This document discusses assessing speaking skills for students at the Liceo Comercial de Tomé high school in Chile. It proposes a 3-part oral assessment to measure students' vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. The assessment includes: [1] an interview where students answer questions about themselves; [2] describing pictures to a partner; and [3] asking about locations and activities in a shared picture. Scoring will be analytic using a 4-point rubric. The goal is to create a reliable, valid, and authentic assessment considering the students' lower English level.
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
2. Introduction
Speaking is a productive skill which is really difficult to assess because of its
subjectivity. According to the book Language Testing, 1961, p. 239 “The ability to speak a
foreign language is without doubt the most prized language skill,”
In the following assessment we are going to measure an oral performance which
will be taken to a group of 35 students of a 1st Medio from the “Liceo Comercial de Tomé”.
The level of these students is lower. For this reason the following “oral evaluation” has
three different parts whose purpose is to measure vocabulary learnt in class, grammar
(basic grammar structures) and pronunciation, the last item is focus on the pronunciation of
the vocabulary.
In order to test the three previous levels of proficiency (vocabulary, grammar and
pronunciation) we created an analytic rubric which contains four indicators (from 1 to 4).
Finally, the idea of this assessment was prepared the most reliable, valid and
authentic oral performance considering the level of English of the students.
3. Unit 3: How to assess “speaking”
School: Liceo Comercial de Tomé (Public highschool)
Grade: 1st Medio
Level of English: Lower
Test specifications:
The test’s purpose: To assess speaking, especially vocabulary learnt in class.
Description of the examinees: Students of 1st Medio from a public highschool
called “Liceo Comercial de Tomé”.
Test level: 1st Medio.
Number of section: 1
Time for each section: 2 or 2 ½ minutes.
Weighting for each section: 3 different items.
Target language situation: Level of English “Lower”
Text- types: Pictures.
Text-Length: Two pictures for each student.
Language skills to be tasted: Speaking
Language element to be tested:
• Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Pronunciation
Test methods: The procedure to measure “speaking” in this case is firstly through
an interview and then using pictures with which students have to guess what the
correct picture is and also ask for the specific location of different objects and
people.
4. Criteria for scoring: The weight of the task is the same because of the level of
complexity. We do not multiply any indicator because for us all of them have the
same degree of importance.
Tasks
Task 1
The examiner introduces him/her and then asks you and your partner to say your
names and spell them. This examiner then asks you questions about yourself, your daily
life, interests, etc.
You must answer the examiner (the
teacher) 3 questions about yourself.
Possible questions:
• What’s your name?
• How do you spell your name?
• What do you think about the weather today?
• What’s your favourite subject at school? Why?
- Task Orientation: Guided. Students have to speak according to some specific
information. (Name, likes, etc.). The answers are predictable and these have not
many variations.
5. - Interactional Relationship: One way interaction. The student is asked to
communicate some opinions and maybe the teacher is going to ask him/her for
clarification.
- Goal Orientation: There is goal orientation in this case, because students have to
speak someone else, in this opportunity to the teacher.
- Interlocutor status: Balanced. Because the three participant here (both students and
the teacher) know each other.
- Familiarity: In this case the familiarity is high between both students because they
selected their partner and probably they choose a friend. Unlike the familiarity
between students and the teacher which is balanced.
- Topics: Personal information likes and dislikes.
6. Task 2
You each have a chance to talk by yourselves. The examiner gives you a black and
white photograph with a man in 4 different situations (A, B, C and D), but in the same
room. You have to look at and choose one. Then you have to describe the once you choose
and your partner has to guess which is the correct picture (A, B, C or D).
Student “A” has to describe one of
the 4 black and white pictures to student
“B”. Student “B” has to guess what the
correct picture is. (You have 60 second to
describe the picture)
A B
C D
Taken from the book: “Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices”, page 158.
7. - Task Orientation: Guided, because although the task is limited and the students
have to answer according a specific picture they can paraphrase some phrases or
words, or maybe use synonyms.
- Interactional Relationship: Interactional, Two ways interaction. Both students
have to communicate each other.
- Goal Orientation: There is goal orientation, because students have to speak
someone else. In this task the students have to communicate each other.
- Interlocutor status: Higher, both are known each other (Student- Student).
- Familiarity: High, because both speakers know each other.
- Topics: Activities at home, elements that a person uses when he/she studies.
8. Task 3
The examiner shows you a picture in which appear different objects and different
people. Both students have to ask each other at least for both the location of 3 different
objects and what 2 people are doing in the picture. Students have to answer with both the
correct location and the correct activity. The examiner is going to give the students an
example of the questions they have to ask to their partner.
You have to ask to your partner for the location of 3 different objects and at least
what 2 people are doing in the picture. Your partner has to answer you and then is the
chance of your partner to do the same. I’m going to give you an example of the questions
you have to ask to your partner. E.g.: Where are the sodas? What is the woman doing?
- Possible questions asked by the students
• Where is the TV?
• Where is the Lamp?
• What is the girl with curly hair doing? etc.
Taken from the book: “Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices”, page 154.
9. • Task Orientation: Closed, because they have to speak according to a specific
information, tenses and words. In this task they have to ask for location and
activities that people are doing. They cannot ask for something else. In addition,
they are given some specific structure they have to follow.
• Interactional Relationship: Interactional, Two ways interaction. Both students
have to communicate each other.
• Goal Orientation: There is goal orientation in this case, because students have to
speak someone else.
• Interlocutor status: High, both are known each other (Teacher- Student).
• Familiarity: High, because both students know each other.
• Topics: Giving specific location and activities.
10. References
H. Douglas Brown. (2004). Language assessment “Principles and Classroom
Practices”, pages 140-183.
University of Cambridge. (2003) “Cambridge Preliminary English test”, page 25
Luoma (2004), “Test specifications”, page 114.