Projects funded by the  Ohio Five Foreign Language Technology Grant Faculty Small Grants program

• Kalimat

This Arabic ViewPoints project is composed of 11 interviews on different topics, such as sports, travel, favorite personalities, geographical description of various Arabic countries.   They are also supplemented by various exercises, that test students' comprehension of the text, multiple choices, fill in the blanks, and writing a composition.  Each
interview has a section on new vocabulary (classical and colloquial) and hidden answer keys.

Faculty participant:  Nevine Demian (Denison)
Date Awarded: Fall 2001
How to access:

• Clips in OhioLINK Foreign Language Videos Database

 

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CHINESE

• Real People on Real Topics

The purpose of the project is to create a set of multimedia materials, web-enabled video exercises for advanced students of Chinese.  Our objective is to create exercises that are interactive, self-paced, culturally authentic, and integrative with the Chinese language curriculum of advanced Chinese.  It consists of 10 lessons of interviews of Chinese people of different age and gender, on social and cultural issues.  The questions for the interviews are from the chapters of the textbook Beyond the Basics.

Faculty Participants: Jianhua Bai, Wei Guo (Kenyon)
Date Awarded: Fall 2001
How to access:

• http://www2.kenyon.edu/depts/mll/Chinese/bbvideo/bbvideo.htm
• CD-ROM
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• ViewPoints Interviews

Over the past few years Oberlin faculty have incorporated both their own and other video-based instructional materials into their language classes.  These materials have proved attractive to many students, so much so that some have asked about the possibility of creating video projects of their own.  We believe that incorporating students into the Viewpoints  project could provide fresh perspectives and yield new responses.  To this end, and in an effort to further student-faculty collaboration, we propose to offer a three-week course during January 2002 in which interested students and faculty could produce small Viewpoints projects, using international students and faculty in Oberlin or elsewhere in Lorain County.

Faculty Participants: Arlene Forman, Quisha Ma (Oberlin)
Student author of project: Cindy Lee
Date Awarded: Fall 2001
How to access:  OhioLINK Foreign Language Videos Database ----------------------------

• Chinese Learning Tools

This project is a multimedia Chinese learning program for second-year Chinese students.  The format will center around real-life interactive scanarios shot from prepared scripts in China.  Students must choose a response to questions or comments.  The format will expose students to the language used in authentic situations.  Our program will integrate video, audio, exericses, authentic reading materials from the web.

Faculty Participants: Liu Fang, Li Kai, Quisha Ma (Oberlin)
Date Awarded: Fall 2001
How to access: http://www.oberlin.edu/~eas/chinesetools

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•  A Multimedia Tutor for Jia

This project is designed to create multimedia tutorial materials for the Chinese novel, "Jia" among the most well-known works of 20th century Chinese literature. For each unit we will design a set of tutorial materials that include a glossary of difficult words with sound, English explanation and pictures, explanation and illustrative sentences for the difficult grammatical structures and discourse devices, comprehension questions and interactive feedback, and questions for discussion on different literary aspects of the novel. We foresee a system by which questions will refer to specific sections of the novel and thereby always anchoring answers to specific textual references.

 Awarded: May 1997
Project Director: Jianhua Bai (Kenyon)
Faculty Participant: Xinda Lian (Denison)
How to access: CD-ROM

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• Beginning Chinese on Web CD

The purpose of this project is to develop multimedia language materials for the elementary level Chinese students. Since the traditional print form of materials have severe limitations in the teaching of Chinese, a more multi-media format (hypertext, video, voice reading, music, graphics, interactive activities, Web connectivity and on-line instruction) allows for a more student-centered learning experience and more effective exposure to the difficulties of learning a non-Western language.

Awarded: May 1997
Faculty Participants: Xinda Lian (Denison), Jianhua Bai (Kenyon), Rujie Wang (College of Wooster)
How to access: CD-ROM

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• Listen to Me Speaking Chinese

A Chinese ViewPoints project.  Chinese Multimedia Listening-Comprehension Study Aid.  This will be a multi-media Chinese listening study aid for the beginning level students.  Using the student aid, students will watch and listen to short live interviews/conversations by native speakers and do different kinds of exercises.

