Teaching and Learning via the Network

Training and Continued Inservice Activities
of Foreign Language Educators using the Internet

Project Number 18 - 1994

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Janine Onffroy Shelley
Technology Coordinator
National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center
300 Pearson Hall
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011
(515) 294-6699
Fax: (515) 294-2776
joshelle@iastate.edu

Dr. Marcia Rosenbusch
Director
National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center

Abstract

The foreign language standards task force has identified foreign language goals that would assist in completing the shift from language as the content of instruction to language as access to the content of instruction, supporting the total educational experience. The structure of the language is deemphasized, and an authentic learning situation that is concerned with the student's affective domain as well as the cognitive domain is emphasized. The teacher centered classroom is being replaced by the student centered classroom, encouraging student exploration of information.

Computer-mediated communication, when used effectively, can be a powerful teaching medium that has a positive affect on student motivation and student writing because it allows the student to communicate to a real audience.

In order to use telecommunications effectively with their students, teachers must be trained to use networks and to develop effective lessons or projects. There has been little such training available to foreign language teachers.

This project involves the training of eighty-eight leading K-12 foreign language teachers from throughout the nation attending one of four National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center institutes this summer to use the Internet and to develop effective lessons using Email. The project design is based on successful established design factors found in research. The email portion of the instutute is intended to support each institute's primary curriculum. The following semester, educators will develop and execute a cooperative Internet project with other institute participants. They will also maintain contact with each other and Resource Center personnel via email.

Project Criteria

(1) This project has as its core the use of the Internet by foreign language educators. It is hoped that as the teachers become more and more familiar with using computer-mediated communication, a computer and modem, that they will expand their use of email to the use of newsgroups, data bases, and other services available to them on the Internet.

(3) The collaborations involved in this project include K-12 foreign language teachers from all over the country, plus eight K-6 university methods professors. In some cases, the projects developed by the participating teachers will involve international contacts. Some of the collaborations will be teacher/teacher, student/student, and teacher/student, depending on the design of the participant projects.

(4) To participate an authentic language situation students and teachers were encouraged to travel abroad, an expensive luxury inaccessible to the majority of students. Use of Email allows the students and teachers to develop international ties without the expense of travel. The Internet provides a door to the target culture, open for every student.

(5) A goal of this project is to provide foreign language teachers with concrete guidelines for the effective use of Email in their classroom. One outcome should also be a variety of successful Email projects that will serve as examples for future projects. Foreign language educators need more examples of peers who have succeeded in using technology, and examples of plans to follow as they begin their own exploration.

A second goal of this project it to provide inservice to institute participants via Email after the institutes. Institute directors will communicate with participants regularly, as well as encourage them to communicate with each other outside of their cooperative projects.

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