[ Home ] [ About ] [ Events ] [ Publications ] [ Resources ] [ Services ]

C&IT Centre

No 6, Oct 95, Pt 1

[ Up ]

 

Alpine Ecology in Cyberspace

The University of Munich is conducting a unique pilot project.

Students from high schools in France, Germany and the USA are debating the problems caused by recreation in the mountains via the Internet. The results of their negotiations might astound even hard-core conservationists.

"What's the English word for "schmarrn" (bullsh...) asks Thomas as he pulls the printout of Windsor High School's (Connecticut, USA) latest message out of the laserjet. The scene: an 11th grade classroom in Dante Gymnasium in Munich (Germany). "Get a load of the ingenius idea our friends at Windsor High have come up with to solve our tourist problems in the Alps." "Hi Dante!" they write, "...our group has a solution for you that will not only satisfy the needs of the people, but will also contribute to the protection of the alpine environment. In the near future, virtual reality will make it possible go snowboarding, mountain-biking, climbing and paragliding in your living room....no more pollution or snow making machines. And the energy you need to run the software for these programs is insignificant." "Quick, I need some responses", adds Thomas to the other 15 students in the room. "We're online and the conference only lasts another half an hour." Already he starts typing the rebuttal: "Sorry Windsor, we don't agree with you on this one...." The conference language is English; it could have been a session at the United Nations. "A few more proposals, please..." His eyes scan the classroom; everywhere earnest faces in deep concentration searching their minds for the right words and convincing arguments.

The idea of having students discuss the problem of recreation in the fragile ecosystem of the mountains via the information superhighway was a joint initiative of the Centrum f�r Informations- und Sprachverarbeitung (CIS) at the University of Munich and the Ecology Department of the German Alpine Club. The heads of both institutions agree that students are often more creative in finding solutions to the ecological problems in the mountains than some hardcore alpine bureaucrats. The project, funded by the Bosch Foundation, is directed by Liz Klobusicky from CIS. Participants are two German high schools, two in France and one in the USA.

The idea of using computer aided simulations for language teaching dates back to project ICONS developed at the University of Maryland in the early 80's. Since the end of the 80's telecommunications projects based on ICONS have become popular in Germany. The project director traditionally writes a scenario which is sent to all participants online and permits them to begin their research on the topic. In the scenario for the topic of "Mountains and Ecology" the main thrust of the discussion was negotiating the economical and social needs of the people living in alpine regions in the face of the fragility of the ecosystems they inhabit. The students were asked to develop solutions to the problems caused directly or indirectly by the desires of people who come to the mountains for recreation: housing developments, air pollution, erosion, water pollution, threats to the biodiversity of flora and fauna...

Their first assignment, once they had studied the scenario and other information related to the topic, was to form a group opinion and make some initial suggestions for solutions to the problems. These original positions were then discussed and revised in a daily exchange of email messages and finally debated in "summit conferences" where all the teams were online simultaneously.

The point of a simulation of this type is to come to an agreement that all teams can live with. Naturally, there were differences of opinion in the beginning - often cultural ones. The students from Albertville (France) were upset by what they considered to be a "typically German doomsday vision" of what is happening in the mountain regions. They were particularly upset that the Germans had tagged Albertville's Winter Olympics of 1992 as a classic example of needless destruction of alpine ecosystems. Small wonder, that in the heat of the discussions, none of the students noticed that the school day had ended. Bernhard Schindlbeck, an English teacher from Freising, is enthusiastic about the motivating aspects of this kind of language teaching. He thinks that English lessons of this type have brought students closer to relating academic ideas to the real world. Rather than approaching the school day as a series of independent 45 minute classes, they learn to apply a wide range of subjects to real life decision making.

