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EDUCATORS of graduate students face the challenge of developing future faculty members who can meet changing disciplinary and institutional needs. In our doctoral programs at Washington University, the professional demands created by the rapid growth of information technologies and shifts in the academic job market led to the creation of an advanced graduate seminar focused on current language pedagogy and the integration of technology into language teaching. We team-taught the course for the first time in spring 1998. (The URL for the 1998 seminar's course page is http://artsci.wustl.edu/~langtech.) This article explains the course's rationale, administrative support, and organization and examines the ways in which the course fostered professional development; it concludes with a reflection on the seminar's outcome.
At a time when pedagogical expertise is ever more critical in job placement, it is disconcerting that formal teacher training continues to play a relatively minor role in graduate students' programs. Moreover, pedagogical training often diminishes as students progress toward the degree. Early in their studies our graduate students, like those in many other language and literature departments, receive a thorough grounding in basic language pedagogy. In their first semester as teaching assistants, they enroll in departmental methods courses tailored to meet their immediate and concrete instructional needs. These one-semester seminars devote considerable time to practical concerns such as techniques and tools--some involving multimedia material--for teaching the four skills in cultural contexts, the use of literature in language courses, lesson planning, classroom management, error correction, testing, and assessment. In addition, they introduce TAs to theories of second language acquisition and to historical and contemporary methods and approaches. New TAs receive further guidance through preservice workshops, direct faculty observation, videotaping, conferencing, and regular section meetings. Thereafter, although still supported by materials, syllabi, section meetings, and faculty observation, TAs begin the transition from formal pedagogical training to relative autonomy. Over the next four to five years of teaching and study for the PhD, most continue to gain valuable classroom experience and to broaden their teaching repertoires. They may also serve on textbook selection committees, attend workshops and professional conferences, and become involved in presemester teaching and orientation sessions. Yet they often lose touch with pedagogical developments because of other pressures, demands, or interests, creating a critical gap in their knowledge by the time they enter the job market.
TA educators have already begun to address the need to train TAs in educational technology. For example, Margaret Ann Kassen and Christopher J. Higgins have developed an innovative, four- to six-week language-learning technology module that complements the methods course required of their new graduate TAs. Likewise focusing on the initial stage of TA development, Virginia Scott stresses how in her basic methods course theoretical and practical assessment of multimedia applications promotes reflection on principles of language teaching and learning. Initiatives such as these echo the call by TA educators to acknowledge what Claire Kramsch terms "the epistemological revolution brought about by the digital medium" ("Introduction" xxix).
To be sure, five years ago multimedia courseware packages included only audio- and videotapes and perhaps an electronic grammar tutorial with "drill and kill" exercises. Instructors could supplement these media with stand-alone interactive programs on laser discs such as A la rencontre de Philippe (Yale UP). Yet quality programs remain limited in number and require costly players that have been superseded by inexpensive CD-ROM technology. Today, spurred by instructors' demands and by competition, publishers rush to introduce innovative CD-ROMs, companion Web sites, and systems for online communication as part of their integrated courseware packages. And instructors using sophisticated HTML editors (Web-page-writing software) and software-authoring systems can now design their own Web-based activities and multimedia software with growing ease. The newer technologies not only provide distinct pedagogical advantages over their predecessors but also are more widespread. Many students already own Internet-ready computers with CD-ROM players, and academic institutions often have computer labs with sophisticated high-tech equipment and materials. On the Internet students can embark on a virtual journey to the target culture, read today's headlines in Argentina's La Prensa, hear a live radio broadcast on Deutsche Welle, watch a RealVideo sports telecast on France 2, choose a vacation spot or hotel, shop, tour the Louvre, or "chat" with native speakers at a virtual café. Through technology, then, instructors and their students have direct access to rich, authentic input.