Awarded: 1998-1999
Project Director: Xinda Lian (Denison)
Faculty Participant: Rujie Wang (Wooster), Xiaoqu Wu (Kenyon)
How to access:  CD-ROM

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• Chinese in China

This project will be an integrated learning program which will include the following:
--Videotaped episodes from Chinese daily life
--Language scripts that go along with the videoclips
--An online dictionary and cultural notes explaining each episode
--On-line exercises and composition practice with Chinese word-processing

Awarded: December 1998
Project Director: Xiaoqi Wu (Kenyon)
How to access: CD-ROM

 

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GERMAN
• Blickpunkte

A German ViewPoints project. This project involves interviews with native speakers of German, for the intermediate German sequence.  Each unit will be comprised of general comprehension questions and, for some of the interviews, cloze listening exercises.  Students will be able to listen to native speakers as often as needed.  We believe that such a listening tool will greately enhance our student's comprehension skills.  We will develop vocabulary lists to accompany the video clips.

Awarded: 1998-1999
Faculty Participants: Lisabeth Hock, Richard Figge (Wooster)
How to access:

• CD-ROM
• http://www.denison.edu/modlangs/german/blickpunkte/welcome.html
• Clips in OhioLINK Foreign Language Videos Database


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• Images and Text: Interactive Video, Slides and Other Images for the Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Level German Class.

This project grew out of work created at Denison University with Quicktime movies in conjunction with the Herren template QDictation. The project group would like to develop this type of exercise to make a wide variety of digitized video clips for use in the beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. Going beyond the more direct reiteration of text, we want to add an extensive series of exercises adjusted for various proficiency levels. It is our desire to be able to recast a single video clip at the three levels based on the ACTFL proficiency guidelines. We will also be digitizing single images as a basis for writing exercises.

 Awarded: December 1997
Project Director: Gary Baker (Denison University)
Faculty Participants: Jutta Schmiers (Oberlin College), Kristina von Held (College of Wooster), Antje Harnisch (College of Wooster)
How to access:  CD-ROM
 

• Points de vue

A French ViewPoints project. An interactive listening comprehension project for intermediate students of French.  This project, based on interviews with seven native French speakers, includes pre-listening activites, comprehension activities, and post-listening activities.  Some videos and exercises may be suitable for beginning students as well.  Topics are: family history, the past, youth, the family, leisure activities, clothing, cuisine, television and cinema, vacation, traditions, and the future.

Participants: Susan C. Binkley (Ohio Five), Christine Latrouitte Armstrong (Denison)
How to access:

• CD-ROM
• Some clips in OhioLINK Foreign Language Videos Database


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•  Medieval Women Writers

This project focuses on Medieval Women who wrote in Latin and French. The purpose of the project is to incorporate texts by Medieval women writers into elementary through intermediate Latin or French classes. Since most Latin and French textbooks do not include works by Medieval women or materials related to the Middle Ages, developing primary texts for this particular student audience is innovative. This project will include as much as possible relevant links to various sites, images, audio recordings of music and readings. There will also be study questions and exercises.

Awarded: December 1997
Project Director: Laurie Churchill (Ohio Wesleyan University)
Faculty Participants: Donald Lateiner (Ohio Wesleyan University), Clifford Weber (Kenyon College), Kaaren Courtney (Ohio Wesleyan University), Marie-Madeleine Stey (Denison University), Janice C. Zinser (Oberlin College)
How to access:  http://www.owu.edu/~o5medww

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JAPANESE
• Web-based Japanese Drills

These drills will include four categories: vocabulary, grammar, reading and listening comprehension.  The program will monitor the learner's learning process in detail for assessment. Such process information will include time spent for a particular question, numerical scores that indicate the learner's mastery level, and the number of attempts that have been made before reaching a certain mastery level.  It is targeted for the intermediate Japanese learner.

