NEALLT 2008 Global Connections: Language Learning in the Digital Age Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey February 29 - March 2, 2008 Conference Program

All events on Friday will be held at the Language Institute, 20 Seminary Place, New Brunswick. For a map, click here. For directions, click here.

Friday, February 29
1:30 - 4:30 p.m. Limited Enrollment Pre-Registration Required Language Institute	Pre-conference Workshops Technology at its Best: Oral/Aural Assessment and Creative Expression Ursula Atkinson, Carolyn Burger, Rutgers University Participants will get hands-on experience in creating oral/aural assessment activities representing the three modes of communication and utilize Photo Story 3 to create multi media presentations. Workshop #1 can accommodate 36. Really Simple Learning Solutions: Podcasting in the World Language Class Jesse Schibilia with Karen Campbell, Rutgers University Participants will get hands on experience in creating their own podcasts using Audacity. Workshop will address the use of editing tools and publication methods, as well as ways to use podcasting in world language instruction. Workshop #2 can accommodate 16.
4:30 - 5:30	Registration, Language Institute
5:00 - 7:00	Reception, Language Institute

All events on Saturday and Sunday will be held in the Rutgers Student Center on College Avenue. For a map, click here. For directions, click here.

Saturday, March 1
8:00 - 9:00	Registration & Coffee (in the Lounge Area outside Multipurpose Room A)
9:05 - 9:20 Multipurpose Room A	Welcoming Remarks Dr. Barry Qualls, Vice President of Undergraduate Education
9:25 - 10:15 Multipurpose Room A	Keynote Address: No Longer a Frill: Using Technology in Learning, Teaching and Assessing World Languages. Janis Jensen, Director of the Office of Academic Standards at the New Jersey Department of Education, State of New Jersey This presentation focuses on the use of authentic, contextualized, interactive and task-oriented technological tools to accomplish the mission of language educators: developing proficiency. The potential for the use of technology as an assessment tool and the results of the New Jersey Grade Eight Pilot Assessment Project will also be discussed. Ms. Jensen is responsible for all aspects of the implementation of state standards and related initiatives in the nine core curriculum content standards areas. Previously she served as coordinator of world languages and international education and taught at the K-12 through post secondary levels. While coordinator of world languages, she worked with New Jersey teacher preparation institutions to become actively involved in department initiatives related to systemic reform in world language education that resulted in the development of several innovative programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
10:20 - 10:50	Session 1
Room 407	Lessons Learned from the UPOLAI Project CLaire Bradin Siskin, University of Pittsburgh At the 2007 NEALLT Conference, the presenter reported on the development of the University of Pittsburgh Oral Proficiency Language Assessment Instrument (UPOLAI), a software tool designed to facilitate the evaluation of students' oral proficiency. Students are presented with language tasks similar to those used in the SOPI, their responses are recorded, and the audio files are saved. The responses are scored by human raters who are trained according to the ACTFL Speaking Proficiency Guidelines. With the UPOLAI, large groups of students can be tested simultaneously. Last year the UPOLAI Project was in its infancy, having just been funded by an on-campus grant. It is now in its fourth semester. A bank of language tasks for French, German, and Spanish has been created. Hebrew and Portuguese are being added this semester, and Italian and other languages will probably be added in Fall 2008. The presenter will demonstrate the UPOLAI software briefly, and she will discuss the evolution of the project from the perspective of a lab director and project manager. Now that she has the hindsight of 4 semesters, what has been done well, and what could have been done differently?
Room 410	Bringing Virtual Reality and Literary Fiction Together Anamaria Banu, Rutgers University Globalization owes much to the flourishing technology of the internet, which has largely contributed to transforming all the rules of communication. E-mail, chat rooms, news groups – are informal tools of communication that break barriers. However, the interactive potential of this technology has not often been applied to the French literature classroom. In my essay, I will consider the legacy of virtual interaction that French writers developed before the age of cyberspace, examine how virtual reality has reached the French literature classroom, and describe how we might pursue virtual interactive capabilities to reach students beyond the traditional classroom framework.