An additional rationale for an advanced course was our recognition that hiring departments were seeking trained and knowledgeable faculty members. While readers of the MLA Job Information List will have noticed that most foreign language and literature departments continue to seek junior faculty members with promise in literary scholarship and excellence in teaching, in the last few years explicit requests for applicants experienced with multimedia technologies are increasingly common. Another market trend is an overall shift in job placement. The Summer 1998 MLA Newsletter reports a 12% decline in placement to tenure-track positions and a 16% increase in placement to full- and part-time non-tenure-track teaching positions in the foreign languages between 1993-94 and 1996-97 (MLA 2). Since such short-term positions are often stepping stones to tenure-track hirings, teaching effectiveness is ever more critical in the career path of young professionals.
Finally, we reasoned that the new course would benefit our institution, which needs its language teachers--TAs and faculty members alike--to be ready to meet the challenges posed by the revolution within the profession. In fall 1998 Washington University opened the new Language and Instructional Media Center, housed within a complex that includes numerous technology-equipped classrooms and computer labs dedicated to language learning. As instructors of many lower-division courses that are scheduled to use this facility, our TAs are instrumental in introducing new language learning methods and materials. The time seemed right to initiate a course for senior graduate students that focused on effective technology use in language teaching. Through advanced TA training, we would produce a cadre of highly trained future faculty members; they would, in turn, have an immediate influence on undergraduate language programs; and together we would take advantage of the new center and contribute to achieving the university's global vision for the twenty-first century.
When we began to plan the course, we knew that a pedagogy seminar for advanced graduate students would be innovative in several ways. It would be unusual because of its cross-departmental listing and its target audience: PhD candidates who had officially completed their doctoral course work and would soon be leaving our institution. As we envisioned it, the seminar also required the commitment of two faculty members and a technology support staff. While we realized that we faced administrative hurdles, we nonetheless proposed the seminar to our chairs, who encouraged us to seek administration approval. We presented our proposal and its rationale to a council of deans, administrators, and computer staff members in June of 1997, and the graduate dean of arts and sciences agreed to a pilot project for 1997-98 and 1998-99.
The administration provided technological staffing assistance as well. The graduate dean assigned Kathy Atnip, associate director of the Arts and Sciences Computing Center, to assist in developing and implementing the course, working an equivalent of one day a week in the fall of 1997 and two days a week in the spring of 1998. The chair of German appointed Stephanie Tucker, a TA advanced in technology, to the course. This generous staffing facilitated every aspect of our work. Tucker, for example, helped conceive and maintain the course pages, offered technical support during weekly lab sessions, and led workshops in such areas as Web page creation. Atnip gave training and technical support to faculty members and course participants and previewed, catalogued, loaded, and evaluated software purchased with a budget from the graduate dean. The diverse skills of the team and frequent communication among its members proved critical to its smooth functioning. During the first pilot semester, the four of us met weekly, attended each two-hour seminar, and often participated in the TAs' weekly lab sessions, which were designed for practice and troubleshooting with interested students. In 1998-99 we received similar technological support for our course.
Organizing the course, Integrating Technology into Foreign Language Teaching, seemed daunting--a matter of combining pedagogical theory and technological hands-on practice. We believed we should approach technology from the perspective of pedagogy, as a means to bolster language acquisition rather than as an end in itself. With this in mind, we reviewed and discussed the theoretical readings we would incorporate into the seminar. (Students were required to buy the book by Bush and Terry.) We planned, for example, to examine language-learning strategies (Oxford), input theory (Krashen; Lee and VanPatten), and the teaching of culture (Kramsch, Culture), as well as the influence of educational policies like those contained in Standards for Foreign Language Learning. As we worked to balance practical and theoretical objectives, our overarching goal was to help students gain the pedagogical expertise and technological know-how needed to make informed choices about language curricula, materials selection, and daily teaching practices.
To select materials that participants could view and evaluate, we studied the growing offerings of language-learning software. We also assessed course pages of language and literature classes at other academic institutions, evaluated target-culture Web sites, and experimented with synchronous and asynchronous communication methods. We familiarized ourselves with HTML editors and software-authoring systems. Because our prospective students were PhD candidates in French, German, and Spanish, we chose resources in each language. In addition we prepared readings and materials for "low-tech" audio and video teaching, knowing that some of our students would find jobs in institutions where tape recorders and VCRs are the only technologies used in the classroom.