While playing the role of alpine environmentalists, the decisions the students made during the summit conferences are evidence of the success of this kind of pedagogy. The student/diplomats were unanimous in their refusal to expand highway systems for transit traffic through the Alps. They ruled that individual traffic should be reduced by subsidizing railways. They also determined that there should be no uncontrolled development of housing facilities for tourists. Furthermore, the mountain communities and climbing associations were encouraged to abandon ideas of expanding the mountain trail systems and constructing new huts. In mountain wildlands, where the reduction of biological diversity is acute, the students opted for the closure of some problematic ski trails and for zoning in less problematical areas. These zoning measures, however, were to be limited to well-founded exceptions - they were not underwriting blanket limitations of access for conservation reasons.

In their demands for a reduction in exploitation of ski areas the young ecologists were more radical - no new ski slopes, no new developments in glacial areas. Only the students from Lyc�e Moulin in Albertville were reluctant to subscribe to these last proposals. In the hope that actions speak louder than words they extended an invitation to the students from Dante Gymnasium, their partner school in Munich: a week of skiing in Les Trois Vallees as a fitting end to their negotiations online.

Participants in the 16-19 age group in British schools and colleges are sought to take part in other such computer aided simulations. For further information, please contact:

Liz Klobusicky-Mailander, [email protected], University of Munich, Germany

There is also a project description on the World Wide Web.

New Software Package: an Introduction to Scottish Literature

This course is a comprehensive study of Scottish Literature from the Middle Ages till the present day. Its exciting interactive nature allows students to check their own understanding, prompts them to consider other issues and enables them to measure their progress. It is divided into three historical periods: Medieval and Renaissance Literature 1375-1625; Poetry and Fiction 1750-1900 and Poetry, Fiction and Drama since 1920. The material covers the great representative works of Scottish literature in more depth than is available in other histories, and also introduces readers to works which have been neglected but are now being rehabilitated by modern critical effort. The course provides width and depth of study and has a fresh, vibrant approach.

The course is based on learning materials written for the degree of Distance-Taught Master of Philosophy which the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow has been offering since 1989. This is now well established both academically and pedagogically and the material represents the largest coherent body of Scottish literary and language criticism in existence.

The material described above is to be made available on disc and CD. Please contact:

Jean Anderson, Project Manager
STELLA (Software for Teaching English Language &
Literature)
University of Glasgow
6 University Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8QH
Tel: 0141 330 4980
[email protected]

CALICO 95

Middlebury College, Vermont, USA

19-23 June 1995

As the theme of this year’s CALICO conference was Collaboration, it was appropriate that a sizeable European contingent travelled to Vermont. This included a group from the EUROCALL Executive Committee who were invited to a lunchtime meeting with the CALICO Board to discuss a number of items of mutual interest.

The conference itself was excellently organised by the CALICO team and the local organisers at Middlebury College. They even managed to arrange perfect weather, so that walking around the campus, and commuting from our accommodation at the Middlebury Inn via Frog Hollow, was a positive delight. The arrangements offered ample opportunity for delegates to see the wide range of software being demonstrated, without missing out on the paper sessions. However, inevitably, one only manages to attend a proportion of these. A memorable experience for me was watching a speech recognition system being ‘taught’ to recognise Chinese, but insisting on responding in Spanish! Unfortunately, space does not allow for publication of details of the presentations, but details of how to obtain the Proceedings appear later in this newsletter.

June Thompson, University of Hull, UK

CALL and the Learning Environment

University of Exeter, UK

10-12 September 1995

The annual Exeter CALL conference this year attracted around 70 participants with the United States being particularly well represented.

There was a high rate of participation, with almost 50 papers being presented at two parallel sessions and after-dinner presentations. Perhaps this indicates that the conference achieved the highly sought-after status of good software, namely 'interactivity'! The drawback of the parallel sessions was that any participant missed half of the proceedings. Also, the time available for each paper was 30 minutes, testing the presenters' ability to cover what they wanted to say and limiting the possibilities for questions at the end. Nevertheless, it is indicative of the range and diversity of work which is being currently undertaken on CALL.

The keynote of the conference - the integration of CALL into the learning environment - and the numerous examples given are indicative of the coming of age of computer-based language learning technologies. Technical constraints of CALL implementation have been eclipsed by the pedagogical problems. There were numerous practical demonstrations of packages and programs as well as illustrations of CALL integration through case studies, examples of effective implementation of multimedia, and papers on telematics, examining remote resources and the implications surrounding their use.

