German Studies Trails. UNCG Andreas Lixl-Purcell



MLA Teacher Education Project

Andreas Lixl-Purcell
Department of German and Russian
University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Kathleen Kish Team - Exemplary Technology Plan
The Digital Language Center at UNCG

http://www.uncg.edu/~lixlpurc/publications/MLAtech.html


Foreign Language Education with Multimedia Technologies


Abstract
I. Paradigm Shifts in Foreign Language Instruction
II. Language Laboratories for the Digital Age
III. An Action Agenda for Multimedia Laboratories
IV. Conclusion: Exploring New Notions of Literacy
V. Bibliography


Abstract: MLA Teacher Education Project
Kathleen Kish Team - Technology Report

Illuminating the possibilities for enhancing foreign language pedagogies through multimedia technologies, the report suggests an ideal scenario for the use of electronic laboratories. As envisioned, the new language center involves three electronic classrooms with 60 workstations which will play a central role in enhancing the teaching, research, and service programs of UNCG's three foreign language departments. This applies in particular to providing user friendly and student centered learning resources, including audio tapes, videos, satellite television, networked software, electronic entertainment, and portable classroom tools [laptops, CD-ROMs, disks, etc.]. Functioning as a digital resource, reference, and research center for teachers and students, and student teachers in particular, the laboratories can streamline advising, assessing, proficiency testing, technology training, electronic bulletin boards, and more. The suggested action agenda involves the new centers like pedagogical hubs with digital spokes supporting all departmental programs from language to literature, and from culture to comparative studies.


I. Paradigm Shifts in Foreign Language Instruction


With the influx of multimedia technologies, foreign language pedagogy began to shift toward more discourse oriented, interdisciplinary, and contextual modes of instruction. Because language studies are by nature encyclopedic, the field has offered prime opportunities for augmenting established educational techniques with interactive technologies and methodologies. On many campuses, new multimedia learning centers and electronic laboratories have already become the focus of these changing paradigms of foreign language instruction. Perhaps more than any other, teacher education majors may benefit from the incorporation of these digital technologies in their pre-professional training.

The term "digital" itself already dramatizes how radically different the new educational landscapes have become. The involved technologies are highly motivating, convenient to use, and task oriented, which accounts for their broad appeal to both foreign language teachers and learners (Noblitt, IAT web). Most students appreciate the electronic media because they help engage them with authentic materials in the form of texts, sounds, symbols, images, and moving pictures. Likewise for many teachers, the increased use of multimedia resources in foreign language programs prompted a revision of teaching styles and techniques. With the introduction of electronic study tools, the established roles of teachers and students began to shift quite rapidly toward more participatory and communicative classroom models.

In the age of multimedia information and instruction, language teachers are able to function more as motivators, mediators, and designers of tasks rather than mere knowledge providers. Instead of emphasizing monologue-style presentations and lectures, instructors can operate more as communicators or navigators to new educational domains, and as expert guides to international repositories of knowledge. This allows teachers to become more involved in conducting and directing student activities to foster an environment of expectation, possibility, and performance. Computer-based resources promote this shift away from teacher focused performances by providing learners with quick and unrestricted access to course related materials. Digital technologies support much more student focused environments which emphasize synthetic learning over linear transfers of knowledge.

As primary actors in this multimedia learning process, students face new expectations and responsibilities in the classroom as well as the digital lab. Presented with a diversified menu of educational choices, students have to select better what to learn, how to process the information, and how to systematize their knowledge. These paradigmatic shifts entail the duty and willingness of foreign language departments to allow for more student control over the learning enterprise. It requires students to respond better to their own intellectual compass as well as to the diverse interests of their classmates and peers. In short, interactive teaching technologies necessitate multiple adjustments in our pedagogical approaches, and call for the disengagement from methodological dogma and dogmatic methodologies.

If there are common denominators among contemporary theories of foreign language acquisition, they are embedded in the notions of "interactive" teaching and "proficiency oriented" cross-cultural communication. Most current methodologies stress learner centered approaches, emphasize affective components in the language acquisition process (Fennell, 8), focus on communicative practices and the study of authentic materials from the target culture. Within these realignments of foreign language pedagogy, meaningful new approaches require that the presented information becomes contextualized, synthesized, and that students discover relationships with other areas of the curriculum. Digital domains such as the Internet, the World Wide Web, CD-ROM software, and multimedia applications do exactly that. They immerse students in virtual realms where the pursuit of foreign languages, literatures, and culture studies become interdisciplinary and learner oriented tasks. Digital media, operating in such modes, permit applied explorations and skill oriented training driven by student query instead of teacher directive. This field expansion of foreign language studies also augments current developments in the Humanities which put new emphases on critical inquiries and interdisciplinary studies across the curriculum.