Faculty Participants: Hideo Tomita (Kenyon)
Date Awarded: Fall 2001
How to access: http://mll.kenyon.edu/~webdrill/  (See Hideo Tomita tomita@kenyon.edu for login information)

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• ViewPoints for Japanese Learners

This project will allow us to produce video clips for Japanese students.  The Japanese videos will constitute part of the ViewPoints project.  These authentic video clips can serve for language learners at various language levels.  Given video clips discussing a contemporary topic, for instance, advance students can learn how the native speakers carry the discussion in the target language.  Intermediate students can possibly self-sstudy for listening comprehension.  Beginning students might find the clip useful to practice the vocabulary and expressions.

Awarded: 1998-1999
Project Director: Hideo Tomita (Kenyon)
Faculty Participant: Hiromi Kikuchi (OWU)
How to access:  CD-ROM
 

• ViewPoints of Russian Emigrés

This project was developed for the students of Russian as a second language who have completed the introductory intensive course and are familiar with the basics of the Russian grammar and vocabulary.  The project consists of seven chapters organized by topics:  Every day, My favorite dish, Russia and its people, America and Americans, An ideal Family, Medicine, Holidays.  Each topic has four units, the first is the easiest and the three following are more complicated. Unit 4 has two clips, which make it possible to compare the information shared by the interviewees.

Faculty Participants: Arlene Forman (Oberlin), Natalia Olshanskaya, Lyudmila Portnova (Kenyon)
Date Awarded: Fall 2001
How to access:

• CD-ROM
• http://www.denison.edu/modlangs/russian
• Clips in OhioLINK Foreign Language Videos Database


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• Russian Points of View
  Russian faculty will develop a Web-based video project suitable for beginning and intermediate students of Russian. As is often the case with the so-called "less-commonly taught" languages, such multi-media materials are not readily available, video resources available through commercial sources are truly meager, in addition they are scripted and thus removed from actual speech. In and of itself, the need for more authentic video materials for elementary and intermediate students of Russian is considerable. Finally, integration of an interactive computer component (glossary, transcripts, and exercises) should be of inestimable value to both faculty and students of the Ohio Five.

Awarded: December 1998; revisions Fall 2001
Project Director: Arlene Forman (Oberlin).
Faculty Participants: James Morgan (Oberlin), Natasha Olshanskaya (Kenyon), Kristin Peterson (OWU), Adonica Sendelbach (Wooster), Elena Sokol (Wooster)
How to access:

• CD-ROM
• Clips in OhioLINK Foreign Language Videos Database

• Video Poemas

Last fall, in the Survey of Latin American Literature, my students created a series of video-poems they accompanied with texts of the poets (biography, social context, and analysis of the poems.  We put all these materials in a CD-ROM we called "Video Poemas: La vaguardia latinoamericana" ("Video-poems, the Latin American Avant-Garde").  The pedagogical assumptions were the following: (a) students learn by doing; (b)students create their own connections among the poet's biography, her work, and a specific poem; (c) a poem acquires a new meaning when it is not only read but also performed.

Faculty Participants: Eduardo Jaramillo (Denison)
Date Awarded: Spring 2001
How to access: CD-ROM

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• Picaresque Narratives

The purpose of this project is to create electronic-based materials for the course SPAN-450 about Picaresque Narratives. This course will be taught in semester II, 2001-02 at Oberlin College. In this course I will elaborate 12 power point presentations about 12 different picaresque narratives as follows:  La Celestina I, La Celestina II, Lozana Andaluza I, Lozana Andaluza II, Lazarillo de Tormes, Guzmán de Alfarache (I), Guzmán de Alfarache (II), Rinconete y Cortadillo, El casamiento engañoso, El coloquio de los perros, Pícara Justina, El Buscón, Ingeniosa Elena, Marcos de Obregón, Periquillo Sarniento

Faculty Participants: Vicente Perez de Leon
Date Awarded: Spring 2002
How to access: CD-ROM

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• Desconciertos de la concertatión

Desconciertos de la concertatión includes interviews with Chilean authors and activists about marginal sexuality and politics, scenes from a transvestite show, scenes from videos by Gloria Camiruaga, and the streets of Santiago.  There are also interactive exercises for practicing analysis of literary texts and other cultural expressions; photographs, unpublished texts, glossaries for interviews, and bio-bibliographic notes.

