How to connect the microphone
To connect the microphone, plug the receiver in to the bottom of your iPad as shown below.
Then, take actual microphone out of the charging case. Once it's connected to the receiver you'll see an indicator on the reciever turn solid blue (instead of flashing), and the actual microphone's top indicator light will be blue, and the bottom one will be red (as shown in the image below). If the transmitter is not connected to receiver, the bottom indicator on the transmitter will be flashing blue instead of a being a solid red.
How to use the push to talk microphone to make an observation
To use the push to talk microphone to make an observation, you'll want to open up the Padlock app and click in to the class you want to record an observation for, and click "start session" in the bottom left.
If you've not plugged in the microphone receiver, you'll get a warning saying that no external microphone has been plugged in, nothing will be recorded if there is no microphone plugged in.
Once you've plugged in the receiver, that warning will go away. To record an observation, you'll then need to take the microphone transmitter and hold down one of the two yellow buttons on it's left hand side.
Note: Even though the buttons have a power indicator and an M indicator on them, we have modified the microphone's internal workings so they both act as push to talk buttons. The microphone will automatically power on when it's taken out of the charging case, and will automatically power off when it's put back in the charging case.
You need to hold down a button for the duration of your observation. This is because the microphone only records when a button is held down.
Note: If you release a button accidentally halfway through an observation, press it down again and continue, there's a grace period of about 3 seconds where you can press a button down again and it'll continue the original observation.
If the app is picking up what you're saying, the microphone indicator will light up red. There will be a period of about 3 seconds after you finish talking where it will stay red, this is due to the grade period mentioned previously.
Once you've made an observation, if you go to the observations list in the app, you'll see an indicator which lets you know an observation is processing.
Once it's finished processing it will appear in that observation list. If an observation doesn't show up, please get in touch using the live chat support, or check out our article on the common reasons observations might not appear. Just type in to it saying "An observation didn't show up" or something similar, and we can investigate from our side. You can also check out our FAQ on why observations might not be appearing.
Important: how to make sure an observation is tagged against the correct child
TeachScribe determines the what child to tag an observation transcript against by listening out for the child's name within the observation. This means that if you wanted to make an observation about George, you would need to say George's name in the observation.
The AI is smart however, so if you initially make a mistake, or forget to say a child's name, as long as you clarify what you meant at the end of the observation, it will still tag it to the correct child.
For example, the following would be valid observations, and tagged against George:
"George tidied up the toys after he was done playing with them"
"He tidied up the toys after he was done playing with them, oh sorry I meant to say George"
"Jack tidied up the toys after he was done playing with them, oh wait actually whoops it was actually George that did that"
However an invalid observation would be:
"He tidied up the toys after he was done playing with them"
You can also make speak about the activities of more than one child and TeachScribe will generate different observations for each child based on the actvities which they performed.
For example if you said "George was tidying away the toys and oh I can just see Jack and Emily playing with a ball in the playground, he's showing a big improvement in his throwing skills." then three observations would be created.
An observation for George tidying away the toys
An observation for Jack playing with the ball with Emily and how he's shown a big improvement in his throwing skills
An observation about how Emily was playing a ball game with Jack in the playground.
This can be helpful if there's a group activity and you want to record the activities of all the different children at once.
If the AI doesn't know what child to tag the observation transcript to, it'll add the transcript to the "needs review list" and you will be able to manually assign it to one or more children later on. You can find out more about observations needing review here.
How detailed do observations need to be?
You should include as much detail as you think best in an observation. The use of AI doesn't change anything in that sense. As always though, it paints a fuller picture of a child's activities when observations contain enough detail, and this will help the AI link it to the correct goals and summarise it.
Does it matter if I make a mistake while recording?
No, it doesn't matter if you make a mistake while recording, it can easily be recovered from, you can either:
Stop the recording by taking your finger off the push to talk button on the microphone for 10 seconds, and then pressing the button down and starting a new observation from scratch
Or you can correct yourself as you go (which is probably easier)
For example, if you say:
"George was playing with the fire engine set and set off the fire alarm before pushing the fire engine out of the station, oh wait no sorry i meant that he beeped the horn on the toy fire station"
Then the AI will determine that what actually happened was that George was playing with the fire engine set and beeped the horn on the toy fire station before pushing the fire engine out of the station. It won't include the mistake about saying he set off the fire alarm.
You should wait 10 seconds between different observations so we can determine that it is in fact a different observation.
If an observation with a mistake does get through, you can edit the observation or you can delete the observation. More details on how to edit or delete an observation can be found here.