William Haworth, Liverpool John Moores University, UK

EUROCALL 95

Universidad Polit�cnica de Valencia, Spain

7-9 September 1995

The EUROCALL 95 conference held this year in Valencia took place in the best of climates. Good weather, interesting software demonstrations and papers, not to mention a social programme with a distinctly Spanish flavour, resulted in a very stimulating EUROCALL event. As at past conferences, delegates from many European countries and from further afield (Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico and the USA were all well-represented) gave their views on the new advances and application of technology to the teaching of foreign languages.

The theme of this year’s EUROCALL was ‘integration’, which was mainly addressed from the point of view of integration of CALL and telematics into the curriculum. Indeed, one of the most novel areas of CALL dealt with at EUROCALL 95 was the development and demonstration of different projects on the use of email and the world wide web: where to get information, what to do with it, how to pair your students for ‘tandem’ learning, and what strategies to give them to guide them through conferencing systems.

Willard McCarty from the University of Toronto, Canada, opened the conference on a philosophical note. His talk emphasised the failure of computer modelling to emulate human communication and how we can take this as a challenge to investigate further. This challenge and eagerness to overcome difficulties was certainly shown in the three following days in which many multimedia applications were presented. They showed a great improvement on earlier attempts at integrating the different language skills in a multimedia computer environment. An exhaustive description of the setting up of self-access language centres in Mexico by the British Council was the topic of the next key-note speaker, Patricia Grounds. The emphasis was on the need to adapt the different centres to the population characteristics and contexts. The question of whether self-access was a ‘means’ or an ‘end’ was left for the audience to decide. The conference ended with an excellent talk by Charles Jennings, Director of CECOMM at Southampton Institute, UK, who explored the potential of telematics for real ‘face-to-face’ communication, establishing interactive learning environments to create a 'global classroom'.

Cristina Ros i Sole, University of Hull, UK.

A full version of this report will appear in ReCALL Vol. 7, number 2, November 1995.

CATH 95: Computers and Teaching in the Humanities

Computers and the Changing Curriculum

Royal Holloway & Bedford New College, London, UK

5-7 September 1995

There were over seventy delegates at this year's CATH 95. Susan Hockey, Director of the Centre for Electronic Texts in the Humanities at Princeton University, USA, gave a thought provoking keynote speech stressing that although initially one might welcome the free availability of hundreds if not thousands of texts via the Internet it is vital that their provenance and completeness can, in someway, be assured.

There followed a well attended parallel session on textual analysis in literary and linguistic studies. Glyn Holmes from the University of Western Ontario gave an informative discourse on the merits of textual analysis, followed by a team from the University of Luton, whose course, involving textual analysis and "The Heart of Darkness", had a surprising effect on a previous non-achiever. The student in question produced an excellent piece of thoughtful work - the only such piece in his university career.

The final session of the day included a talk by Mark Diller from the University of Chicago, who described a distance-learning project using America Online. The initial results of his survey suggested that the widespread idea that disabled or disadvantaged students would be empowered by this form of learning was to some extent mistaken. Robert Wasserman of Fordham University, New York then delivered an inspiring lecture on "fighting the wonderful". He contended that it is time to "normalize" the use of technology in the humanities rather than to dwell on the extraordinary.

The Long Distance Group Writing Project workshop involved joining a course in electronic journalism and mass communications delivered by Monash University in Australia. We explored the virtual university that over 3,500 students had access to: not only for distance education and open learning modules but for electronic assignment submission, email, conferencing, library services and internet access. It is envisaged that the use of the specially designed NetFace software will be extended to cover more of the 16,000 students currently enrolled on distance courses with Monash.