Room 411AB	iStudy- Enhancing Russian and Japanese Courses with iPods Marisa Castagno, Connecticut College Faculty at Connecticut College are encouraged to enhance their courses using technology by receiving digital devices, such as digital cameras, camcorders or iPods, at no cost for the students. This presentation focus on how a Japanese and a Russian beginner course have improved after students enrolled have been given a 30 GB video iPod and instructors have received a 60 GB video iPods. Each student has the iPod for the entire duration of the course, one full academic year since they are enrolled in both 101 and 102, but must return it at the end of the second semester. Professors keep theirs even after the end of the course. The iPods are loaded not just with languagelab lessons, but also with podcastings, newscast recordings, folk-tale readings, cartoons, songs, and music videos. Critical has been the organization of the various files in customized playlists. Students are requested to do their drills and record them in the iPod using an external microphone (also provided). Not only students are very happy to be enrolled in a course that has provided them a new iPod, but also instructors report higher scoring on both listening comprehension and speaking tests. An article on this experiment with the various digital devices used to enhance courses at Connecticut College has also been recently published on the Chronicle of Higher Education (source).
10:55 - 11:25	Session 2
Room 407	The Internet and Authentic Learning Edward Dixon, University of Pennsylvania and Nelleke Van Deusen-Scholl, Yale University We would like to suggest ways to use Chats, Wikis and Threaded discussions for collecting data from students for not only assessing their performance and communication skills but also as a source of instruction and way for actively involving them in their own learning. Within the context of a totally online environment, we would like to show how authentic materials can be used to generate authentic texts by the students, i.e. the data.
Room 410	The Applications of Multimedia-induced First- and Second- Hand Experiences of DKE Model for Language Learning MingTsan Lu, Yu-Chia Lin, Kang-Hao Hung, Teachers College Columbia University Our research uses the DKE (Designs for Knowledge Evolution) model and tries to extend the work of Schwartz, Martin and Nasir (2005) from the domain of statistics learning into the domain of second language (L2) learning. We examine the effects of providing learners with a multimedia-induced preactivity that was designed to help them develop both first- and second-hand experiences and see how these experiences may influence L2 learning. Experimental design is used. We investigate whether this pre-activity improved learner's acquisition of the pronunciation rules, as measured through several different types of items on a post-test. The positive results show the important influence of these experiences in an instruction of L2 learning. The applications and implications of DKE model are further discussed.
Room 411 AB	Cost Effective Solutions for LRC: Problems and Solutions for a Dual-Boot Environment Kyo Koo, Chase Lovellette, Davidson College The Language Resource Center (LRC) at Davidson College has developed a dual-boot platform environment where users can select a preferred operating system between Windows and Mac OS. This development resulted in savings of both the budget and space. This presentation will address issues and procedures for implementing dual-boot systems. The LRC was a mixed platform lab with 18 Windows and 4 Macintosh computers. While most users prefer and are more accustomed to Windows computers, demand for Macintosh computers became increasingly prevalent as they gained popularity. With the advent of Apple's Boot Camp, it became possible to accommodate all users without the budgeting problems of purchasing two sets of hardware and without the space limitations. There were many issues that accompanied our plans. We first needed to determine that all of our software would function correctly on both OSs. We also needed to determine the best means for deploying hard drive images to each computer and found ideal imaging software. Software licensing also raised a question. The greatest concern during the whole process was security, and we needed to develop a system that would allow for both OSs to update security patches as needed. In order to best understand the problems and develop flawless systems, we made a team of multiple IT professionals consisting of instructional technologists and a Macintosh specialist. We also conducted a survey on users perspectives. After implementing the dual-boot system, we were able to provide complete compatibility in the LRC through the use of the dual-boot platform.