II. Language Laboratories for the Digital Age


The design, structure, and use of digital language laboratories need to reflect the new pedagogical imperatives. Electronic learning centers quickly developed from rather passive, drill-based instructional facilities to interactive and interdisciplinary environments where students function as self-motivating centers of activity. Instead of being technological extensions of front-end teaching techniques, language laboratories exhibit the potential to become the most valuable learning hubs of language departments. Their electronic ramps to the Internet and other multimedia domains, supply instructors with a cornucopia of educational opportunities to individualize the learning process, and involve students in authentic communicative scenarios.

At UNCG, the Departments of Romance Languages, German and Russian, and Classical Studies are currently collaborating to remodel their language laboratories. The scope and scale of renovating the 20-year-old facilities involves all areas of technology mediated instruction. Ideally, each of the three rooms in the new center will contain about 20 networked computer stations with Internet and satellite television connections, wall mounted monitors, overhead projectors, as well as tape, video, CD-ROM, and software programs for eight foreign languages taught at the university. The initial stage of the restructuring project involves redefining the pedagogical and technological functions of the envisioned learning center. This includes expanding current capabilities, re-configuring workstations, purchasing new computing equipment, and wiring everything from the ground up, from the console controls to the computer sockets, and from the ear phones to the lighting fixtures.

In line with current instructional theories and methodologies, the interests and needs of foreign language students occupy the center stage in the technology plan. The first steps thus involve redefining the functions and purposes of the language laboratory itself. Of primary importance is the interior design of the space itself. We envision a learning center where students can feel at ease, study in groups or in private, and enjoy exploring the available resources. This involves providing comfortable, supportive, and versatile social spaces where students have easy access to the following technology tools: quality audio and video tapes, compact and laser disks, CD-ROM software, satellite and cable television, Internet browsers, and network programs which promote the extension of language studies [Ervin 81] on all levels of proficiency. If the various technologies are linked and networked for easy access, the electronic and pedagogical options are growing. This concept informs our digital language center design in a nutshell: hardware, software, and connectivity fostering the proliferation and integration of foreign language studies.

Current plans for the new language center accommodate the following visitor scenario. During a typical hour, each of the three laboratories would be visited by 10-15 students. In one room, for example, half a dozen undergraduates might be watching various SCOLA television programs from France, Mexico, and Russia. Working in the carrels next to them sit two faculty members who logged on to the Internet to assemble bibliographies of World Wide Web sites for their Japanese conversation and Greek culture classes. In the adjacent room, several Italian majors are watching film selections from a laser disc, while another student is practicing her Spanish pronunciation with a CD-ROM program. In the third room, an audio tape session is under way for 20 elementary and intermediate German students to complete their weekly laboratory assignments. A group of students, and a couple of visitors from area high schools are working on independent study projects with the web. In the video screening corner of the room, Latin students are watching a video tape on Roman civilization. The labs are scheduled to be open sixty hours a week, 20 hours of which are reserved for proctored audio-tape sessions. During the remaining 40 hours, a majority of the work stations are in use at all times. Within this ideal scenario, the digital laboratories would resemble language learning cooperatives or collaborative towers of Babel, where students explore learning second languages to construct a better world.

Perhaps for the next five years or so, more students will work with audio tapes, videos, and television broadcasts than with other high-tech media. We plan to bring in more radio services, perhaps short wave receivers or Global Radio, and a free German satellite service that provides international radio signals worldwide with a variety of broadcasts from popular culture to poetry recitals. At the top of this wish list would be the request that the new technology is versatile, easy to operate, and inexpensive to maintain. This should be achievable without complicated equipment set-ups and service routines. Ideally, instructors should be able to do all technical operations themselves, without any technical support. However, regularly assigned laboratory assistants are scheduled to work in the facilities at all hours of operation. Future plans also involve the opening of new full-time positions to manage the facility, guide software development, faculty training and teacher education projects.

The laboratory should serve as the foreign language resource center with links to departmental programs, faculty materials, teaching tools, placement tests, advising references, career planning aids, technology workshops, and foreign language entertainment. Through its local area networks and world wide web pages, the laboratory's electronic reference shelves can provide bulletin board capabilities for students and instructors to post assignments and responses. Electronic chat areas can provide opportunities for role playing projects and informal discussions. In addition, virtual connections to university library services and databases can be offered through network links [telnet, ftp] from electronic boards and web pages. The laboratory should function as a distribution center for instructional materials as well. Faculty can easily deliver extra-curricular resources on the campus networks or the Internet.

