Outreach Activities:
Teacher Workshop info: 17-21 July 2000, UT campus
"Electrifying Pedagogy: Teaching German in a Digital Age"
A one-week workshop for Texas teachers of German
The purpose of this workshop is to familiarize Texas teachers of German with new technologies available in foreign language instruction and their possible applications as they relate to the national and state standards for foreign-language teaching. The week-long workshop will take place in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). It will be conducted by Prof. David Wright whose expertise is in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching with emphasis on educational technology. This one-week workshop will be open to secondary teachers of German from public and private institutions in Texas.
The proposed workshop will introduce German teachers to the basics of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). This will include 1) understanding the options CALL makes available to the foreign language teacher in general, 2) exploring recent research on the impact of new technologies on teaching foreign languages, 3) identifying and using authentic language-learning materials available on the web to develop task-based classroom activities, and 4) evaluating these materials in relation to the national and state standards for foreign-language learning. To this end the teachers will work extensively in the Department's newly furnished computer laboratory and get hands-on practice applying what they have learned and developed by working with students of a beginning German-language class that will be in session during that week.
The foundation of the workshop will be our Department's state-of-the-art language materials database of over 7,000 visual and audio files for teaching German. Teachers will use this web-based technology to build activities relevant to the needs of their language programs. This database is interdisciplinary with files from areas such as the arts, geography, and political and social history. It also includes materials for the Department's growing Business German section. The collaboration begun during the workshop will continue after the final meeting; through the University's Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) participants will maintain contact with each other and Prof. Wright in an electronic network and will have on-going and long-term access to the database for further materials development as their needs and understandings of technology change over time. Participants will be asked to submit a report by December 1, 2000 outlining attempted and successful applications of the technology in their classes.
This week-long workshop has four main objectives: 1) to introduce teachers to new instructional technologies and provide them access to an extensive electronic database and a network system for use in their classes, 2) to aid teachers and, thus, their students in accessing authentic cultural materials through these technologies, 3) to provide teachers with a long-term network for sharing ideas about technology and instructional concerns, and 4) to collect data on teachers' use of this technology in their classes.
