Group items tagged

"Language Acquisition and Technology is a course that surveys technologies currently in use in language instruction, and will be delivered using an important subset of those technologies under student management. The course consists primarily of four components: 1) creating digital media and integrating it into instruction; 2) creating and deploying learning objects based on principles derived from instructional design and second language acquisition; 3) managing technology in an instructional environment; 4) evaluating existing technology-based learning objects and applications. Primary outcomes will be based in each of these four categories and include produced media, language courseware, technology training experience and a publishable review. "

The Autonomous Language Learning (ALL) project, funded by the European Union, is building Blended Learning language courses in four European languages (Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian. These courses are designed for students who have had an initial introduction in one of the languages and who wish to progress from a basic survival level to a higher competency (A2 of the Common European Framework) The project results are for Language schools and Colleges. The partners in this project are experts in language education and technology in education, from across Europe. You can get involved and contribute to this project in a number of ways.

The Language Acquisition Resource Center, LARC, is a national Language Resource Center located on the San Diego State University campus. It is one of fifteen Department of Education Title VI funded Language Resource Centers (LRCs). Our mission is to develop and support the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the United States through research, technology, and publications. Particular attention is paid to less commonly taught languages, cross-cultural issues, language skills assessment, and teacher training.

linguos.com is a window to the non-English web. Users with can search the non-English web with just an English QWERTY keyboard. This is NOT a translation service, but a transliteration and transcription based search engine. In most languages, enter your queries as they would sound in your target language. linguos.com is powered by Linguaseek Language Technologies. linguaseek.com is a portal and a platform that enables multi-lingual search, communication and content generation. A single interface allows transliteration to over 120 languages (virtually all digitally available languages.) Global portals and services can benefit from the service by integrating with or licensing linguaseek.com webservices, allowing users to search for multi-lingual content, communicate (IM/email/etc) and generate content (blogs, comments, web pages, etc), all without requiring custom keyboards, software or transliteration schemes. linguaseek's transliteration is based on ISO standards where available and optimized for user input. Users familiar with English and a second (or more) language(s) will benefit the most from this service.

Welcome to the Language Technology Boot Camp Site. The first Boot Camp was initiated because the language residents at the Oldenborg Center at Pomona College did not receive any training in the use of technology in foreign language learning and teaching. Many had never encountered the possibilities that a private liberal arts college offers and most had not been familiar with the teaching and learning styles and philosophy prevalent at our institution. Therefore the first Boot Camp was conducted at Pomona College in August 2006. After talks with colleagues at other colleges I found that this was a novelty, as usually only faculty get trained in these matters and that language residents or assistants usually fall through the cracks. But especially these teacher/students are the ones with a lot of enthusiasm, current cultural knowledge, native-speaker abilities, and a more open and relaxed relationship with new technologies and possibilities. As I was planning the 2007 Boot Camp, which underwent several changes, the idea was born that all this work and preparation should be shared, and also that if others contributed to this Boot Camp, the program would be better than if only I prepared everything.

The Online Language Environments (OLE) Board is a web based threaded discussion instructional tool that utilizes voice, video and text to replicate the functions of a language lab. OLE is used for, but not restricted to, oral practice, listening comprehension, speaking practice and reading and writing practice. The OLE Board can be used to supplement instruction in face-to-face classes as homework assignments, and can be used in entirely distance classes. CERCLL support provides assistance to improve the technological capabilities and establish the pedagogical strategies of the OLE Board, which has been successfully piloted in French, Arabic, various Indigenous languages and ESL. Specific deliverables for the OLE Board project include templates and pedagogical strategies with examples for Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese; online and print user and instructor documentation; lesson plans and use case scenarios; usability studies for further desired improvement; piloting of multi-institutional usage. We also provide for the protocols necessary to integrate the OLE Board for use with course management systems. The OLE Board is being developed as an open-source product that will be available to the wider language instruction community.

"WeSpeke (www.wespeke.com) is a free, unique and innovative language website and cultural exchange for teachers and students. WeSpeke is designed as a free-time resource to help improve the efficiency of foreign language acquisition and practice amongst language learners and focuses on supporting the language education curriculum across the conversation continuum including; Messaging (asynchronous communications) Chat (synchronous and asynchronous communications) Audio (real time conversations) Video + Audio (full peer-to-peer language immersion and cultural exchange)"

LLU was started in 2005 as a place for people interested in language learning and technology to come together and discuss, ponder, or complain about teaching and learning languages in the 21st century… On any given K-16 campus there may be one (and just one) person who supports the teaching and learning of languages. While our fellow language faculty know and appreciate and respect our work, quite often our colleagues throughout the rest of the campus have absolutely no idea what we do, or how we do it. As a result, we often labor alone at our schools, and yet we crave the ability to connect with others who are in similar jobs, facing similar concerns.