Through the course's organization, approach, and content, we sought to exemplify the effective integration of technology and to provide students with a prototype to use in other levels and contexts. For instance, the TAs could grow comfortable with technology as an administrative tool by using our online course page, which included a detailed syllabus, Web-based assignments, and links to online resources. To give seminar participants the chance to assess asynchronous and synchronous communication through hands-on practice, we set up a dedicated listserv (electronic mailing list), newsgroup (or bulletin board), and chat room for the course. Formal course requirements were extensive reading and discussion; production of a series of projects, including revision of all or part of a Washington University undergraduate syllabus to incorporate technology effectively; and participation in an end-of-semester colloquium. (See app. for syllabus.)
The first semester attracted seven native English speakers and six native Spanish, French, German, or Croatian speakers from our respective departments.1 At the outset, we asked students to complete a brief questionnaire about their views on the uses of technology in education.2 (For assessment purposes, we had them answer the same questionnaire again at the end of the semester.) While we had expected the new generation to be open to the potential of educational technology, most were skeptical and obstinate about its use. Many students did acknowledge the World Wide Web as a source of up-to-date and engaging cultural materials, yet they expressed doubt about its usefulness as a tool to stimulate communication. In short, most participants began the seminar unconvinced that integrating new technologies into their courses could significantly contribute to the teaching and learning process. Although initially surprising and somewhat unnerving, the students' fear that technologies might undermine affective dimensions of teaching--or replace the instructor altogether--demonstrated a critical spirit that we sought to channel into critical reflection about pedagogical theory and instructional practice.
While the basic course components were in place at the beginning of the semester, the online syllabus metamorphosed as the seminar progressed. Throughout the semester we took advantage of the syllabus's flexible format by adding relevant links and assignments. To be sure, some of our students expressed bewilderment as the syllabus expanded before their very eyes. They naturally associated additional content with additional work on their part and growing expectations on ours. Their bewilderment prompted lively class discussion about the implications of an evolving syllabus. For example, since the syllabus traditionally states a pact between instructor and student, the class debated which elements should be fixed and which could be augmented during the semester. It became clear that instructors must distinguish between required and optional materials linked to the syllabus. The use of our online syllabus also revealed critical differences in students' computer skills and access to Web browsers such as Netscape or Internet Explorer.
The course newsgroup provided an ideal forum for extending discussion beyond regular seminar hours. Unlike our listserv, which we used primarily to distribute information, the newsgroup fostered discussion and debate. One exchange, for instance, considered how the Web shapes cultural representations. Students debated whether highly visual media might skew cultural perspectives in different ways from how print material does. Students also exchanged views on the types and quantity of Web resources to link to a course page, the efficacy of online grammars, and how technology affects methodology. When we required students to post to the newsgroup, we gained valuable insights into their development and opinions.
We experimented with our chat room once during a seminar meeting. While we were familiar with the work of scholars such as Margaret Healy Beauvois who advocate allotting class time for students to exchange ideas in real time by computer, we were ourselves somewhat skeptical about this technology. Promoting virtual communication when face-to-face communication was possible at first seemed counterintuitive, even science-fictional. Our synchronous discussion, however, confirmed many of the arguments for the use of chat rooms or local area networks (LANs). All students contributed to the markedly open discussion, and the high amount of "talk" confirmed the "definite motivational advantage" of LANs Beauvois cites (179). Initially our chat topics focused on how synchronous communication could be used in language learning. We considered logistical and motivational factors, the pros and cons of online office hours, the language skills practiced, and even the implications of using code names. As messages flashed on the screen, students read and responded to postings that sparked their interest, engaging in a rapid-fire dialogue punctuated by outbursts of laughter. Some students who were hesitant to contribute to face-to-face classroom discussions suddenly became outspoken, serious ones revealed their humorous sides, and the instructors' role shifted from discussion mediators to equal participants.