Use of the laboratory's resources for teacher education purposes can range from basic information delivery to development of sophisticated virtual learning environments. Two models are envisioned: the course supplement model which utilizes the Internet's most basic feature centered around the dissemination of information. The second model involves the virtual classroom extension which incorporates the web's most sophisticated features. It moves beyond a basic information delivery model to a long-distance and tele-conferencing mode, whereby course and entire degree programs can be delivered in whole or in part over the Internet. [Syllabus, Distributed Learning, p. 12]. With faculty development programs and laboratory workshops , these models can be adapted to fit most courses offered by the department.

Through this integrated use of the new facility - combining teaching, training, administrative, outreach, and entertainment functions - the university's ties to the community should be strengthened as well. By encouraging residents of various ethnic origins to keep abreast of their heritage cultures, the language learning center becomes an inter-departmental clearinghouse for multicultural events on campus. Exporting some of the laboratory's capabilities such as radio programs, satellite broadcasts, network programs and Internet browsers to dormitories and activity centers would certainly broaden the appeal of language studies on campus As the multimedia center allows students electronic access around the clock, it frees teaching, learning, and research endeavors from the confines of space and time. Broadcast and computer network services can provide students with exciting technological gateways to foreign languages, cultures and traditions beyond the classrooms. The electronic laboratory could therefore develop into the greatest physical and educational asset of our departments.

The availability of foreign language computing and networking to a broader audience introduces an important aspect of laboratory planning which applies across the board. The application of computer-based learning technologies ought not to be left to individual faculty members or department heads who act as trend setters. Technology initiatives across the humanities require the association and cooperation of many individuals in many parts of the institutional hierarchy. The active collaboration of departmental colleagues, regardless of their level of electronic expertise, is imperative for launching successful new technology initiatives.

It is encouraging to know that in this decade our profession has moved the foreground of the electronic revolution. To illustrate the trend toward digital technologies among educators, I am including a promising statistic on computer use published in January of 1996 [Chronicle of Higher Education, and USA Today]. The list mentions the top five answers given by elementary school teachers when asked what they regard as the biggest advantages to using personal computers for teaching in the classroom:

30.7% Motivate students
26.4% Let students work at their own pace
25.1% Reinforce learning
24.1% Expose students to technology
16.8% Save time with record keeping


III. An Action Agenda for Multimedia Laboratories


An analysis of the pedagogical impact of electronic teaching tools is a comprehensive task, as the closer examination of professional articles and papers indicates. The brief overview which follows is primarily intended to provide practical guidelines and ideas on enhancing foreign language instruction through laboratory technologies. The various goals, objectives and functions of such a digital learning center are grouped according to their benefits to both faculty and students.

As envisioned, the facility will play a central role in enhancing the teaching, research, and service functions of UNCG's three foreign language departments. This applies in particular to providing staff and students with learning resources, as well as research and service oriented materials for teacher education purposes, student advising, proficiency testing, and more.

Listed below is a functional blueprint of the most important capabilities designed for the new language center which services the Departments of Romance Languages, German and Russian with Japanese, and Classical Studies.

1. Language Studies: Grammar, Phonetics, Linguistics

2. Literature and Literary History: Virtual Texts, Electronic Research, CD-ROM Software, Internet Archives

3. Conversation and Composition: Tapes, Software, Listeservs, E-Mail, Internet

4. Culture Studies: Media, Film, Civilization, Arts

5. Area Studies: Business, Politics, Sciences

6. Proficiency: Student Portfolios, Colloquia, Teacher Education Standards, Technologies

7. Student Assessment and Advising: Placement Testing, Course Information, Study Abroad Programs, Exchanges, Extra-Curricular Events

8. Technology Training: Teching Methodologies, Laboratory Functions, Digital Resources, Workshops

9. Language Resource Center: Tapes, Books, Audio-Visuals, Videos, Slides, Software, Internet Tools, Portable Technologies

10. Entertainment: Foreign Film Series, Language Software Games, Tapes, Videos, Internet, Bulletin Boards, Posters, Special Events


1. Language Studies: Grammar, Phonetics, Linguistics

The laboratory's primary function as a language learning center pertains to providing students with interactive media to practice language skills, and promote better comprehension of the target culture. The computer assisted language instruction primarily involves study programs distributed via local area networks, and other channels of technology mediated training. This includes conventional audio tapes, radio and television broadcasts, videos as well as laser disks, CD-ROM programs, Internet listservs, e-mail exchanges, and World Wide Web browsers.