11:30 - noon	Session 3
Room 407	The Wiki Way: An Online Collaborative Writing Tool for Students CJutta Schmiers-Heller, Columbia University Working well as a group and keeping up with new technologies remain important skills today. Creating wikis, where students edit simple web pages together, is a tool allowing students to practice both and to learn that the process is an important step towards the final product.Creating a wiki related to topics discussed in the class presents students with many opportunities not all of them collaborative. They have the opportunity to bring in their own ideas, to practice organizing their thoughts, and to write them down in an electronic format. Apart from those individual aspects, students learn to critically evaluate the collaborative project as a whole and to edit and revise it. As with group projects in general, students worry that there might be an imbalance in the quantity and quality of contributions. It is therefore important to show students that all contributions can be tracked and hence properly evaluated. The presenter will show and discuss how wikis are used for student collaborative writing at different levels of learning. The presenter will demonstrate how to set up a wiki and how students are trained to use this particular tool. In addition, samples will be given of different wikis that have been created by students. The presenters will also show how to track and evaluate individual student contributions in a collaborative writing project. The presentation ends with an evaluation of wikis focusing on the following: a) Students' evaluation of wikis as a learning tool, and b) a general evaluation and discussion of how to grade individual students and the complications associated with this issue, and c) the usefulness of such a tool in language learning.
Room 410	Maintaing Relevance in a New World Sean Palmer, La Guardia Community College With so many on-line language resources available, languages labs have to prove their worth now more than ever. I know this from personal experience. When I was working in the Language Acquisition Labs at the University of Illinois, we closed down our tape lab and put most of the material on the web. Also, in discussions with colleagues, I've learned that many labs are being scaled back. Here at LaGuardia, this isn't the case. I run two digital language labs, and have proposed expanding to include a third lab. Why? First, we have just proposed a new Speech/Communication major, secondly, I am deeply involved in many college wide projects, including e-Portfolio, Oral Communication across the Curriculum, Digital Storytelling, and Building Information Literacy across the Disciplines. As a result, I have opened the labs and our services, such as videotaping classes, to the entire college. We are extremely busy now: with about 20 classes with a lab component and classes from many other disciplines, such as History, English, Co-operative Education, Mathematics and Nursing. This presentation discusses the process of this expansion, the lessons I've learned and the rules I've developed to handle the explosion of business.
Room 411AB	Vive l'Environnement Mina Kim, Churchill Junior High School The environment has become a global pressing issue for all nations. Today's students need to be made aware of these issues, as well as be equipped with the knowledge to coherently discuss possible solutions to the growing threat to our planet's environment. This presentation will talk about how a French curriculum was used to teach students about the issues facing their planet and how they were challenged to become actively engaged in reducing their own personal impact on the environment. The unit starts from the beginning - activating and stimulating prior knowledge - to the end - applying and creating solutions. The unit was taught using a mixture of authentic French sources and documents, media and the internet (limited to authentic sites). It focused mainly on vocabulary acquisition, reading comprehension skills, and oral presentational skills. As it was an actual taught unit, the presentation will highlight both positive and negative sides to teaching such a unit, as well as be open to suggestions from the audience on how to improve it. Any educators interested in teaching an environmental unit in a target language would find this presentation helpful.
12:05 - 1:10	Lunch - Food Court, Student Center (included in registration fee)
1:15 - 1:45	Session 4
Room 407	Showcasing Your Language Resource Center Michael Jones, Steven Day, Swarthmore College At Swarthmore College we've installed a flat panel screen outside our Language Resource Center in order to showcase lab resources, classes in Modern Languages and Literatures, students in the department, various student projects, study abroad opportunities, satellite broadcasting, activities available as well as departmental and relevant campus events of interest. We've put together a presentation which features movie clips, interviews with faculty and students who have studied abroad, performances, and general LRC and departmental information and announcements. This has proved to be an effective and dynamic way of reaching out and publicizing our Language Resource Center and the Modern Languages department to the broader campus community. The 90 minute presentation was created using Apple's application Keynote.
