with only 128 MB of RAM, but other applications running need RAM, too. How much RAM LangLab PASSPORT requires depends on how long sound clips are. Currently it's configured to let sound clips run up to 10 minutes. Since it holds clips in memory, when a LangLab PASSPORT module is brought up, it instructs Java to grab 128 MB. Because other applications may also require RAM, 256 MB of RAM is a normal system requirement. If you set the maximum length of sound clips at under ten minutes, it may be possible to use LangLab PASSPORT successfully on computers with less memory. A key point to remember is that the memory requirement depends on which other programs a computer is running at the same time. Regardless of how much RAM is installed, the computer should not be running other services that result in much less than 128 MB being available for LangLab PASSPORT. Otherwise, frequent paging may result in performance problems such as scratchy sound.

o Screen display: 1024x768 recommended o Sound card: Full-duplex sound card on which Javasound will run. Virtually any modern computer has one. Strongly recommended for Windows users is a sound card that lets the stereo mixer be turned on or off in a sound control panel, since for some instructional purposes it should be on and for others off. This feature seems not to exist with OS X, although it may be possible to achieve mixer control to combine whatever the sound card is playing with microphone input as the input source for a LangLab PASSPORT recording by using third-party mixer software. o An OS that can run a fully-functional version of the Java Run-time Environment: Windows 2000 and XP, Apple OS X from 10.2.6 on, Unix,

Novell,

etc.

On the Mac, the current 2.2 release of LangLab PASSPORT requires at least Apple Java 1.4.2, for which the OS requirement is OS X 10.3.4 or later. Java 1.5 is better than 1.4.2 at handling Asian characters, and can display together languages such as

34 Arabic and Chinese, an ability lacking in Java 1.4.2. Java 1.5 is not compatible with versions of OS X earlier than 10.4, however. o The Java Run-time Environment just mentioned: for Windows, Java 1.5 (also known as the JRE 5.0) or later, and for the Mac, Apple Java 1.4.2 or later. (See the preceding note regarding display

of

Asian

characters

with

Apple

Java.)

Java 1.6 (JRE 6.0) has not been properly tested for compatibility yet--don't use it until we tell you it's safe to do so. Mac users: please note that Apple's Java 1.5 release requires Tiger (10.4) or later and is not compatible with earlier versions of OS X. Here is how to download it if you don't already have it: Windows users: go to the page http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp, read down to the JRE 5.0 Update 12 that "allows end-users to run Java applications," and click on the link just below to download it (after accepting the license agreement). With time this page may change as updates after 5.0 (or 1.5) become available, but the main j2se page should always have links to the current version. Mac OS X users: you can find out which version of the JRE is installed by opening a terminal window (Applications->Utilities->Terminal) and typing java -version. Java 1.5 is currently available from this Apple Web page. Java 1.4.2 Update 2 is currently still available from this Apple Web page. These links may become outdated, but Java versions can be found by entering "Java" as a search term in the search field of Apple's main page. If Let'sT@lk is used on a Mac that has Java 1.4.2 rather than 1.5, small panels being used will not stay on top of main panels as one moves back and forth, but clicking on them brings them to the top again.

o A headset and microphone (preferably part of the headset) for individual work; a stand-alone microphone may occasionally be useful when pairs or groups of students are asked to record, sitting together by one computer and passing the microphone back and forth, though Let'sT@lk is a superior tool for this purpose. o So that it's possible to use MP3 files on a Mac, the LangLab PASSPORT installer includes the LAME MP3 encoder. The encoder

35 installation package includes the source code for the encoder and the text of the GNU Lesser General Public License, as required by the terms of that license granted by the Free Software Foundation. That's it for a single user trying out the demo version. Here are two additional requirements for real use on a network: o Networking: 100 Mb backbone/10 Mb to stations minimal (100 Mb to stations recommended) o For a client-server installation, server capability for SFTP, FTP, or the SMB protocol. (SMB is used by default with Microsoft Windows, and is used by the SAMBA open-source utility running on Mac OS X, Unix, Linux, and Netware machines.) Any operating system capable of acting as a server normally has SFTP and FTP capability included. When a Mac is used as a server, it is a good idea to have even client machines in the lab communicate with it by SFTP, to avoid problems of inadvertent deletion of critical files that might arise if the client machines have to mount the server volume and permissions are not managed with sufficient care. For remote use, E-LangLab strongly recommends use of SFTP, which provides greater security than SMB or FTP and does not require managing a VPN (virtual private network). Client-side SFTP capability is already incorporated into LangLab PASSPORT modules.

Sound File Formats Either .wav or .mp3 format (monitoring uses one format at a time). You can capture sound in either of these formats from audio files of many other types that you play in a media player.

36

Deliverables Sr. No. 1.

2

Particulars

Quantity

Teacher Software Students Software Headphone with Mic

01 30 31

Training

Online

37 HCL here by submit its Commercial Proposal for Total Library Management

Solution

to

(Client). Kindly find below our Commercial proposal: Commercial Offer for Library Management Software: Sr. No. Particulars 1. Teacher Software (01)

Price (Rs.)

Students’ Software (30) Headphone with Mic (31) 2

Online Classroom via local internet (100 users) with Let’s Talk Module (optional)

Terms & Conditions: o

Delivery: 2-3 weeks from the date of receipt of the PO and payment.

o Taxes: The above prices are exclusive of all local taxes. The same will be charged extra as applicable by HCL to (Client). o Warranty: There is a warranty on the solution purchased for one year from the date purchased. Thereafter, the warranty will continue to get extended on an annual basis as long as (Client) continues to renew the Annual Maintenance on an annual and timely basis from the second year onwards. o Validity of Prices: These prices are valid for 30 days. o Force Majeure: HCL shall be under no liability whatsoever on the occurrence of any Force Majeure event such as war, fire, arson, industrial action, orders of government or other duly constituted authority, any natural calamities or Act of God, etc.

38 o HCL provides the solution to (Client) based on the above understanding, In case any additional scope of work or legal licenses or copyright act has to be noticed by (Client) only. o HCL and (Client) will come into a agreement to fulfil the scope and when ever there is change in scope mutually will agree and the same in the agreement as and when it arises. o Above

pricing

is

for

generic

softwares.

In

case

of

any

customisation in software charges will be taken as per the degree of customization in the software Hope the above is in order. Sincerely,

For HCL Infosystems Ltd.