The afternoon session continued with Erica McAteer of the TILT TLTP project from Glasgow University describing the implementation and evaluation of CAL courses in Hispanic Studies and Modern History. A team from Coventry University then gave an interactive account of their Computer Assisted Language Learning project. In order to try and interest and motivate the students to learn grammar the students developed a CALL package which would explain one particular aspect of foreign language grammar to other learners. So far the team were very encouraged by the increase in student motivation in learning foreign language grammar. The software fair enabled the delegates to catch up on the latest developments of allied TLTP projects as well as impressive displays from Chadwyck-Healey and Attica CD-ROMs. The final paper was an interesting description by Joanne Lomax of her pioneering MA thesis which involved the authoring of a multimedia document based around the medieval York Play of Domesday and the problems encountered during the external assessment. In all, the conference was wide ranging and stimulating.

Kathy Beedham, University of Hull, UK

Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) in the teaching of Chinese and Japanese in higher education in the UK

Pavia, Italy

September 1995

September 1995 saw the first international conference held on CALL specifically for Japanese: CASTEL/J, in Pavia Italy. New software packages for Chinese and Japanese (word processing, CD-ROMS and dedicated language teaching/testing packages etc.) are appearing with increasing frequency, especially in America. As more students go into higher education in the UK to study these languages, more interest in such CALL packages is being shown by teachers and students alike.

Having gained a first degree in Chinese (1988) and also having lived in Japan for two years (from 1990-1992), the author took the opportunity to gather information on this subject for a recent MSc dissertation, the most relevant chapter of which is summarised below.

Chapter 3 of the disssertation collates and analyses the results of a questionnaire sent to all East Asian Studies departments in higher education institutions in the UK. The aims of the survey were to quantify the number of departments currently using any form of CALL in teaching Japanese or Chinese, to determine general attitudes towards IT in the field of East Asian Studies and to establish what support and advice networks are already in use.

Findings indicate that although Chinese and Japanese word processing is used in all departments, few dedicated CALL packages are used or provided for students. There is no standard for integration of CALL into East Asian Studies language courses and no evaluation is being carried out in those institutions which responded. Although some individual software development is occurring, most packages are developed abroad, notably in America and Australia.

The final chapter of the dissertation includes various sources of information on CALL for East Asian Studies language courses.

Susan Jephcott, University of Sheffield

Please contact Jenny Parsons at CTI Modern Languages if you would like further details of the full dissertation.

CALICO 1996: "Distance Learning"

The 13th annual symposium of the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium

May 27-June 1, 1996. Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

Hosted by the University of New Mexico, located at the Sheraton Old Town Albuquerque and the University of New Mexico.

• May 27-28: preconference workshops
• May 29-31: regular sessions
• June 1: courseware fair

For more information contact:

CALICO
Duke University
014 Language Center, Box 90267
Durham, NC 27708-0267, USA
Phone: (919)660-3180; fax: (919)660-3183
[email protected]

On-line registration will become available at http://www.agoralang.com:2410/ncalico.html.

CILT is carrying out the fourth

Survey of Current Research in Language Teaching and Learning

This will cover the period August 1993 - July 1995. If you are involved in a research project linked to the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages and have not yet received a questionnaire, please contact Philippa Wright at the address below.

CILT’s aim is to disseminate information on research being carried out in the UK as widely as possible. The results of the survey will be made available as follows:

• in print as Current research in language teaching and learning 1993-1995, which will be available from CILT from mid 1996;
• on-line via CILT pages on the Internet;
• to NFER (National Foundation for Educational Research) for inclusion in their Register of Educational Research in the UK;
• to EUDISED (EUropean Documentation and Information System for EDucation) for inclusion in their database and in the European Education Research Yearbook.

Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research
20 Bedfordbury, London WC2N 4LB
Telephone: 0171 379 5110
Fax: 0171 379 5082
[email protected]

World Language Pages

URL: http://www.livjm.ac.uk/language/welcome.html

These new Web pages have been put together by William Haworth at Liverpool John Moores University to provide a resource for language learners and teachers. Comments from users - both teachers and learners - are welcome, and a feedback form is incorporated in the pages.The four areas covered in the pages are:

1. Pointers to resources for a specific language. The selection criterion is relevance for language learning.
2. Pedagogical considerations. This option provides an appraisal of the relevance and usability of the various categories of resources, and some suggestions for their use.
3. Methodological considerations. This option provides information on how to access and participate in discussion lists, Usenet newsgroups, IRC chat sessions, etc.
4. Technical considerations. This option provides data on factors affecting Net performance.