Faculty Participants: Hector Dominguez (Denison)
Date Awarded: Fall 2001
How to access: CD-ROM

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• Spanish ViewPoints Interviews

I have collected video footage of native Spanish speakers answering questions and discussing topics pertinent to beginning and intermediate level Spanish language classes. These clips will be a contribution to the OhioLINK Foreign Language Videos database and will be available to other language teachers for listening comprehension exercises.

Faculty Participants: Kim Faber (Oberlin)
Date Awarded: Fall 2001
How to access: OhioLINK Foreign Language Videos Database

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• Cervantes' Don Quijote

This project represents the first step of a comprehensive program to elucidate the text of Don Quijote through a web-site for undergraduate students.  In this project, I intend to create web-based courseware and other ancillary material for the study of the work and to recreate the historical, intellectual and artistic context in which it was written.  In addition, this course design will also include a component on information literacy and different research and critical approaches to the work. The language level aims at the 300 and 400 level students who major in Spanish.

Faculty Participants: Julian Arribas (OWU)
Date Awarded: Spring 2001
How to access: http://www.owu.edu/~jjarriba

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• Contextos

"Contextos: Introducción a la cultura hispánica" is a digital collection of textual, audio, and visual meterials accompanied with interactive exercises.  Both the textual and the audiovisual materials are organized in contextual units. Each contextual unit may take one week of material to be covered.   The compondents of a contextual unit are as follows:
• activities
• a gallery of images
• ViewPoints video clips
• a text for students to read


Faculty Participants: Eduardo Jaramillo (Denison)
Date Awarded: Spring 2001
How to access: http://www.denison.edu/~jaramillo (requires password; see Eduardo jaramillo@denison.edu for login information)

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• Web-based Spanish Courses

This project plans to give the courses Spanish Expository Writing (Spanish 305) and Advanced Grammar (Spanish 304) a more technologically oriented approach to the benefit of both the students and the teacher by using CourseInfo for the discussion board, course documents, course information, external links, and assignments.

Faculty Participants: Alicia Martinez Marco (Oberlin)
Date Awarded: Spring 2001


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• Spanish Song Lyric Database

The project will target first year language instruction but will also have immediate application for second and third year classes.  They lyrics to Spanish-language music will be catalogues according to grammar topic, level of difficulty, music style and country of origin.  They will be available in both full-version and "fill in the blank" format.  A web site with related Internet links will provide additional information on the artists, styles, and cultural context.  The web site will also include specific suggestions for instructors on how to make effecitve use of this resource.

Faculty Participants: Kim Faber (Oberlin)
Date Awarded: Spring 2000
How to access: http://www.oberlin.edu/~kfaber

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• The Latinization of the USA

We plan to digitize video clips and put them on the Web with Hot Potatoes exercises.  This project is designed for three levels: third semester in the beginning level, Conversation skills, and Hispanic Cultures.

Awarded: Feb. 2000
Faculty Participants :  Bernardita Llanos, Hector Dominguez and Janet Nunez (Denison)
How to access:
• http://www.denison.edu/modlangs/latinization
• Some clips in OhioLINK Foreign Language Videos Database


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• Assessment of Multimedia-Based Methods for Language Learning

Language educators believe that multimedia-based approaches offer significant advantages over traditional teaching methods by accelerating and sustaining the process of language acquisition. Our success in procuring long-term support that will nurture new advances in the field depends on the extent to which we can articulate in quantitative and objective terms the pedagogical benefits offered by these new technologies. This project will provide a case study to illustrate the methods of assessment used to evaluate a Spanish multimedia program developed by Kenyon College Spanish Faculty. It will consist of demonstrations of the program at the other colleges involved in the Ohio5 Language Technology Project, and a description of the experimental design used for the assessment of such a program, including numerical and graphical summaries, a statistical analysis and anecdotal evidence. For extra info visit: http://www.ohio5.org/assess.htm

Awarded: December 1998
Faculty Participants: Clara Román-Odio and Bradley Hartlaub (Kenyon College)
How to access:  Research paper, http://www.ohio5.org/assess.htm -----------------------

