Welcome to the first of a series of newsletters providing you with a selection of carefully curated links, resources, and useful information to support technology, teaching, learning, and research in Modern Languages.
Kicking off this week is a podcast that you might find useful, links to language learning, and a conference recommendation. Remember, if you want to find out more about a particular feature or you'd like some training and support on something mentioned here, then please get in touch.
Students in the French in Society Course interview Chef Christophe François in the Chants d'Avril Restaurant in Nantes.
Students returned from a week in Nantes, where they gathered media, interviewing locals, photographing and filming locations to support the creation of web-based interactive experiences. Students worked in groups on specific themes or Geography, History, Cuisine, and Culture.
This was a busy week for them, with pressure to capture as much as possible for their projects. Look out for news towards the end of the semester of how you can view the fruits of these projects, some of which will be on display in the Global Languages & Cultures Room.
Why do these multilingual school kids want to learn more languages?
More than half the students at Reay Primary School in South London speak two languages. To coincide with the release of the 2017 Languages for the Future report, we asked them for their thoughts on language learning.
Links and News
January saw the launch of the MFLTwitterati Podcast hosted by Joe Dale and Noah Geisel, this international offering explores the use of technology in language teaching, showcases ideas, and celebrates language teaching. Episode 1 is available to download here and you can visit the site for other streaming options and find out more.
In this short video, Oculus CTO John Carmack explains what Virtual Reality is in five levels of increasing complexity, to a child, pre-teen, college, grad student, and expert. It's a great video to help us understand VR and also how we differentiate between audiences when pitching new ideas and concepts.
The Annual Language Consortium Symposium is open for registration and takes place on May 10/11th at Columbia University. This year's title is Language Education in a Time of Crisis: Innovation, Adaptation, Transformation and will address how language programs can and should adapt and innovate to address the challenges posed by the nationwide decrease in language enrollments that has been highlighted by the latest MLA report.
The wonderful Language Nerds (or just Nerds) website has a great post on Five Words that sound the same in almost every language which you might consider unlikely with so many languages and people scattered all over the world. I for one, am grateful that the word "Coffee" is pretty much the same in most languages as the basics of language wouldn't function without a brew in the morning.
Many of you spotted an article in the PGH city paper looking at a survey concluding that Pittsburgh has the most educated immigrants in the US. This data compiled by the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research show the Pittsburgh metro area contains the highest percentage of educated immigrants in the nation.
The CMU International Film Festival opened this week with Borders (image above), a film exploring gender, form, nature, and instinct. To explain the plot would be to give away too many of its secrets, of which it has many. This dark and surprising fairy tale opened the festival and spoke to its theme Faces of Wo/men (it's about the slash). More films to follow over the next few weeks, tickets are available for all showings.