The laboratory is scheduled to stay open 60 hours a week, of which 20 hours would be reserved for class sessions involving elementary and intermediate students. In addition to this operating schedule, the electronic servers of the facility would stay open around the clock and allow access to the various network programs. Students are welcome to browse through the software library, screen videos and reference materials, check out study programs, and work on the materials at their own pace. Technical assistance is provided by laboratory proctors [work-study stipends] during all hours of operation.

Pedagogical Advantages: The training materials free classroom periods from time-consuming drills. They facilitate the learning of linguistic features [morphology, vocabulary] without repetitive list or paradigm memorization. Moreover, the scope and range of available laboratory tools enables students to learn new languages without over-exposure to grammar rules, and without recourse to text translation methods. Supported by on-line assistance to solve vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and stylistic problems, students can focus on engaging and task-oriented explorations of the target language. Statistical tracking of student performances provides instructors with accurate, fair, and consistent testing results that allow both students and teachers to better monitor and diagnose proficiencies.


2. Literature and Literary History: Virtual Texts, Electronic Research, CD-ROM Software, Internet Archives

The language center is designed to provide students on all proficiency levels with opportunities to study primary and secondary literature, including critical essays, literary histories, documentary texts, and magazines online. The virtual resources are especially geared to enhance students' literature comprehension and interpretation skills. The electronic programs allow users to access reference materials, browse through literary collections on the Internet, engage in topical and biographical research, and access on-line archives to retrieve critical essays and articles. The literature materials of the center are not designed to compete with library resources. Instead, the electronic study tools expand literary and narrative studies into the virtual domain. Easy interfaces invite students to search for available books through network catalogs, jump-start research projects, scan on-line literary journals, visit national and international archives on the World Wide Web, and download or print digitized literature.

The World Wide Web with its hypertext links to literary collections, research sites, and exhibits offers the most elaborate and open-ended forum for course related literature assignments. The scope of activities is almost unlimited, ranging from reading assignments to research for seminar papers. For example, a typical student assignment might focus on the following research tasks: Enter the World Wide Web through browsers like Mosaic or Netscape, and visit a national literature archive. Open a text collection, research the available information concerning your topic, download relevant materials, including on-line images. Bring these research materials to class, and present and discuss them in oral and/or written reports.

Pedagogical Advantages: Utilizing the laboratory and its network capabilities as a reading and literary research facility encourages students to become scholarly collectors and critics. Numerous search tools provide well-marked tracks for information hunting and gathering, all of which are simple and efficient to use. Especially useful for elementary and intermediate students are laboratory reading and text comprehension programs which offer a wide range of proficiency oriented activities. Moreover, linking literary endeavors with other areas of the foreign language curriculum offers students and instructors the chance to combine narrative inquiries with language and culture studies .


3. Conversation and Composition: Tapes, Software, Listservs, E-Mail, Internet


Audio and digital training programs can greatly enhance students' mastery of the conversation and composition process by providing on-line support structures. The tape laboratory has long been established as an important extra-curricular learning forum, and will undoubtedly continue to play a central role. However, digital programs can expand these functions in many directions. Especially designed for enhancing writing skills, text editing programs make drafting, editing, and revising foreign language texts much easier and thus more rewarding and convenient. Composition software helps students with grammar and spelling checks, as well as other lexical and diagnostical questions. This allows learners to experiment more with their written expressions, and avoid many of the frustrating experiences associated with writing in a foreign language.

By posting their findings on electronic bulletin boards or through e-mail exchanges, and exposing their works to public scrutiny, students get motivated to perform better, and take their own endeavors more seriously. E-mail and listservs can be particularly useful in larger courses where discussion in the classroom is hard to begin and sustain. Of particular value for jump-starting discussions is the instructor's encouragement to respond to other students' writings through e-mail messages (O'Donnell). In this way, the act of writing is geared toward a larger audience, and becomes a meaningful exercise in peer communication. If a respondent misreads a particular argument, the author of the paper might find new motivation for improving his or her work. In this scenario, the teacher can become more of a mediator and collaborator, and less of a critic and judge.

One of the most unique learning tools for foreign language students to emerge in the nineties involves on-line chat groups, MOOs and MUDs. These conversational forums function like virtual meeting rooms where participants engage in written exchanges. They can be monitored on screen by everyone present in the digital space. MOOs offer foreign language students excellent opportunities to contact native speakers, participate in conversations, practice the idiomatic use of the target language, and learn about current topics and affairs abroad. After mastering simple rules for on-line talk, students can participate in the conversations according to their own interests and skills. A sample student assignment might involve the following instructions: Enter a foreign language MOO as "guest", follow the conversations on-line, and contribute as much as possible. Prepare an oral or written report about your MOO encounters, and present it during small group discussions in class.

