MFL Listening Exams

[Vegas]

How does your school do this?
This has landed on my desk?! because next year the listening exam comes on CD and it has been suggested that computers be used to play the CD's. I'm pretty sure the exam board will not like this so I suggested personal CD players (cheap and simple).
Any suggestions appreciated.

[bizzel]

As a former languages student, I always used a personal cd player all the way through gcse and a-level. I can't see how that would be your responsibility at all. It's worth mentioning that if the students are playing back CDs on the computers, that makes it easier to cheat since they'll have the whole www in front of them.

[Linfit]

Computers seem overkill for this, and to much oportunity for someone to screw up by clicking on the wrong thing: you need a backup device anyway. We use cheap CD players for the smaller rooms, 2 identical for each room, the fewer buttons the better: as long as they can be paused and are loud enough they'll do.

[kearton]

Here, the Head of MFL gets the CD 1 hour before the exam, and converts it to MP3 and then the students listen through headphones in our Language labs

[K.C.Leblanc]

Here, the Head of MFL gets the CD 1 hour before the exam, and converts it to MP3 and then the students listen through headphones in our Language labs

I take it you have to lock the computers right down for this?

[kearton]

We have special "exam" logins which are even more locked down than the normal student accounts, including no Internet, etc.

[Vegas]

I don't think our Head of MFL would know an MP3 if it bit her on the arse!

[Andrew_C]

Here, the Head of MFL gets the CD 1 hour before the exam, and converts it to MP3 and then the students listen through headphones in our Language labs

Same here, except as noted below about HoDs technical ability. I do the conversion. The MP3 is kept on a local disk until the start of the exam when it is moved to a folder to which only the exam log-ons have access to. Works well but the stress (oh feck the networks off following the thunderstorm last summer...) is quite high. We use the Sanako software for playback as it avoids Mediaplayers ability to slow the tracks down.

We also host the music listening component, where we put the cd in the PC due to the chapterisation of the disk, which would be a challenge with MP3s.

[Vegas]

Sorry, not a very professional comment but here we are with the exam in January and i'm getting this dumped on me 2 days before we finish for Xmas, what the hell do we pay these Heads of Depts for!!

[Sylv3r]

@Vegas

Is this for A Level exams? In the past they have generally come on tape - does this mean that they will now come on CD for everybody or is it the choice of the school?

The language department have individual tape recorders with headphones for each student, but if it is CD only we will need to purchase Personal CD Players.

When does this start January or June 2008?

Thanks

[Vegas]

Panic over we have tapes for January, our MFL Head had just glanced over the letter and only saw a mention of CD/MP3 and panicked, if she had read on it also mentioned tapes! For the summer exams we will only get CD/MP3 so we have sensibly decided to replace our existing tape players with CD players.