The Online Language Environments Tool: Technology Support for Language Instruction
(This article appears in the June 12, 2006 edition of The eLearning Guild's Learning Solutions e-Magazine, available through paid membership at http://elearningguild.com. A Microsoft Word version is available here: Download file)
by Garry Forger, MLS
The University of Arizona
Learning Technologies Center
Practice, practice, practice. Language instructors require their students to practice -- outside of class -- the language they are learning. They want them to practice not only pronunciation but also conversation. Language researchers, as well, want to be able to record the last speakers of an endangered language before they are no more. How best to do this?
Having students and speakers pass around cassette tapes is cumbersome, at best. Creating MP3 files and attaching them to e-mails is beyond the technical skills of most of the students and speakers they are dealing with. To address these problems, we at The University of Arizona created the Online Language Environment (OLE) software that lets instructors and researchers capture sound recordings outside of the classroom and at a distance.
The ability to incorporate sound, graphics, and video into Internet-based learning has opened the door for the delivery of rich educational experiences online. At The University of Arizona, we are actively creating tools to promote Internet-based language instruction.
Background
The Learning Technologies Center at The University of Arizona has been working with faculty -- in the departments of Second Language Teaching and Acquisition, English as a Second Language, Interpretation and Translation, Less Commonly Taught Languages, Near Eastern Studies, and Native Language Teaching and Preservation -- to maximize the use of technology for language instruction both in and out of the classroom. Technical personnel work closely with faculty to identify the need for the development of electronic language instruction tools and to provide specific teaching strategies for the best use of those tools. Using these electronic tools gives the students not only the ability to practice language learning skills, but enhances their technical skills in the process, providing them with an added advantage for operating in real world situations.
We created an informal group on our campus called the Online Language Environments (OLE) to bridge the areas of language instruction and technological support. The OLE Web site is a place to collect information on various aspects of technology and language instruction. The OLE Board is a specific tool to help with language instruction. An overview of OLE is provided in this article, as well as descriptions of the functions and development of the OLE Board and outline specific ideas for using the tool.
See the entire article here: Download file
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