Speaking activities

Juan Angarita
Feb 20

I have been creating activities for my students to practice conversational Spanish. In most cases, students are able to record and complete the activities successfully. However, some students are experiencing an issue with the recording feature. When they try to record, the button continues to spin and does not allow them to proceed or complete the activity.

Has anyone else experienced this issue? If so, have you found a solution?

Conversation summary

Los comentarios discuten un problema con la función de grabación en actividades de conversación en español, donde algunos estudiantes no pueden grabar correctamente. Se exploran posibles causas como el tipo de dispositivo, el navegador, permisos del micrófono y el uso de bloqueadores de anuncios, pero no se encuentra una solución definitiva. Un ingeniero del equipo de desarrollo sugiere verificar y restablecer permisos del micrófono y menciona una actualización reciente que podría ayudar, aunque el problema persiste para algunos usuarios.

Valentina Ardiles
Feb 20

Hi,

The same thing is happening to my students. The tech team and I have tried different solutions, but nothing has worked. We thought it might be because my students use iPads. Do yours use iPads too?

Juan Angarita
Feb 20

Hi,

Most of my students are using Mac laptops and some use PC laptops. We have tried using different browsers to open the activities, and resetting the activity but nothing has really worked for those students.

Matt Lyons
Feb 20

Does it work for them differently when at home and when at school? Are they using Adblocker or something similar on their laptops? When is the last time the laptop was completely shut down and restarted? Is the mic being used by any other program on their computers?

Juan Angarita
Feb 24

I know that the same thing happens at home. I will need to check on ad blockers, restart, or the mic being used by another program. Thanks for the insight. I will let you know if any of the above makes any difference.

Juan Angarita
Feb 26

Using chrome fix the issue for some but not for everyone. I did check if the mic was being used by other app. Did not find a fix for some of them.

Matt Lyons
Feb 26

Ok. Some progress is good. I wish I had a slam dunk answer for you.

Zachary Reece
Feb 27

Hello!

I’m Zachary, one of the engineers building Flint. Sorry to hear you’re experiencing this issue. We just pushed out some updates that should address this, particularly in the Safari web browser.

Another potential cause of this is microphone permissions. It’s possible that permissions were denied on accident or at some previous point by someone else using the device. Resetting the permissions should fix the issue. This can be done at the system level and the browser level, so it’s worth checking both.

Chrome Permissions: Open Chrome and go to chrome://settings/content/microphone. Ensure "Sites can ask to use your microphone" is selected. If there is a specific entry under "Block", make sure that Flint isn’t listed there. If it is, remove it.

Safari Permissions: Open Safari and click “Safari” in the top menu bar next to the Apple Logo. Then click “Settings” and go to the “Websites” tab. Then in the list on the left, click “Microphone”. You should then see an entry for Flint. If it is set to “Deny”, change it to “Allow”. If you don’t see an entry for Flint then it will prompt you to accept the permissions next time you use the microphone on Flint.

If these settings in the browser look correct then see the links below for resetting the system microphone permissions for the browser and that should resolve it.

Windows Permissions: Windows Microphone Permissions Guide
macOS Permissions: macOS Microphone Permissions Guide

I hope this helps!

Juan Angarita
Mar 18

Hi Zach. Most of my students use Chrome. We have checked on microphone permissions. But nothing really change after updating those permissions.