The electronic medium lets students proceed at their own pace, diagnose their work with the help of impartial tools, and store it for later revisions. The integrated support and feed-back structures of these learning tools provide supportive writing environments. For students working on course journals, portfolios, or seminar papers, the composition programs offer unique opportunities to revise, present, and exchange their works.

Pedagogical Advantages: Establishing a reading audience through class listservs and e-mail distribution lists adds valuable dimensions to the writing endeavor: reader reception and response. Through digital media, students can publish their writings for a broader audience, and thus experience a sense of authorship which can be quite exhilarating. In order to publish compositions directly on the World Wide Web, students can create their own home pages using a UNIX server. Instructors can provide links to their students' pages on special class sites which allow course members to read and comment on each others writings. This interactive format encourages students to publish their best writing, and respond to critical commentaries from class members and other readers. For example, a student assignment might include the following directions: chose a paper topic, create your own web page, and start your Internet publication by collecting entries for a "selected bibliography" on your topic. The bibliography should contain references to printed books, journals, and articles, as well as entries referring to Internet addresses and research sites. As your paper progresses, post preliminary abstracts, outlines, and drafts on your web page under the project's title. The complete paper should be ready for publication during the last week of the semester.


4. Culture: Media, Film, Civilization, Arts

The turn toward more discourse oriented, interdisciplinary, and culture centered studies was supported by the rise of multimedia technologies which gave students access to a broad range of learning materials. Not only grammar and vocabulary programs benefited from this development but also cultural history and civilization programs on CD-ROM, and, since the early nineties, the World Wide Web. More than any other technology tool, the Internet promises to turn into the most important culture studies resource in the foreign language laboratory.

On the web, students can browse through interdisciplinary resources, read print media, access film, art and historical museums, view on-line slides and videos, and listen to international broadcasts. They can tap into foreign music archives and collections, visit popular culture exhibits, and virtual information pools. The Internet's almost unlimited educational resources include news groups, MOOs, e-mail exchanges, listserv discussion groups, on-line conference forums, electronic articles and books, virtual encyclopedias, and many other cultural expressions. All of these realia can easily be accessed from the laboratory, and can help language students turn into informed cultural observers. Especially education majors can benefit from this virtual immersion in the target culture, and thus better prepare themselves for their roles of cultural ambassadors in the classroom. Students are becoming increasingly less skeptical and screen shy about the new technologies, yet, there is need for a deeper understanding about its implications for future educational practices. The laboratory provides a great starting point for this exploration.

The envisioned facility and its digital linkage of images, sounds, texts, and up-to-date archive materials can create entirely new educational domains because they are multimedia by design and interactive by nature. Networked programs, CD-ROM software, and World Wide Web browsers such as "Netscape", "Mosaic" or "Lynx" function as gateways to this interdisciplinary universe. They immersing language students in multi-sensory learning environments which extend far beyond the walls of traditional classrooms. Maintaining Internet study links to foreign language newspapers, journals, and research collections is one of many functions of the lab. Building video, tape, and disc collections, including foreign language films, theater recordings, and instructional teaching clips is another. This can be done for elementary through intermediate language levels. Collecting these materials might encourage interested faculty members to offer more media studies courses which utilize the diverse information systems: satellite TV, newspapers, and SCOLA programs.

Pedagogical Advantages: Providing students with these interdisciplinary gateways to foreign language media, film, cultural history, and arts exhibits offers tremendous educational advantages. Teachers have long known that exposure to such authentic realia fosters students' motivations for mastering second languages. Unlike textbooks and tapes, the culture bound resources offer more holistic learning experiences involving all four areas of language proficiency. In this intertwining practice of reading, writing, listening, speaking and research skills lies the great potential for helping students overcome both language and literacy problems. Linking the networks, and especially the Internet, to the language laboratory may prove particularly effective for scheduling extra-curricular tutorials and long distance education projects.


5. Area Studies: Business, Politics, Sciences

Over the last 10 years, undergraduates at UNCG displayed increasing interests in augmenting their language and literature majors with area and culture studies, including business, music, international studies, history, art, anthropology, psychology, and various other sciences. A well equipped laboratory ought to service all of these students and their special interests.

Cable and Internet resources constitute the best laboratory tools for the needs of majors in area studies programs. Especially SCOLA television, satellite broadcasts, and the multimedia universe of the world wide web can service this information pool. A wealth of interdisciplinary materials are available on TV and the net, including foreign language news and documentaries [SCOLA], electronic user groups, listservs and bulletin boards. These authentic study materials provide windows into professional fields abroad, and illuminate foreign affairs, minority cultures, and subcultures in the target countries. Appropriate exercises designed around independent study projects can familiarize students with international affairs by providing ready made study exhibits of everyday life and work abroad.

