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C&IT Centre

No 19, February 2000

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CTICML to be part of new Subject Centre

The Subject Centre in Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies was formally approved in December 1999 by HEFCE, on behalf of the UK Funding Councils, as part of the new national Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN). Led by the University of Southampton, it is supported by the University Council for Modern Languages, on behalf of a large number of subject associations.

Aims

The Subject Centre's principal aims are to promote high quality learning and teaching across all UK higher education institutions, and to support co-operation between educators in its three key subject areas. The Centre will offer support for the study of Modern Languages, Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, cognate Literary, Cultural and Area studies, and Area Studies not related to language. It will explore the extension of support to English taught as a foreign language and to Welsh, Scottish and Irish studies.

In pursuit of its aims, the Centre will identify the needs of the academic community; promote and share innovation and good practices, with particular regard for curriculum development and staff development; provide access to relevant information; and establish a framework for effective networking between educators.

A Centre in three locations

The Centre is led by a Director, Professor Michael Kelly, supported by a team reporting directly to him, and located in the School of Modern Languages at the University of Southampton. The Southampton team will include a Centre Manager, responsible for ensuring the effective operation of the Centre's activities. It will also include two Academic Co-ordinators, with responsibility for identifying, promoting and disseminating innovation and good practices in each of the three key subject areas, and providing support for the work of the three specialist advisory Groups.

The Centre team at the University of Hull (formerly CTICML) will take responsibility for activities in matters involving Communications & Information Technologies (C&IT). Its remit will include evaluating and disseminating C&IT approaches to learning and teaching in all three key subject areas. It will also establish and maintain the Centre's Websites, databases and email lists.

The Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (CILT) will maintain an Information Centre for the Subject Centre in London, with telephone and drop-in access, and distribute hard-copy information on innovation, good practices, resources, training and conferences.

A Management Group will ensure effective co-ordination between Southampton, Hull and CILT, and day-to-day monitoring of the Centre's programme of activities.

The role of the C&IT Centre

Since 1989 CTICML has provided advice and information on the use of technologies for the teaching and learning of languages throughout the UK higher education sector. It has built up a wide range of resources, including a unique library of software and publications relating to this field. Under the arrangements with the new Subject Centre the C&IT Centre will extend its coverage to include C&IT-related aspects of Linguistics and Area Studies, as well as providing technical expertise to the Subject Centre as a whole.

The Centre will continue to host EUROCALL, to liaise with Cambridge University Press in the publication of the ReCALL journal, and to participate in a range of related projects. The team at Hull will be contributing to a central Newsletter which will automatically be distributed to former recipients of the ReCALL Newsletter.

TELL

The TELL Consortium (http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/tell.htm) will continue to operate from the Hull office of the new C&IT Centre, unaffected by the changes to CTICML.

ICT4LT - launch of first five modules

This Socrates-funded project provides online training materials in ICT for language teachers. The first five modules are already online and being piloted by teachers from the partner states of Finland, Italy and the UK. A booklet containing these modules, together with a floppy disk version of the website, will shortly be provided free of charge to the pilot group.

The materials on the website have already been accessed almost 30,000 times, with visitors from over 50 different countries, including Hong Kong, Bulgaria, Russia, the USA and Canada, as well as every EU state except Luxembourg.

Work on a further ten modules is in progress.

To access the online materials go to http://www.ict4lt.org/

To join the ICT4LT pilot group discussion list go to http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/ict4lt-pilot/

Nuffield French for Scientists & Engineers

This is a French course designed specifically for science students, developed by the Nuffield Project at the University of Dundee, and financed by the Nuffield Foundation (http://www.nuffield.org). The course, published by Hodder & Stoughton, consists of a Student's Book, and an Audio-Visual Resource & Teaching Pack. The materials can be ordered from:

Bookpoint
39 Milton Park
Abingdon
Oxon
OX14 4TD

Email: [email protected]

Tel: 01235 400414/827220 Fax: 01235 400454

For further information on the course, and resources to accompany it, including freely downloadable software (PC and Macintosh), visit the Nuffield Project website at http://www.dundee.ac.uk/languagestudies/Nuffield/nuff1.htm

Software Reviews on the Web

Reviews of a large number of CALL software packages can be found on the CTICML website at http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/resources/reviews/revlist.htm , sorted alphabetically by name. These reviews have been published both in the ReCALL Newsletter and on the website. There's also a list of other WWW sites where you can find CALL software reviews online.

Divace

Produced by Teleste Educational, Divace is a "Digital Interactive Audio Video Recorder" for Language Laboratories and "multimedia classrooms". It seeks to replace the analogue technology of audio- and video-tapes played back on cassette recorders and VCRs, with digital audio and video recordings stored on networked and standalone PCs, although the interface paradigm of the Language Lab is preserved for both students and teachers. Divace comes in two forms: Duo and Solo. The Duo form is the full 'digital language lab' for networked PCs, in which student PCs are controlled by the teacher's 'master' computer. The Solo form is for standalone PCs, for use in self-study situations. A Divace Player - software to playback multimedia files in common formats - is also available, free of charge, although this is to be superseded by Divace Lite which will enable recording as well as playback, and which will be sold as a separate product.

Further information on Divace, including contact details, can be found on the WWW at http://www.divace.com, from where you can download the Divace Player.

Language Resources on the Internet

A large, categorised, and continuously updated, list of links to useful Internet sites for language learners and teachers is available on the CTI Centre for Modern Languages World Wide Web server at the URL:

http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/langsite.htm

The list contains a wide variety of sites, including:

Online newspapers (eg La Repubblica, Le Monde, La Vanguardia)

Online dictionaries (eg English-French, -Italian, -Norwegian)

Country-specific search engines

Linguistics resources

Culture and history of languages

Other language resource lists and indexes

Resources for teaching and learning languages on the Internet

Many of these sites are written in the native language and can thus be useful sources of contemporary language material as well as of up-to-the-minute news and views on the society.

Lively discussion in the WELL project

The WELL project has recently established a series of online discussions, through its mailbase discussion list, with each discussion led by a well-known practitioner in a specific area.

The first discussion was led by Uschi Felix of Monash University, Australia, around the general topic of learning and teaching languages on the Web. A summary of the discussion can be found at http://www.well.ac.uk/wellproj/discuss.html or you can follow the full discussion via the mailbase archive at http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/well/archive.html

The second discussion, on the use of WebCT, is led by Marina Orsini-Jones of Coventry University. You can join the WELL discussion list from the mailbase web page at http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/well/

EUROCALL 2000

A Celebration of Innovative Language Learning

University of Abertay, Dundee

31 August 2000 - 2 September 2000

http://dbs.tay.ac.uk/eurocall2000/

For information about the conference including the organisation of pre-Conference events, contact Philippe Delcloque ([email protected])

Forthcoming Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A continuously-updated events calendar can be found at http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/resources/calendar.htm

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C&IT Centre, Language Institute, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX, UK
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Last updated 15 March 2000