Room 411AB	College Wide Expansion: ePortfolio's Next Step Sean Palmer, La Guardia Community College Over the past few years, LaGuardia Community College has implemented an ambitious ePortfolio program. Starting with a few trail classes, and gradually expanding, we now estimate that over 4000 students have built ePortfolios. At Ūrst, our ePortfolios were relatively simple: they contained papers and photographs, but we have expanded into placing audio and video on them as well. While this has brought challenges, the ePortfoliios have become more and more interesting. Now, we are in the process of expanding our ePortfolio program college-wide. We do this through a required course: Fundamentals of Professional Advancement. All students take this class, and now, all students are required to develop an ePortfolio while in the class. It is our hope that, as our students continue their journey here at LaGuardia, they will continue to deposit work on their ePortfolios. Many other professors require ePortfolio work as well, so some sort of continuity will hopefully develop. This presentation will discuss pitfalls and solutions to college wide implementation.
1:50 - 2:20	Session 5
Room 407	French Online and the French Online DVDs Marc Siskin, Carnegie Mellon University French Online is a web-based course developed at Carnegie Mellon University with support from the Hewlett Foundation through the Open Learning Initiative and from the National Science Foundation through the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center. The course features a bi-modal delivery system: licensed for class use, but open to Internet adult learners. Innovative aspects include new Flash-based exercise templates, extensive logging and tracking, new communicative video shot in France, and activities based on authentic materials. The French Online DVDs will also be available for viewing. They will be distributed through the Oral Language Archive.
Room 410	Global Analysis of the Arabic-English Etymology Hebatalla Elkhateeb-Musharraf, Princeton University Etymology dictionaries often attribute any word whose origin precedes Latin or Greek as of unknown origin. For example, the word “globe” is from Latin“globus” and and the word sphere from Greek sphaira “globe, ball,” of unknown origin. The word “Globe” has a clear Arabic origin and means“hearts” in Arabic! Hence, global connections mean “the connections of the hearts” in Arabic which extend beyond all geographical boundaries. Although Arabic as a Semitic language and English as an Indo-European language seem to be definitely two separate languages and linguistically classified as belonging to two different language families. From a global perspective, Arabic shares an unusually close etymological relationship to English. Arabic words in the English language have a long history that extends beyond the sciences, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, navigation, music, religion, and politics to the daily life activities and names of foods, clothes, and household articles. Therefore, modern English as well as other Indo-European languages can trace not only its alphabet and mathematical system but also numerous parts of its vocabulary to its Arabic origins. As a result, linguists assumed that the Arabic- English cognates were loan words or borrowed from Arabic over the past forty centuries of its linguistic evolution. This study presents a pioneer pedagogy of teaching and learning of Arabic from a global perspective. It utilized technology as a global learning tool to reveal an unprecedented etymological connection between the Arabic and English languages. This connection goes beyond borrowing to the hardwiring of the human mind. It presents Arabic as a unifying global cultural language by systematically analyzing numerous Arabic-English cognates to explicate how they are similarly structured and illustrate the patterns of change in word structure of many English words which are derived from Arabic. It exemplifies these patterns with animated comparative etymological analysis of Arabic- English cognates with side trips to other languages for confirmation. It also demonstrates how fascinating Arabic words in the English language are in their original meaning, history, culture, usage, and connotation, thus presenting a new paradigm in the field of linguistics, curriculum development and the pedagogy of teaching and learning Arabic and English from a global perspective. It also paves the way to a new global linguistic perspective that calls for the rethinking of the division of language families. This study has been piloted on a sample that was selected from students attending Elementary Arabic classes at Princeton University in the fall semester of 2007. Students' learning outcomes were measured by students' numerical semester and oral interview grades in Arabic. The students' test results revealed that using computer structured etymological analysis of Arabic- English cognates' class activities in oral and written contexts enabled the students to form semantic association of new target words, lead to increased students vocabulary acquisition, improved oral communication skills and the use of new vocabulary words, and positively correlated with student learning outcomes.
Room 411AB	The Power of PowerPoint Santiago Peña, East Brunswick High School and Rutgers The Power of PowerPoint is a presentation made for world language teachers, to learn how to integrate technology into a PowerPoint presentation to be used in the world language classroom. Also during this presentation I will show teachers how additional equiment can be used and integrated into PowerPoint, how to know what is the right equipment, prices, and where to get it.