The Internet trails invite students to investigate business archives, company portfolios, scientific experiments, political investigations, minority traditions, popular culture initiatives, holiday calendars, celebrations, and social customs. Given the almost unlimited scope of resources across traditional subject and disciplinary boundaries, the Internet is second to none in providing area studies resources for laboratory visitors. The continuing expansion of this medium promises to offer even more materials on an ever broadening scale.

Pedagogical Advantage: The wealth of information posted on the networks and the Internet is far more inclusive than the printed resources available at most campus libraries. Besides current newspaper articles, journal essays, and archive commentaries, electronic discussion groups and web sites provide exceptionally good resources for area and culture studies. The up-to-date contents matter of these resources together with their multimedia presentation formats provide students with critical insights into the cultural, social, political, and economic life of international communities. It also provides teaching majors with a broad knowledge base to launch their own area studies inquiries, model new lesson plans, and engage in educational debates on how to use the new technologies for their own classroom purposes.


6. Proficiency: Student Portfolios, Colloquia, Teacher Education Standards, Technologies

One of the most useful technology applications to prepare teachers for the job market involves writing programs for resumes, vitas, and portfolios. These software tools are especially geared toward presentation and marketing activities, and can help teaching majors prepare for their job interviews. The computer templates can also be used by the department to establish student profiles, and electronic records of entry level performances and improvements.

The digital media allow for new approaches to composing course journals, portfolios, and other proficiency tracking devices. One such extension might pertain to the composition of multimedia course books or yearbooks: pictures and illustrations can easily be scanned into electronic documents. Reduced to thumbnail images, they can be called up as full screen versions of photographs, letters, records, exams, and other portfolio documents. Different entries can be added throughout the year as graphics or text. This provides a visual foundation of the portfolio content that can include written assignments and even digitized oral presentations and short video clips. These components can form the foundation of a multimedia portfolio, and furnish an excellent basis for authentic assessment that can be shared effortlessly (Sutherland). Such multimedia portfolios and digital home pages can be saved on disk or CD-ROM for later use in job interviews. Of course, digital yearbooks can be maintained off-line, even by students themselves, and require no particular technological expertise to construct.

Proficiency development as a whole can be augmented by laboratory technologies. From placement exams to colloquia, from portfolios to oral presentations, the medium can track progress, store documents, illustrate contents matter, and publish results on the network, the web or CD-ROM.

Pedagogical Advantages: The laboratory can supplement proficiency oriented instruction with a battery of teaching tools to support individualized, interactive, and interdisciplinary study and research activities. Digital yearbooks and portfolio documents can turn into motivating instruments to reflect student performances at all levels of instruction. Moreover, providing teaching majors with video recording services, resume programs, and interviewing skills better prepares them for the job market.


7. Student Assessment and Advising: Placement Testing, Course Information, Study Abroad Programs, Exchanges, Extra-Curricular Events

The multimedia laboratory may function as a virtual assessment, advising and career planning center. It can offer its electronic services around the clock, provide access to placement scores, study abroad files and schedules, and post program information and course related resources. It can expand the traditional advising agenda with valuable new services such as on-line course descriptions, extracurricular events, and assessment tools. Students can also audit their transcripts, check lesson plans, instructional training videos, professional brochures, and many other portfolio resources of interest to prospective teachers.

Electronic assessment instruments and check lists can capture cumulative performance profiles of teaching majors and other students. By providing placement and exit testing standards, the department can diagnose weaknesses as well as remedies for individual learners. Faculty can access the portfolios of their students and advisees - individuals as well as entire classes - both qualitatively, examining learners' performance in detail, and quantitatively, generating statistical overviews of their progress along any number of dimensions. This integrated tracking of students allows faculty councilors to offer fair, consistent, and informed advise.

The laboratory's electronic repository of study abroad materials offers interested students diverse reference materials, including web sites and hypertext links directly to the host institutions. Up-to-date information on the programs, their prerequisites and requirements can be accessed quickly and efficiently. Cost comparisons and other on-line orientation points make research and information gathering convenient. Follow-up advising and faculty assistance in choosing the appropriate program can and should supplement these initial activities.

Pedagogical Advantages: On-line advising services allow students to orient themselves in an atmosphere of student-centered openness, diversity, and innovation. By informing themselves about available choices and opportunities, students become more responsible for what they learn, where they can do it, and how they apply this knowledge. By jump-starting the orientation, assessment, and advising process through digital means, follow-up faculty counseling can become much more focused and informed.