• José Asunción Silva: Thread of an Image

This project develops a hypermedia reading of Silva's most famous poem, "Nocturno III." The goal of this project is to put significant information in the hands of the students so that they can perform a close textual reading of this poem by one of the most important poets in Colombia's literature, and to broaden the meaning of the poem within a non-linear format for student access at different levels and for promoting a different conceptualization of literary history. The materials with which I plan to enrich the meaning of the poem both in terms of the context in which it was written and in terms of the importance it gained throughout the years include more than a hundred slides two video documentaries on Silva's life, a professional recitation of the poem, various realia, and Silva's poems in Spanish, English and French. This project is aimed at students in a (anti-) survey course taught in English and subsequently in Spanish.

Awarded: May 1997
Faculty Participants: J. Eduardo Jaramillo Zuluaga (Denison)
How to access:  CD-ROM

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• Ingenio, Romance y Protesta en la Música Popular Hispana

The impetus for this collaborative effort arises from our belief that music constitutes an ideal vehicle to introduce students to key cultural values from the Hispanic world embedded in linguistic and extra-linguistic codes. Consistent with this perspective, Ingenio combines, music, video, images and text to develop viewing and listening skills, enhance vocabulary in context, test comprehension, and engage students in speaking and writing activities. Five musical genres (tango, bolero, Afro-Caribbean music, protest songs and poem-songs) provide a vehicle for the incorporation of a breadth of cultural information that includes: historical background of political revolutions/coups d'etat in Latin America; social class struggles that brought about these musical genres; attitudes towards love and sexual roles; and literary appropiations of musical culture.
 
Awarded: May 1997 (revised for the Web, July 2002)
Project Director: Clara Román-Odio (Kenyon)
Faculty participants: Linda Metzler, Carlos Piano, Janet Nuñez
How to access: http://www.denison.edu/modlangs/musica/ -----------------------
 
• Tools for Introductory, Intermediate, and Advanced Oral Expression and Comprehension: A Collaborative Project with French and Spanish Assistants (by Globalink)

This project integrates interactive exercises (Web and/or Authorware) with the use of Spanish and French Assistants by Globalink targeting reinforcement of aural comprehension and oral expression at the introductory, intermediate and advanced levels of French and Spanish. The goal is to exploit the speech generating device (the VOICE) and grammar/language references of the Assistants, in conjunction with publisher's materials, Authorware activities and/or web based activities. These enhancements to Assistants expand and vary the application of these tools to fit the materials of any course.

Awarded: December 1997
Faculty Participants: José Ballón (Ohio Wesleyan University), Margaret Fete (Ohio Wesleyan University), Mortimer Guiney (Kenyon College)
How to access:  CD-ROM

• Swahili  ViewPoints

A second Swahili ViewPoints project.  This project intends to enrich Swahili language classroom atmosphere by bringing to life aspects of the cultural diversity of Swahili people who live on the coast of Kenya.

Awarded: Feb. 2000
Faculty Participant :  Ali Skandor, OWU
How to access:

• CD-ROM
• Some clips in OhioLINK Foreign Language Videos Database


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• Swahili Poetry

This project will involve video taping Swahili poets who continue a long tradition of teacher/poets.The project intends to provide American students of the Swahili language with authentic material highlighting a long-standing cultural practice using poetry. These materials will include the video of the poets themselves and the places about which they are reciting.  The documentary to be produced will allow students to practice their listening comprehension at the higher levels, and will give all students exposure to traditional Swahili culture.

Awarded: Fall 2001
Faculty Participant: Ali Skandor, OWU
How to access: VHS tape

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• ViewPoints for Introductory and Itermediate Swahili

For this project, the main goal is to provide students with video interviews on CD and to post online materials to support the aural comprehension and writing compondents of introductory and intermediate Swahili.  Swahili is sppoken by virtually millions of inhabitants of the East AFrican nations and has the advantage of offering communictive flexibility to students of language.

Awarded: 1998-1999
Faculty Participants: Ali Skandor, Margaret Fete (OWU)
How to access:  CD-ROM

 

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© 2002 Five Colleges of Ohio Foreign Language Technology Project
Last revision: 05/15/03