Macros for Word 6

A suite of macros to produce language exercises is available free from the School of Modern Languages at Liverpool John Moores University. The user may produce downloadable exercises and worksheets with ease from existing text files in Latin characters sets. The macro will remove some element or modify the structure of the source text i.e. accents, puctuation, text scrambling, gap-filling; this is presented to the student who must re-construct the original.

The macros are fully integrated into Word 6, and are ready to run from a Toolbar as icons. They may be customised like any Word macro to run from a menu or the keyboard and more than one may be run on the same text. Contact:

William Haworth
School of Modern Languages
Liverpool John Moores University
98 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UZ

Please send a 3.5" disc and SAE.

EUROCALL 94

Technology Enhanced Language Learning in Theory and Practice

From the vast number of contributions to EUROCALL 94 at Karlsruhe the editorial board has selected 29 papers to be included in the conference proceedings. These papers give an overview of the various aspects of computer-assisted and technology-enhanced language learning presented and discussed at Karlsruhe, offering innovative ideas and provocative thought on a wide range of relevant issues. The Proceedings will be available at the end of 1995, price �15.00 including postage and packing (�13.00 to EUROCALL members). Cheques, payable to EUROCALL, may be sent to the CTI Modern Languages at the address on page 1. If you wish to place an order for payment via invoice or credit card, please contact Kylie Baxter for an order form.

EUROCALL 96: First Announcement and Call for Papers

EUROCALL 96 will take place at the D�niel Berzsenyi College, Szombathely, Hungary. The local organiser is Prof Dr J�nos Kohn, Director of the EECALL Centre, which is based at the College. The theme of the conference will be ‘New Horizons in CALL’:

In the light of the expanding European Community, and the current capabilities of computer-based technologies, satellite TV, communications networks etc, what does the future hold for language learners and teachers? Will computer assisted/technology enhanced language learning become a major element of most learners’ timetables? Or will it remain a peripheral activity, the domain of a few dedicated enthusiasts, viewed with suspicion by many teachers and beyond the scope of most institutions?

Proposals are invited for papers on relevant topics, placed in the context of the general questions outlined above. Abstracts should be submitted by 28 February 1996, to the EUROCALL office.

Submission of Abstracts

Please arrange your text as folllows:

Title (not capital letters)
Abstract (maximum 300 words)
Name, Institution, Address (including telephone and facsimile numbers, and
email address)

Abstracts should be submitted in hard copy and on disk in both word processed format (Microsoft Word preferred) and ASCII by 28 February 1996. Presenters will be informed by 30 April 1996 whether their papers have been accepted. At that stage, full information will be given regarding the precise time allocation and equipment available for presentation.

Accommodation and Catering

There will be a choice of single or double study-bedrooms in College hostels (with shared bathroom and toilet facilities in corridors) or accommodation in local hotels. Both types of accommodation are within walking distance of the College.

Travel

The most convenient airport for Szombathely is Budapest. There is a regular InterCity rail connection from Budapest Keleti Station direct to Szombathely, the journey taking approximately three hours. Vienna Airport is about two hours’ drive from Szombathely but there is no direct rail or bus connection. Depending on demand, it may be possible for the College to provide a limited pick-up service from and to Vienna Airport, subject to a small additional charge.

Details of the cost and registration forms will be available in due course.

Second part of this newsletter

[ Home ] [ About ] [ Events ] [ Publications ] [ Resources ] [ Services ]

C&IT Centre, Language Institute, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull  HU6 7RX, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1482 465872, Fax: +44 (0)1482 473816, Email: [email protected]

Site maintained by Fred Riley, [email protected]
Last updated 15 December 1998