8. Technology Training: Teaching Methodologies, Laboratory Functions, Digital Resources, Workshops

One of the most important functions of the electronic laboratory pertains to teacher training activities involving educational technologies. Collaboration and cooperation among faculty members, laboratory assistants, and teaching majors form the prerequisite for a successful operation. Instead of delegating the management of laboratory technologies to self-selected cyberbuffs among the faculty, the laboratory should become an integral component of most if not all departmental courses and programs.

The training functions of the laboratory need to be clearly articulated since they seem especially relevant for teacher education majors. They should be able to graduate with a clear understanding of the possibilities and limits of current teaching technologies, and how to use them in the laboratory as well as the classroom. Exposure to and familiarity with the equipment can be enhanced through in-house workshops, demos, presentations and, in the case of teacher education programs, formalized training sessions. The more pronounced this technological training mission is spelled out, the more integrated and inclusive the lab's functions can become. Informed and frequent use of hardware and software by teaching assistants, laboratory proctors, and departmental faculty will lead to high student occupancy rates, which in turn, may bring more funding for instructional equipment and even new faculty lines.

Pedagogical Advantages: Exposure to the laboratory's digital operation, and experimentation with its software and network capabilities can teach education majors vital skills for the job market. As computer networks will eventually become ubiquitous, the use of new classroom technologies through formal training sessions and informal workshops is crucial. Because the medium is so new, these technology sessions should become regular laboratory events designed to provide participants with the practical know-how for teaching in the information age.


9. Language Resource Center: Books, Audio-Visual Exercises, Videos, Slides, Software, Internet Tools, Portable Technologies

The digital laboratory ought to become much more than a computer aided learning space for foreign language students. Its capabilities should include some traditional library services as well as reference, repository, audio-visual and other functions. Literary and biographical dictionaries belong as much into the laboratory's learning archives as do video collections, museum and art catalogs or CD-Rooms, business manuals, and foreign address and telephone guides. A well managed and computerized catalog of available print and digital materials should form the center link to all laboratory resources. Information retrieval should be made easy and convenient, and involve all avenues of data storage and management.

Another important aspect of the language center extends to providing faculty and instructors with portable classroom technologies such as notebook computers, digital slide projectors, CD-ROM players, and similar teaching tools. Collecting and maintaining these resources in a central location will facilitate their use, and familiarize instructors with the available pedagogical technologies. Modeling the equipments' use in the laboratory can extend to technology workshops and seminars for instructors on and off campus.

Pedagogical Advantage: Providing a service hub for learning resources and technologies facilitates the use and integration of these tools in the classroom. A team approach to managing and upgrading these equipment lines fosters constructive experimentation with new teaching software, and the sharing of techniques and ideas among faculty members. This will prove increasingly important as technology becomes more portable and affordable.


10. Entertainment: Foreign Film Series, Language Software Games, Tapes, Videos, Internet, Bulletin Boards, Posters, Special Events

Perhaps the most popular yet least acknowledged function of digital laboratories pertain to their potential as foreign language entertainment centers. This conversion constitutes an interesting extension rather than a distraction from the educational purposes of the facility. Indeed, foreign language entertainment can and should be used for educational purposes as long as the pedagogical applications are thought through. For example, electronic chat groups and other interactive virtual exchanges can greatly enhance the conversational skills of foreign language students. Similarly, foreign block-buster films, television hits, radio talk shows, popular CD-ROM games, and playful Internet sites hold great potential for familiarizing students with expressions of everyday life, culture, and leisure. Important idiomatic expressions and conversational phrases become more memorable and meaningful if students encounter them in communicative situations. On-line tele-conferencing, long distance chats and many other forms of interactive computer entertainment are inexpensive and exhilarating ways to use the target language.

Diffusing the lines between formal and informal language learning is bound to boost both the popularity and purpose of the departmental enterprise. Given the freedom to co-determine the laboratory's diverse instructional functions, students will use their own resources and imaginations to develop the space according to their needs and preferences. This will help to anchor the facility as one of the fixtures in the educational and social life of foreign language departments. Instead of restricting the use of its entertainment features, the laboratory should open them as extra-curricular attractions. Foreign film festivals, computer conferences, and social gatherings can all become part of the diverse functional menu of the laboratory.