The course page also included links to language, literature, and culture courses at other academic institutions. They furnished models for our students, many of whom will combine language and literature teaching. For instance, Laura Mandell's undergraduate class The Early Romantic Period, taught at Miami University, Ohio, featured an online syllabus, a dedicated listserv, links to Web resources, and student work. In a compelling article describing the course, Mandell relates how the electronic mailing list improved the dynamics and quality of student contributions by broadening the audience of student work. By exploring other Web-based courses, navigating through our own course page, and testing varied forms of online communication, our students came to see technology as a method of course administration, classroom management, and expanded educational opportunities.
Well aware that technological bells and whistles could drown out our emphatic call for sound pedagogy, we designed a series of projects that involved theory, assessment, and reflection. They focused on experimenting with and evaluating how multimedia can, if well chosen and well used, enhance language instruction. To this end, we asked students to expand a Washington University undergraduate syllabus. Students chose syllabi from elementary French, intermediate German conversation, Spanish composition, and advanced business German courses, among others. The first project, the construction of a Web task, targeted classroom practice. The second, the design of a hypertext, drew attention to reading skills and strategies while inspiring reflection on teaching literature in general. The software review, the third project, introduced students to Web publishing through formal evaluation of materials. Finally, at the colloquium students presented their technology-enhanced syllabi and gave theoretical rationales for their work.
As the first step of the Web-task project, we demonstrated a lesson plan based on James F. Lee's article "Using Task-Based Activities to Restructure Class Discussions." Students then read theoretical material in Lee and Bill VanPatten's teacher training textbook Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen (245-68). Discussing information-exchange tasks, Lee and VanPatten remind the reader that a meaningful task goes beyond the mere acquisition of information: that students should do something with the information they receive. When considering the "information superhighway" as a source of input for language-learning activities, we encouraged TAs to create tasks that tap the medium's rich and open-ended structure and to consider what students will do with Web material. We reminded them of Elizabeth Joiner's caveat that technology can neither "select from among [. . .] texts those that are most suitable for a group of learners" nor "design tasks" that help us meet our goals (95-96). With this perspective in mind, seminar participants examined online tasks for their effectiveness in engaging students with information. These included the standards-based learning scenarios created in the American Association of Teachers of German's 1997 Technology Trainer Workshops3 and the Web activities that accompany the first-year French program at the University of Texas, Austin. After viewing, evaluating, and discussing such activities, students finally constructed Web tasks tailored to their own syllabi. One student developed an extensive task for a German conversation class. Its goal was a class debate between German automobile manufacturers and environmentalists based on position statements by these groups found on the Web. By linking to authentic, topical materials containing rich visuals, the task took advantage of the electronic medium. Another team of students proposed an extended Web task in which advanced French conversation students would choose a region in France for an extended stay, find housing, research job opportunities, and investigate entertainment options. Then their students would exchange findings from the French Web sites. After our seminar participants presented their Web tasks, we concluded the unit by collectively revising our criteria for creating Web tasks in particular and tasks in general.
The second project was the creation of a Web-based hypertext. In the light of research on second-language reading, students weighed how activities before, during, and after reading affect comprehension. Drawing on Ana Martinez-Lage's article "Hypermedia Technology and the Teaching of Reading," we discussed the annotations possible with multimedia and their implications. How, for example, do sounds, video, still images, and text help tap into students' background knowledge and ease their access to the target-language text? How can word, sentence-level, paragraph, and cultural glosses influence the reading process and vocabulary acquisition? We also reviewed formats for effective discussion of literary texts, both in language and literature classes. To illustrate our theoretical concerns about development of the reading skill, we demonstrated an elaborately annotated CD-ROM version of a well-known intermediate-level German short story, Heinrich Böll's "Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral" from Cyberbuch (Chun and Plass). The stand-alone hypermedia version of this narrative incorporates prereading activities, vocabulary glosses with German and English definitions, video and still images, and a vocabulary testing program. Students viewed additional online literary and cultural hypertexts, including fairy tales and thumbnail biographies. Moving from theory and observation to practice, they then selected a written text appropriate to their syllabus, put it online, and created hyperlinks to enhance reading comprehension.
