Department of Foreign Languages

Web Workshop, Spring 1996




Andreas Lixl-Purcell


German Studies on the Web:
Virtual Classroom Tools

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

Introduction: Paradigm Shifts in Foreign Language Instruction

With the influx of interactive technologies, foreign language studies are shifting toward more discourse oriented, interdisciplinary, and contextual modes of instruction. Because language learning is by nature encyclopedic, the field offers prime opportunities for augmenting established educational techniques with multimedia technologies and methodologies. On many campuses, new language learning centers and digital laboratories reflect these changing paradigms of foreign language instruction.

The involved technologies are highly motivating, convenient to use, and task oriented, which accounts for their broad appeal to foreign language teachers and learners alike. Most students appreciate the electronic media because they engage them in guided simulations involving foreign language texts, sounds, symbols, images, and moving pictures. Likewise for many teachers, the increased use of multimedia resources in foreign language programs encourages the reevaluation and revision of teaching styles and techniques. With the introduction of electronic study tools, the established roles of teachers and students are shifting quite rapidly toward more proficiency oriented, participatory and communicative classroom models.

In the age of multimedia information and instruction, language teachers can function more as scholastic mentors, mediators, and program guides rather than mere knowledge providers. Instead of emphasizing presentations and lectures, instructors can operate more as communication directors, and master navigators to 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 which emphasizes synthetic learning over linear transfers of knowledge.

As primary actors in this multimedia learning process, students face new expectations and responsibilities as well. Presented with a diversified menu of educational choices, students can better select what to learn, how to process the information, and how to systematize their knowledge. It requires them to respond better to their own intellectual compass as well as to the diverse interests of other students. In short, interactive teaching technologies necessitate multiple adjustments in our pedagogical approaches, and call for the disengagement from methodological dogma and dogmatic methodologies.


Teaching Scenarios for the Multimedia Classroom

The World Wide Web and other Internet applications provide the bases for a variety of classroom activities which can be tailored to the needs and interests of individual instructors. Assignments which combine the use of traditional and electronic media offer great opportunities for advancing students' proficencies, especially reading, writing, and speaking skills. Moreover, the World Wide Web is developing into a superb research tool for literary, cultural, and interdisciplinary inquiries.


Outline

1. Information Hubs
Posting Syllabi and Announcements
Distributing Reading Materials
Exhibiting Multimedia Resources
Creating Interactive Bulletin Boards

2. Conversation & Composition Tools:

Oral & Written Web Reports
Cyberspace Commentaries
Presentations

3. Foreign Language Entertainment:

MOO Chat Groups
Electronic Shopping
News Groups

4. Intercultural Communications:

E-Mail
Digital Exchanges
Virtual Contacts

5. Research Ramps:

Web Bibliographies
Archive Links
Webfolios

6. Publication Forums:

Student Essays, Reports, Papers, and Projects Posted on Listservs
Web Publications

7. Open-Ended Trails:

Teaching Leads and Links on the Web



1. Information Hubs:
Digital Syllabi, Readings, Resource Guides, Bulletin Boards

The World Wide Web can be used as an electronic bulletin board which offers students instant access to course syllabi and other useful information. An efficient and popular use involves the web as a distribution center or trading post for course materials, including digital texts, articles, journals, research bibliographies, slides, e-mail, and more. A well constructed course web allows students to research the subject field from many entry points, and provides valuable study tools and guidelines for extra-curricular explorations.

a. Posting Syllabi and Announcements

  • Prof. Russell G. Rose
    http://unccvm.uncc.edu:8090/~forlang/fren1100.html
    French Course Syllabus, UNC Charlotte

  • Prof. Gregory Crane and Ellen Brundige:
    http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/overview.html
    Greek Course Syllabus, Tufts University

  • Prof. Robert Godwin-Jones:
    http://www.fln.vcu.edu/gj/311/311.html
    German Course Syllabus, Virginia Commonwealth University

  • Syllabi Pages: French, German, Spanish
    http://www.fln.vcu.edu/courses/coursepage.html
    Foreign Language Courses, Virginia Commonwealth University

  • DAAD Syllabi Collection at Cornell University:
    gopher://jhuniverse.hcf.jhu.edu:10005/11/.aicgsdoc/.daad/.DAAD_Syllabi
    Gopher Archive, German Academic Exchange Service


    b. Distributing Reading Materials:

    The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia:

    http://www.lib.virginia.edu/etext/ETC.html

    Medieval Studies Center at Georgetown University

    http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth-home.html

    German Press: Stern Magazin

    http://www.stern.de/mag/

    Austrian Press: Der Standard

    http://www.derstandard.co.at/DerStandard/


    c. Exhibiting Multimedia Resources

  • Goethe Institut Deutschland
    Study Abroad Information: http://www.goethe.de/dindex.htm

  • Dartmouth College Language Resource Center
    http://www.dartmouth.edu/~hr/lrc/

  • Holocaust Archives
    http://www.ushmm.org/index.html

  • Deutsche Schulzeitungen
    http://www.educat.hu-berlin.de/cgi-bin/w3-msql/schulen/zeitung.html


    d. Creating Interactive Bulletin Boards

    Language Laboratory Guides

    http://unccvm.uncc.edu:8090/~forlang/fl_lab.html
    Dept. of Foreign Languages, UNC Charlotte

    Departmental Programs

    http://www.swan.ac.uk/german/p1956.htm
    Dept of German, University of Wales

    Prof. James O'Donnell

    http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/jod.html
    Latin Studies Page, University of Pennsylvania



    2. Conversation & Composition Tools:
    Web Exercises, Internet Reports, Cyberspace Commentaries, Presentations

    The World Wide Web with its multimedia links to foreign language archives, research sites, and museums offers students on all levels of proficiency an elaborate and open-ended forum for speaking and writing assignments. The scope of activities is almost unlimited, ranging from World Wide Web exercises to newspaper reading assignments, and research projects.
    Sample Student Assignment: Enter the World Wide Web, and visit, for example, the Berlin based Kulturbox. Click on a project link of your choice, and download at least two documents and/or images regarding your topic. Bring these printouts to class and present an oral and/or written report.

  • Film und Unterhaltung

  • Digital Lab Exercises. Deutsche Internet Chronik

  • Deutsche Kinderliteratur. Froschkönig, Max und Moritz, etc.

  • Women in German. Feminist approaches to German literature and culture



    3. Foreign Language Entertainment:
    MOO Chat Groups, Electronic Shopping, News Groups

    Unique digital learning tools for our language students involve online chat groups, MOOs (multi-object oriented), MUDs, and other forms of electronic entertainment, including shopping catalogs, and news groups. The most popular among students are chat groups where participants exchange notes which can be read on screen by everyone present in the virtual space. MOOs offer students excellent opportunities to improve their foreign language proficiencies, contact native speakers, participate in authentic conversations, discover idiomatic express ions, and learn about current topics and affairs abroad. After mastering the basic rules for on-line talk, students can participate in MOO conversations according to their own interests and skills.
    Sample Student Assignment: Enter a foreign language MOO as a "guest", follow the conversations online, and participate as much as possible. Prepare an oral or written report about your MOO encounters, and discuss it during class.

    Diversity University MOO. telnet moo.du.org 8888

    Morgengrauen. MOO der Universität Münster

    Wildpark. Unterhaltung, Info-Pool und E-Bar



    4. Intercultural Communications:
    E-Mail, Digital Exchanges, Internet Conferences, Virtual Connections

    A rewarding way to involve students in reading, writing and speaking activities centers around e-mail exchanges with native speakers abroad. Through special listservs and the Goethe Institute's matching service, high school and college students can link up with interested counterparts or "keypals" in foreign countries, and engage in correspondence involving personal and academic subject matters. The concurrent classroom assignments focus on oral or written reports about these information exchanges, or better yet, encourage students to visit each other abroad.
    A didactic expansion of the e-mail based project involves posting information directly on the world wide web through message galleries and multimedia course books or yearbooks. Illustrating the materials personalizes the information exchanges, and allows for more flexibility in the design of the projects. For more information, consult the innovative academic exchange archives created by Lt. Colonel Richard Sutherland at the Unites States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and Prof. Donna Van Handle at Mt. Holyoke College.