Pedagogical Advantages: Rather than downplaying the entertainment functions of the learning center, it seems beneficial to guide and channel students' motivation to combine education with recreation, and thus overcome old stigmas and stereotypes often associated with foreign language studies. Turning the language center into an attractive social space where students can play together, explore technology in an un-threatening environment, and use the foreign language in an entertaining fashion can certainly enhance the educational dynamics of the entire operation.


IV. Conclusion: Exploring New Notions of Literacy

The installation of digital language centers as mediators between native and foreign languages, literatures and cultures holds many rewards for teachers, teaching majors and students alike. It goes without saying that these resources are used best when they complement more traditional forms of instruction. Their big advantage, however, lies in the fact that they integrate the educational process by transporting students from the linear mode of learning to the relational and the creative mode of inquiry. This integration greatly enhances and expands the realm of pedagogical possibilities available to teachers and students alike. Ideally, experimenting with digital technologies should be closely tied to one's own research and teaching in order to be personally meaningful and rewarding. While retooling teaching styles and techniques to accommodate multimedia classroom applications, it is wise to avoid the temptation to reinvent the blackboard through electronic means. Most importantly, instructors should find ways to assure the screen shy members among their education majors that the new technologies are designed to help them in their classroom careers without intimidating them. Rather than perceiving the computer as an impersonal intruder it can be viewed as a visiting teacher, who presents problems or ideas for the teacher and students to attack together as a team. [Meunier 44]. In my own teaching, I have found it most useful to provide class introductions to the new hypermedia labs on campus at the beginning of each semester, and to pair reluctant students with their more computer literate class mates. These partnership arrangements prove not only productive for interacting with the electronic medium but also provide for better group dynamics in the laboratory setting. In these collegiate partnerships and discoveries lie the primary rewards for our efforts to appropriate new classroom technologies. Most students enjoy the exploratory nature of the electronic frontier, and are quite eager to tap into these exciting new knowledge domains. This laboratory visits awaken their curiosity, challenge their notions of literacy, and offer yet another reason for the mastery of foreign languages. As we cast our educational nets ever wider, searching for students and contacts across the globe, the resources of the information age help us teach tolerance for differences as well as for similarities. What better place to continue the dialog about teacher education, virtual classrooms, and the benefit of multimedia language centers.


V. Bibliography

Berman, Russell A. Global Thinking, Local Teaching: Departments, Curricula, and Culture. Profession 95, Journal of the Modern Language Association, p. 89-93.

Ervin, Gerard L. Cruisin' the Information Superhighway in My '57 Chevy: Farewell to Rte. 66? CALICO Journal, Volume 11, No. 3, 1994, p. 79-92.

Fennell, Barbara. The Interaction of Language Acquisition Theory and the Technology of Language Teaching. In Language Laboratory: Issues and Practice, edited by Pegge Abrams and Barbara Fennell. A publication of the Duke University Language Learning Center, Durham 1993.

Hargadon, Tom. The State of the Info Highway. New Media, Volume 5, Issue 10, October 1995, p. 44-53.

Massy, William F. and Robert Zemsky. Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity. Internet paper published by the Interuniversity Communications Council. http://www.educom.edu/program/nlii/keydocs/massy.html.

McClintock, R. Power and Pedagogy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications, 1993.

Meunier, Lydia E. Computer-Assisted Language Instruction in Cooperative Learning. In Applied Language Learning, Volume 5, No. 2, 1994, p. 31-56.

Noblitt, James S. Superb pedagogical essay collection on the integration of technology in foreign language instruction, published at the web site of the Institute for Academic Technology at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

O'Donnell, J. Teaching with Technology. World Wide Web document containing excellent pedagogical suggestions involving electronic media. URL address: http://gopher.upenn.edu:80/pennprintout/html/v11/5/teach.html. University of Pennsylvania, 1995.

Olson, D.R. (ed). Literacy and Orality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Patrikis, Peter C. Where is Computer Technology Taking Us? Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. ADFL Bulletin, Winter 1995, Vol. 26, No. 2, p. 36-39.

Postman, N. Technopoly: A Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Knopf, 1991.

Saltzberg, Steven and Susan Polyson. Distributed Learning on the World Wide Web. Syllabus, Technology for Education, Volume 9, No. 1, September 1995, p. 10-12.

Sutherland, Richard. Electrify Your Instruction: Virtual Schools, Digital Yearbooks, Multimedia Portfolios, Off-Line Internet. E-Mail Posting on the FL Teach Listserv, November 12, 1995.

Teachers and Computers. Tenth Planet Elementary School Teachers and Technology Survey. Statistics. USA Today. January 4, 1996, p. 1D. See also the Information Technology essay"Reaching a Critical Mass" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 1996, p. A17.


Greensboro, NC. Spring 1996



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