Comet is the name of a set of templates that language teachers can use to create multimedia instructional materials in nearly any language. Developed by the Center for Language Study at Yale University, the Comet templates simplify the authoring of online materials by allowing instructors to focus more on pedagogical intent and foreign language content than on technical details of design and implementation. (The name COMET is an acronym for COurse Materials and Exercise Templates.)

What does it do? Develops the four skills of language learning Can be used with any language Utilises existing resources; audio, text books, worksheets and graphics Enables live monitoring of an individual student or a group of students Provides private communication between the teacher and student or a group of students Motivates learners of every ability using familiar technology Easy Assessment - All student work is saved as mp3 files or web pages The addition of a headset with a microphone turns any pc network into a language lab How does it do it? Using two small software programmes, a student module and a teacher module, that will run on virtually any pc and network. Items containing text, graphics and audio recordings are viewed by students who can record themselves and can also enter text or make selections. The teacher can communicate to students individually, or by group, and can monitor progress live.

Evaluation of NLP and Speech Tools for Italian Following the success of Evalita 2007, we are pleased to announce Evalita 2009, the second evaluation campaign of Natural Language Processing tools for Italian, supported by the NLP working group of AI*IA. The general objective of Evalita is to promote the development of language and speech technologies for the Italian language, providing a shared framework where different systems and approaches can be evaluated in a consistent manner. This year in conjunction with AISV (the Italian Association of Speech Science), Evalita will also hold the first speech input technology evaluation for Italian.

TiP is one of European natural language research and software development leaders! With 18 years of expertise in language parsing, summarizing, disambiguation and machine translation TiP delivers linguistic components to the biggest names in the IT field. Our experts have qualifications in linguistics, statistics, terminology, knowledge discovery in documents as well as excellent technical skills related to multiplatform computing. A company wholly dedicated to natural language research and software development, TiP was established in 1991 in Katowice, Poland. In 1992, with COR™ and CorWin™ stand-alone spell checkers TiP became the leader in the computer linguistic technology in Poland. TiP's Polish proofing applications were recognized in 1993 as the Software of the Year by PC Kurier magazine and were awarded the Gold Medal at Softarg '92 Fair in Katowice.

The GLoCALL Conference aims to share knowledge, research and experience on how to use computer technology to make language learning more effective and pleasant; to explore how the technology can be adapted to better meet the local needs of students and teachers, while at the same time providing global perspectives on computer-assisted language learning (CALL); and to bring the technology within the reach of local teachers who wish to develop their professionalism in CALL. GLoCALL is jointly sponsored by APACALL and PacCALL.

Free Language Learning Software available in 70 languages

The Language Center's goal is to enhance second language instruction at the University of Minnesota. The Center provides audio, video and computer facilities and equipment, assists in the preparation of instructional materials and offers training and consultation to instructors with the application of new instructional technologies.

The dizzy speed of technological development has driven the educational market to pile up a huge number of software programs without any serious methodological concern and consideration of the application to a variety of learners. This paper reviews current software evaluation tools and their problems, followed by further specific discussion of issues related to language learning software programs. Based on the critique of dominant bottom-up approaches of current software evaluation, this paper tries to take a holistic methodological framework into serious consideration and to provide a tentative framework which addresses key areas in evaluating language learning software programs for educators and learners.

A refereed journal for second and foreign language educators. Fully online

TAGARELA is an intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) system designed to be fully integrated into the Portuguese Individualized Instruction Program at The Ohio State University. It can be viewed as an intelligent automatic workbook that provides students with opportunities to practice their reading, listening, and writing skills. Because it is a web-based system, it can be used anywhere there is a computer with internet access. TAGARELA uses state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology to analyze students' input, and detect spelling, morphological, syntactic and semantic errors. Its NLP components allow the system to handle activities that go beyond the usual multiple choice or fill-in-the-blanks used by regular CALL systems. Its exercise types are similar to the ones typically found in current workbooks, such as: * listening and reading comprehension * picture description * vocabulary practice * phrasing and re-writing TAGARELA has a student model that keeps track of each student's individual performance, and an instructor model that carries information about activity and error types. Together the student and instructor models allow the system to choose the best feedback strategy to use with each individual learner based on the level of the activity, type of task, characteristics of error, and learner profile.

Itoh, R. (2006). Handwriting Technology and Future of Writing Instruction for Japanese Language. In T. Reeves & S. Yamashita (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2006 (pp. 609-612). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS Friday, April 3: Barbara Sawhill (Oberlin College) Saturday, April 4: Gus Leonard (CSU Monterey Bay) In addition to the keynote speeches, the conference will consist of various workshops, joint presentations and panels centered around the use of technology and language learning. This collaborative conference, co-located with SWALLT, is designed for the expert and novice alike! April 3-5, 2009