A further project was the writing of a publishable software review. The project was preceded by a two-day publishers' software fair. Major educational publishers were eager to demonstrate their products to our senior graduate students and faculty members, who might soon be making curricular and courseware decisions.4 Confronted with an array of CD-ROMs and publisher-maintained Web sites, graduate students could compare program features and question publisher representatives about the design and role of multimedia in their courseware packages. Some CD-ROMs include rich cultural scenes, lively dialogues and activities. For example, Portes ouvertes, an elementary French package from Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, features characters from the city of Besançon. Course materials revolve around the lives of these characters, transporting American students into a virtual French environment. Other materials we saw, such as the CD-ROM that accompanies the first-year German package Kontakte (McGraw-Hill), were closely tied to a textbook and, targeting linguistic accuracy, could replace the traditional workbook. Still other CD-ROMs such as the Spanish version of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (Broderbund) or the German program Who Is Oskar Lake? (Language Publications Interactive) place students in the role of private investigator, stimulating them to detect and respond to clues as they venture to distant places to solve an elusive mystery. Stand-alone programs for self-study such as Spanish Your Way 2.0 (Syracuse Language Systems) represent yet another type of CD-ROM. In this stage of experimentation publishers continue to develop multimedia products and to call on language professionals to guide their development decisions. Graduate students, they recognize, are an emerging clientele as well as potential experts.
Students based their software reviews on a generic format that we devised by examining software reviews in major journals such as the Modern Language Journal. After choosing software products, they outlined commentaries, which they presented in conjunction with the software to a small group during a class session. They then composed a review of up to five hundred words, a length prescribed by many journals. Finally, having received the teaching team's rigorous editorial comments, they revised their reviews for online publication. Many of the reviews are linked to the course home page.
The final professional development project was participation in a teaching colloquium for the university community. Individual students or teams of students presented their technology-enhanced syllabi and course pages and explained the pedagogical rationale for their use of technology. The combination of material and theory exemplified the graduate students' ability to articulate both concrete teaching methods and pedagogical models and principles. For example, a TA in German proposed an online travel project whose components, she showed, might be adapted for many levels and across languages. Another showed a course page for business German containing links to up-to-date topical resources unavailable in this country. One team of TAs demonstrated the hypertext of a French poem by Jacques Prévert, including links to a digitized recording of the spoken poem and the writer's biography; homework was to be delivered to the instructor by e-mail.
To pull together the semester's work, we devoted the final meeting of the seminar to teaching portfolios, an increasingly important element in hiring. Major components of the portfolio include a statement of teaching philosophy, sample syllabi and course materials, and peer and student evaluations. We asked students to choose five terms they would include in their statements and post the terms to the listserv before the seminar meeting. The most common terms were student-oriented, interaction, culture, and context. Through discussion of these key terms, students themselves synthesized the course by stating how they could meet teaching goals using multimedia. As they connected theory and practice into documents for a portfolio, they were able to recognize and demonstrate their growth as experienced and knowledgeable teacher-scholars.
The final course discussion on portfolios and the students' professional performance at the teaching colloquium convinced us that we had met our goals. The seminar had changed student attitudes toward technology as a tool for language teaching: on the final questionnaire, their initial skepticism had diminished and their views had become generally more moderate. Although several students cited the time commitment required to learn how to use and create activities using the Web, this concern should lessen with increased experience. Most students were now enthusiastic about using technology to improve their teaching. One student summarized its advantages: "Technology, e.g., the WWW, can give students immediate access to the target culture, can facilitate and stimulate conversation, help lower the affective filter and potentially free up instructors from chores such as workbook grading and searching for realia so they can spend more time working on communicative activities."
Another positive outcome is the undergraduate curricular revision already implemented by course alumni. As a result of their previewing the program Portes ouvertes for the software review project, the department of romance languages and literatures adopted the program. Two alumni of our course led this major curriculum revision. With faculty guidance, they produced an online syllabus and integrated CD-ROM materials into the elementary French program. Another alumnus integrated multimedia resources into the intermediate French syllabus, while yet another created an online syllabus that had cultural links and Web resources for the first-year German program. The latter two alumni were generously funded as research assistants for us in the summer of 1998. The course has stimulated reform and innovation, and, more important, it has given graduate students the opportunity to develop as pedagogical professionals and to make significant contributions to the university's programs.
