After a short hiatus, we pick up again with a few stories, links, and reports from a busy summer. I hope you're all well and managed to get some rest in between the planning and prep.
From visits and conferences, calls, and online chats, it's clear to us that so many universities exploring and investing in new technology, and heartening to see that here in Modern Languages at CMU we are making ground in these areas. Over the summer we met with many colleagues interested to visit and gain a better understanding of ways that we are using technology in the Global Languages & Cultures Room and throughout our department.
It's clear that there is a huge appetite in the student body for courses that touch on new technologies and support language learning using digital tools and platforms. It is also important to add too that the aims of those already using this technology are to support active learning, the technology provides new ways to facilitate playful, exploratory, making, and reflective pedagogies.
We're very keen to share some of these insights and will be offering workshops and sessions in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
Delegates at the Playful Learning Conference at the University of Leicester exploring ideas of narrative and structure in design thinking.
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These ladies are the ‘Climbing Cholitas’ or ‘Cholitas Escaladoras Bolivianas’. A group of Aymara indigenous women is breaking stereotypes and shifting perceptions. In January of 2019, they summited the 22,841ft peak of Mt Aconcagua. The highest mountain outside of Asia. And did so eschewing traditional climbing clothing in favor of their traditional, vibrant, billowing dresses, and using their traditional shawls to carry equipment rather than backpacks. (Photos by todd@toddantony.com)
Links and Stories
Landscape is an online resource for mapping, integrating, and making discoverable a wide range of information about the world’s languages as well as for raising public awareness of language diversity. It is a project of the Maryland Language Science Center and can be used to track the movement of languages across the globe.
University of Hawaii’s Language Flagship Technology Innovation Center has announced the Finalists for their Launchpad Language Education Technology Competition. Entrees include an AI platform that helps people learn languages through film, learning languages through games, and new platforms specifically for language learning.
Lyricstraining is an amazing new app that helps you learn languages through song lyrics, there's a useful tutorial here for teachers and the app is available on android and apple iOS.
E-Flashcards outperform paper flashcards when learning Mandarin. Students used i-pads with enhanced media, including animation, video, and audio instead of paper flashcards leading to increased test scores. Full paper at Springer.
A reminder if you're preparing your canvas course of some of the things you can do.
If you haven't already, make this the first week you listen to the MFLTwitterati podcast which this week explores the power of music and song in the languages classroom and showcase lots of great ideas from the community.
Global Languages & Cultures Room - Funding
There is still time to apply for Global Languages & Cultures Room funding for new projects that provide opportunities to create media content highlighting multi-cultural activities and contribute to the resources of the room by way of exhibiting, screening, or publishing final outcomes. We will also consider proposals to investigate the effectiveness of multimedia technology to foster cultural learning and intercultural competence. Please get in touch if you would like further information.
This isn't about languages, but it is strange and weird and amazing (or maybe not), thank goodness for NPR's @radiolab
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No time to stop! Look forward to speaking to you next week.