2:25 - 3:25	Poster Session (Lounge Area outside Multipurpose Room A)
	BabelMOOing at Rutgers: Language Teaching in a Virtual Environment Myriam Alami, Rutgers University One of the multiple technology-based projects recently developed and implemented at Rutgers is BabelMOO, The Rutgers Newark/New Brunswick Multi-Language MOO, a text-based online virtual learning environment that enhances students' ability to collaborate with peers in their classes, at other institutions, and even internationally. In language education, a MOO provides a unique opportunity to immerse oneself in another culture and to communicate without inhibition. The flexibility of MOO programs permits teachers and students to build virtual objects, rooms, and even cities, real or imagined, thus enhancing the teaching of culture by transporting the students into the target environment. A prototype Spanish MOO was developed by Jennifer Austin at Rutgers/Newark, and, during Academic Year 2005-2006, instructional material for rooms in French, German, and Italian were added by instructors on the New Brunswick campus. This material is still being expanded and utilized regularly in second-year language courses as well as at more advanced levels, with MOO sessions taking place in our main language laboratory on a regular basis during class time as well as outside of class. With an upgrade to the latest version of the MOO database system, called enCore, non-western fonts will be integrated so that students in languages such as Arabic and Hebrew can take advantage of this very powerful teaching and learning tool. Instructors and students found the system easy to navigate with only minimal training, for which a tutorial was created containing information on basic MOO commands. This tutorial is updated periodically to reflect any actions students might need to perform for their class. Students have embraced BabelMOO with enthusiasm, repeatedly requesting more MOO sessions, which has resulted in measurable improvement in students' writing skills as evidenced by their group projects posted in the MOO.
	Digiclass – Information Technology and Classroom Materials: A Perfect Match Ursula Atkinson, Rutgers University Digiclass is a universally accessible, online learning environment, which has become an important part of instructional technology at Rutgers. It seeks to create active, self-directed language learners and to improve students' mastery of world languages by exposing them to customized linguistic practice so skills are acquired effectively and progressively. Digiclass provides access to valuable out-of-class communication and serves as a significant source of native cultural information essential for the development of functional language proficiency. This computer-aided interactive platform offers students many more opportunities to use a language actively and to receive an immediate and individually appropriate response than are possible in class or through traditional forms of homework. Additionally, Digiclass assists instructors with course management and enables them to teach in ways that were previously unavailable.
	Microsoft's Photo Story 3: An Innovative Tool for Creative Language Anne Catherine Aubert, Rutgers University Photo Story 3 has been integrated into both our undergraduate world language curriculum as well as our World Languages Institute (WLI) course for K-12 teachers, "Technology in the World Language Class, K-12." This free software from Microsoft is easy to use, but can produce very elaborate presentations combining still photos, text, music, narration and sound effects that appear video-like in format. This application has been used at Rutgers since summer 2006, when it was first demonstrated by Dr. Ursula Atkinson to K-12 teachers taking the WLI technology course as an effective tool for language instruction. Since then, it has been adopted by Myriam Alami, who has required her elementary French students to use Photo Story 3 to create tourism advertisements for Francophone countries. In addition, I required my advanced level students in a poetry course to use the application in their final projects. One part of the project was either to create an ad by bringing together images, music and figurative language (written or oral) or to illustrate a poem or a song of their choice. Most students chose to make their own ad, while one student used a song and animated it. Students found the project an appealing alternative to producing either a creative writing piece or an oral presentation because it provided them with the opportunity to combine both formats more artistically to reinforce and synthesize what they had learned in class - the different figures of speech such as metaphor, metonymy, alliteration and assonances.
	Emerging Technology and the World Language Curriculum: Rutgers' Use of the “Cutting Edge” to Sharpen Language Proficiency Carolyn Burger, Rutgers University The Language Institute performs an extremely important role in the support of world language study at Rutgers University. The Institute's mission is to assist the language departments in program, curricula, and materials development, and it maintains relationships with other language-related academic centers and units at Rutgers. It also provides training for Teaching Assistants and Part- Time Lecturers, professional development workshops for K-12 teachers as well as instructional technology training, design, and implementation. The implementation of any technology-based project into a world language curriculum requires not only reliable and consistent computer support staff, but also state-of-the-art instructional facilities. Both are crucial to developing a) effective language learning strategies for students which also allows them to become proficient in the use of technology as outlined in the National Educational Technology Standards for Students and b) communicatively based teaching that is advanced through regularly scheduled faculty and TA/PTL workshops, many of which promote the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers. The impact of technology on language acquisition should not be underestimated since it allows students as never before to spend increased contact time with the target language, accessing culturally rich authentic, language-specific materials. Proficiency-oriented activities designed to guide students through this authentic, and thereby often dense, material reflect the initiative by many New Jersey institutions of higher education to adopt the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning and its derivative, the New Jersey K-12 Core Curriculum Content Standards for World Languages. With advanced technology as the foundation, these standards, in conjunction with the well known and widely respected American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines for Speaking are informing the world language curriculum development at Rutgers and at other New Jersey institutions of higher education.
	Facilitating Professional Development for the K-12 Community through an Online Platform: RutgersOnline Karen Sanchez, Rutgers University Since fall 2005, the Rutgers World Languages Institute has been using eCompanion as an online platform to offer a methodology course for language teachers. This hybrid course “Methods of Foreign Language Teaching, K-12”, which includes five off campus class meetings, is designed to address the needs and concerns of students preparing to teach foreign languages in the K -12 schools and in-service teachers who need a methods course for endorsement or licensure. It also serves in-service teachers who are seeking to update their knowledge of second-language acquisition and instruction for personal growth or for academic credit toward state re-licensing or for national board certification. The presenter will demonstrate the various features of the course and discuss this highly successful format.
	youtube.com - Window to the World? Beatriz Pelaez Martinez, Middletown High School North I love youtube.com and have been using it religiously at all levels to expose my students to authentic cartoons, newsreports and sound. I want to have the opportunity to show some of the tasks that I have created using this website and hopefully have the opportunity to discuss the validity of this resource with interested colleagues.
3:30-4:00	Session 6
Room 407	Acquiring Oral and Writing Proficiency in the Lab Maria Jose Cabrera-Puche, West Chester University Improving oral and writing proficiency levels in a second language is a goal aimed by all language learners, especially by language teachers who are pursuing their certification as language teachers. This presentation is addressed to instructors of all language levels, and it presents different ways to increase the oral and writing proficiency levels of students using different tools encountered in the language laboratory (internet, head-sets, group conversations, phone calls, PowerPoints, photos, videos, etc.).
Room 410	Angel Course Management System and its Technology Integration by Language Faculty Takeshi Sengiku, Gettysburg College The presentation will illustrate the overview of the new Course Management System (CMS) “Angel” and how language faculty members have been incorporating this technology into their curricula and courses. The presentation will describe the features in Angel CMS as well as the transition from the previous system to the current management system. Along with the technological features in Angel, the presentation will also provide examples of the system usage and the material development by language faculty members. In addition, the participants of the presentation will find out the opinions and comments on Angel CMS from the perspective of both instructional technologists and language faculty members.
Room 411AB	FL Students A-Twitter with Micro-Blogging Enza Antenos-Conforti, Montclair State University Introducing micro-blogging in the post-secondary environment has demonstrated that social networking can also be transformed to educational networking. (source). To allow students to speak in “sound bites” and “self-obsess” (source) via Twitter would seem to contradict the concept of higher learning and the quest for knowledge. Yet, there is an opportunity in such an environment to provide FL students initially with a community of peers (their classmates) and a form of output (writing in the FL) and input (reading classmates' tweets) and then expand this community globally, by following native FL twitters as an authentic source of input of the target language and, ultimately, for conversational exchanges. In this presentation, I will describe a project currently underway in my intermediate I-level Italian classes. Students are required to tweet in the FL twice weekly about themselves and reply (converse) to the tweet of another classmate, all in the target language. Once they become comfortable with the concept of micro-blogging (by approximately week 5 of a 16 week term), they will instructed to follow 5 different native Italians (preselected by the instructor). The research questions to be answered are the following: 1) will students be more inclined to write given the nature and brevity of the tweets? 2) will students comment on or correct grammatical or spelling errors made in previous tweets? 3) will students notice and/or be able to extract sociocultural information from the tweets of the native speakers they are following? The presentation will reveal some preliminary findings from this project and draw some conclusions based on data available. It was also provide an opportunity to discuss the framework created for the project and deliberate other conditions that may affect its outcome.
4:30– 5:00	Tour of Language Institute Facilities at Rutgers University - if interested sign up at registration
7:00	Dinner (Optional, pre-registration required!)

Sunday, March 2
8:30 - 9:00	Continental Breakfast
9:10 - 9:55	Session 7 - Panel
Multipurpose Room A	Using Flash Animations in the Teaching of French Grammar Duane W. Kight, Haverford College Over the last several summers, I have worked to elaborate a number of Flash animations (cross-platform) which dynamically illustrate French grammar points. These present the grammar in question--conjugations of regular and irregular verbs in the present and the formation of questions--in much the same way that I would teach them in my beginning and intermediate class, imitating the dynamic process I use by, for example, drawing on the board as I explain, creating schematics, and underscoring potential problems students may encounter in producing these forms graphically. Much as my explanations supplement or improve on the presentations in the textbooks I use, these films have served as an important resource for students. They offer multiple benefits. First, they preserve my lectures in a form that students can revisit as many times as necessary, depending on their command of French. Second, they make the material accessible to students on their, rather than my, schedule; since they are linked to my Web syllabus, a student who cannot come to office hours or who misses class can have some of his or her questions answered independently. Third, they can be used at several levels--initiation to and reinforcement of the concept in question at the beginning level, review of the concept at the intermediate level or above. At the upper levels, they also allow saving class time in reviewing grammar that all students in the class may not need to review. Fourth, they serve as exercises in listening comprehension through their narration. Fifth, they provide templates that can be modified by colleagues in other languages. Finally, they present grammar in a way that is more attractive to contemporary visually-oriented students than the conventional approach used by textuallyoriented class manuals. What I would like to do at NEALL is to demonstrate my work so that others might be inspired to develop similar tools. Moreover, I would very much like feedback from colleagues; in my own department, there is a resistance to Web-based materials, and I work largely in isolation, which results in a limited perspective as to the efficacy of what I have developed. Anecdotally, students have benefited from what I have done, but as I continue this project, I could benefit from the reactions and suggestions of NEALL colleagues. I would hope that my presentation could lead to a broader discussion of the uses that this particular technology could be pput in the language classroom. Promoting Second Language Learning By Flash Jun Kramer, Yinghua Day School High-tech definitely makes our world smaller by letting teachers and students access on-line resources all over the world. Flash is a rich resource. If you type your subject appended with the word “Flash” in any Internet search engine, you will get tons of websites. Among them there are a lot of cultural authentic stories, rhymes, games, songs, etc. They can not only, be integrated with L2 curriculum to create communicative activities, but also a visual exposure to the culture. Flash is animated and interactive. If it is used properly, it can be a great tool for both young learners and adolescents. Flash is easy to access. It only needs a computer having an Internet connection, speakers and Internet Explorer. Most classrooms already have all these. (If you want to project Flash, you also need a Data Projector.) The presentation will include three parts: 1.Why Flash? 2.Where and How to Find cultural authentic Flash? 3.Demonstration of Integration of Flash and L2 Activities.
10:05 - 11:00 Multipurpose Room A	Lab Director Panel Panel To be announced Topic: To be announced
11:10 - Noon Multipurpose Room A	Your Turn (Open Mic) Opportunity To Ask Questions, Seek Advice, Present Issues
Noon - 1:00 Multipurpose Room A	Business Meeting & Optional Box Lunch