In reflecting on how we will refine the seminar for this year, we see that the challenge of balancing pedagogical theory and hands-on practice with technology remains. Students come to such a course not only with diverse goals but also with varying degrees of technological expertise. In the pilot course we held a series of technology workshops during seminar hours as well as optional lab sessions. While most students made use of the optional sessions toward the end of the semester, several requested that we devote more seminar time to practice with technology. Others, however, would have liked more class time to discuss pedagogical issues. One way to meet their different needs would be to require attendance at weekly lab sessions held in conjunction with the seminar. Students with expertise could refine their skills, and less experienced students could receive individualized assistance from the teaching team. This step might free class time for discussing pedagogical issues. Another solution would be to expand the role of the newsgroup as a discussion forum. A continuing challenge for the teaching staff will be keeping abreast of the influx of new multimedia products, the rapid expansion of and change in the Web, technological innovations, and theoretical research in second language acquisition as it evolves under the influence of technology.
This collaborative course helps students grow as professionals, increase their pedagogical knowledge, sharpen their critical and self-critical abilities, gain new technological skills, and synthesize their learning into the beginnings of a refined teaching portfolio. Undergraduate education on our campus is already benefiting from seminar participants' activity in curricular reform, textbook and software selection, and the creation of Web materials. The profession itself benefits in many respects as we rise to the challenge of improving the education of future faculty members.
The authors are, respectively, Senior Lecturer in French and Assistant Professor of German at Washington University.
1We have contemplated opening the course to graduate students from departments of less commonly taught languages, but we have not yet done so, because of concerns about the teaching team's time and ability to address pedagogical questions and evaluate technological resources specific to these languages.
2The questionnaire asked the following: (1) What are the advantages of using technology in language instruction? (2) What are the disadvantages of using technology in language instruction? (3) What technologies are you familiar with and/or do you use in your language instruction?
3The AATG Web page (http://www.aatg.org) provides information on these workshops and links to the sample learning scenarios developed in the summer workshops. For more insight into how the Web can help meet the goals of the standards, see Walz.
4We are grateful to Eduardo Lage-Otero, director of Washington University's Language and Instructional Media Center, who arranged the publishers' fair.
Beauvois, Margaret Healy. "Computer-Mediated Communication: Technology for Improving Speaking and Writing." Bush and Terry 165-84.
Bush, Michael D., and Robert M. Terry, eds. Technology-Enhanced Language Learning. Lincolnwood: Natl. Textbook, 1997.
Chun, Dorothy M., and Jan L. Plass. Cyberbuch. CD-ROM. New York: St. Martin's, 1997.
Joiner, Elizabeth. "Teaching Listening: How Technology Can Help." Bush and Terry 77-120.
Kassen, Margaret Ann, and Christopher J. Higgins. "Meeting the Technology Challenge: Introducing Teachers to Language-Learning Technology." Bush and Terry 263-85.
Kramsch, Claire. Culture and Context in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993.
------. "Introduction: Making the Invisible Visible." Redefining the Boundaries of Language Study. Ed. Kramsch. AAUSC Issues in Language Program Direction. Boston: Heinle, 1996. ix-xxxiii.
Krashen, Stephen D. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. New York: Pergamon, 1982.
Lee, James F. "Using Task-Based Activities to Restructure Class Discussions." Foreign Language Annals 28.3 (1995): 437-46.
Lee, James F., and Bill VanPatten. Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen. New York: McGraw, 1995.
Mandell, Laura. "Virtual Encounters: Using an Electronic Mailing List in a Literature Classroom." Profession 97. New York: MLA, 1997. 126-32.
Martinez-Lage, Ana. "Hypermedia Technology and the Teaching of Reading." Bush and Terry 121-63.
MLA. "New Data from the 1996-97 MLA PhD Placement Census." MLA Newsletter 30.2 (1998): 1-2.
Oxford, Rebecca L. Language Learning Strategies: What Every Teacher Should Know. New York: Newbury, 1990.