  • SchulWeb. Der deutsche Server für Schulen im Internet
  • University German Departments around the World
  • Prof. Mark Warschauer. Virtual Connections
      This 417-page edited book (ISBN 0-8248-1793-1) contains 125 contributions on the use of the Internet for language teaching, online activities and projects for networking language learners.



    5. Research Ramps:
    Web Bibliographies, Archive Links, Webfolios

    Utilizing the web as a research tool encourages students to become information scavengers and collectors. Numerous search engines provide students with well-marked tracks for information hunting and gathering, all of which are very simple to use. The results of these web inquiries can be posted as interactive bibliographies or webfolios. Publishing the clickable resource lists on an Internet course page provides teachers with an oportunity to assess and exhibit students' works in public. The conceptual framework behind these course pages resembles the notion of museums or galleries where visitors can explore the exhibits at their own pace.
    Sample Student Assignment: Chose a special project related to the course curriculum [Kafka, theater, Popmusik, women, minorities, Berlin Wall, etc.). Create your own World Wide Web page. Surf the Internet in search of archives or research sites, collect their URL addresses, and post them on your home page in the form of interactive links. Prepare to write your research paper with references to at least two such Internet archives, and talk about your findings in class.

  • Virtual Germanistik. Studentenseite von Steven Clagg, U of Washington
  • Nachrichten zur Frauenliteratur. Ariadne Newsletter
  • Critical Theory, Culture, Technology. Articles
  • Bookreview of Prof. Sherry Turkle's [MIT] book Life on the Screen



    6. Publication Forums:
    Student Essays, Reports, Papers, and Projects Posted on Listservs and the Web


    a. Class Listservs

    To jump-start classroom discussions on reading assignments, articles, and literature selections, class listservs provide excellent tools to disseminate students' papers and critical commentaries. Such assignments are simple to organize, generate interesting exchanges among class members, and expand the academic discourse beyond the classroom. To provide the forum for such exchanges, class listservs are set up through the campus computing center, and all students enrolled in the class become subscribers.
    Sample Student Assignment: Compose and post an essay [on an assigned topic] on the class listserv before the next class meeting. Read the posted essays of other class members, and respond to at least two essays of your choice by writing and posting short commentaries on the listserv prior to class. Then prepare to summarize your paper and your commentaries during oral discussions in class.

  • Syllabus Web. Educational E-Zine, List of Resources, Trends, Ideas


    b. Web Publications

    For foreign language students involved in writing course journals or seminar papers, the web offers unique opportunities to publish their writings. In order to do so, students obtain their own home pages on the web [usually through campus accounts], and format their final papers as a hypertext document [html]. Instructors provide links to their students' home pages through special class page which allows course members to read and comment o n each others works. This interactive format motivates students to compose quality essays, react to critical commentaries, and revise their papers for online publications.
    Sample Student Assignment: Chose a paper topic, create your own web page, and start your Internet publication by collecting entries for a "Web Bibliography" on your topic. The bibliography should contain references to printed books, journals, and articles, but also contain entries referring to Internet addresses and web sites. As you work on your article, post preliminary abstracts, outlines, and drafts on your home page under the project's title. The complete paper should be ready for publication on-line during the last week of the semester.

  • Brigitte Gastel. Webpage




    7. Open-Ended Trails:
    Teaching Leads and Links on the Web

    Foreign language instruction with the web can be as innovative and diverse as your imagination. Here are some examples involving Lutheran course materials, educational technology, independent study resources, and interesting European pages. Browse through the sites for further inspiration [outstanding course web by Prof. David Shepherd] or entertainment . The last links lead to search engines in Germany and the United States. You can also search for more information concerning e-mail listservs for FL teachers, and research oriented interdisciplinary sites in Germany.

  • Prof. Lauren Rosen. Using the Web: Ideas for Instructors.

  • Prof. Manfred Prokop. Jump Stations to German Resources

  • Spanish News for Classroom Use. TECLA Web Magazine

  • Interesting and useful country, society, and culture links, provided by Dr. Craig Nikisch at Idaho State University, dealing with business, foreign languages, teaching, and more.

    * German * * Spanish * * French * * Russian * * Japanese *

  • WWW "How-To" Resources and Guides. Library of Congress




    German Studies Trails Andreas Lixl-Purcell. Home Page

    UNCG German, Russian & Japanese Department UNCG International Programs