Scott, Virginia. "Exploring the Link between Teaching and Technology: An Approach to TA Development." New Ways of Learning and Teaching: Focus on Technology and Foreign Language Education. Ed. Judith A. Muyskens. AAUSC Issues in Language Program Direction. Boston: Heinle, 1998. 3-17.
Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the Twenty-First Century. Lawrence: Allen, 1996.
Walz, Joel. "Meeting Standards for Foreign Language Learning with World Wide Web Activities." Foreign Language Annals 31.1 (1998): 103-14.
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Date |
Course Topic/Discussion |
Readings/Activities |
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| January 15 | Introduction |
 Assignment: Subscribe to course listserv (langtech-l)
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| January 22 |
Task-based Instruction and Multimedia National Standards for Foreign Language Learning
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James P. Pusack and Sue K. Otto, "Taking Control of Multimedia" (Ch. 1) James F. Lee and Bill Van Patten, "Building Toward a Proficiency Goal" National Standards: Description from ACTFL 
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| January 29 |
Culture and the Internet
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Peter A. Lafford and Barbara A. Lafford, "Learning Language
and Culture with Internet Technologies" (Ch. 7) Pages 215-239
Companion web site to article Standards-Based Projects from the AATG Technology Trainer Workshops
Assignment: Exploration &
Evaluation of On-Line ExercisesEvaluate 5 Web-exercises and be ready to talk about one in class. Click on the Web Resources Icon for some sites to get you started. Use and modify the criteria outlined in Lewis Johnson's Web Exercise Evaluation Form in your review of these exercises.
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| February 5 |
Virtual Communication:
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Peter A. Lafford and Barbara A. Lafford, "Learning Language and Culture with Internet
Technologies" (Ch. 7) Pages 239-260
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| February 12 | Integrating the Web and Internet |
Also take a look at the McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin sites in Web Resources. How do you think the array of technological resources made available there will affect course materials and curricula?
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| February 19 |
Workshop: Creating a Home Page
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Assignment:
Preparations for Putting Syllabus On-Line
We will be using Word 97, so please bring your syllabus to class on a PC-formatted disk. The syllabus should be converted to a Word document. If you cannot do this on your computer, have the consultants in Cupples help you. In addition, all tab stops must be deleted from your syllabus. To easily convert your syllabus to a Web document during the workshop, we suggest that you place the dates, readings and assignments in table format (like the syllabus for this course). We can help you with the above, as well as with scanning any images you would like to include on your course page, in the open lab Tuesday. If you are new to designing web pages, make sure to skim some of the web resources collected for the workshop.
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| February 26 | Reforming FL Methods |
Ana Beatriz Chiquito, et al, "Multiple, Mixed, Malleable Media"
(Ch. 2)
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| March 12 | Audio and Video |
Elizabeth G. Joiner, "Teaching Listening: How Technology Can
Help" (Ch. 3)
Rick Altman, et al, PICS Videoguidelines
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| March 19 |
Workshop: Creating Web-Based Hypertexts |
Ana Martinez-Lage, "Hypermedia Technology for Teaching Reading"
(Ch. 4) While Martinez-Lage discusses hypermedia created with the authoring system GR, her guidelines also pertain to web-based hypertexts.
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| March 26 |
Interactive Multimedia Demos & Hands-On Work with Software |
Assignment:
Choose a Multimedia Program to Evaluate
A brief written review of this software will be due on April 9. Criteria and for evaluation are available in web resources.
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| April 2 |
Interactive Multimedia
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Assignment:
Preparation for Preliminary Assessment of Software
You will be discussing these programs in small groups.
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| April 9 |
Writing Tools Authoring Systems |
Margaret Healy Beauvois, "Computer-Mediated Communication
(CMC): Technology for Improving Speaking and Writing" (Ch.5)
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| April 16 |
Multimedia Pedagogy & the Profession Teaching Portfolios |
Michael D. Bush, "Implementing Technology for Language
Learning" (Ch. 9)
The web resources link to information on the purpose, format and content of teaching portfolios.
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April 23 | Colloquium | 3:30 to 6:00 |
© 1999 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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Bulletin Board Assignment: