The Bi-Weekly MFLL E-Newsletter
MONDAY, November 06, 2006
The Newsletter for Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures
web.utk.edu/~mfll

• Robert Patrick (French) successfully defended his dissertation titled "The Liar as a Comic Figure in Plays by Ruiz de Alarcon, Corneille, and Moliere," November 1.



• John Romeiser's (French) new book, "Combat Reporter: Don Whitehead's World War II Diary and Memoirs," has just been published by Fordham University Press, with a foreword by Pulitzer-prize winning author and journalist Rick Atkinson.

The LRC invites you to a workshop in the Presentation Technology Series :

1. The LRC invites you to a workshop in the Audio / Video Series: CAVILAM for Instructional Purposes (1 to 1.5 hours) Tuesday, November 7, 1 PM, HSS 205
   
   Goals: CAVILAM, or le Centre d’Approches Vivantes des Langues et des Médias, was created in 1964 by the universities of Clermont-Ferrand and the city of Vichy. Its mission is the union of technological and pedagogical innovation for the teaching of languages. We will look at the resources for French teachers and how our future partnership with the Audiovisual Attaché in the Cultural Service of the Consulate General of France in New Orleans will augment the resources found at CAVILAM. While this workshop targets French teachers, we invite all instructors interested in multimedia-enhanced language learning to discover pedagogical applications being practiced by CAVILAM and its subscribers.

   Registration is required as space is limited. Please register by emailing dcanfie1@utk.edu, dialing 974-6494 or visiting the Language Resource Center.




2. The LRC invites you to a workshop in the Web Development Series: Introduction to Hot Potatoes (1 to 1.5 hours) Thursday, November 9, 12:30 PM, HSS 205
   
   Goals: Hot Potatoes makes it simple for instructors to create complex interactive Web pages — exercises that present material, evaluate user responses, and provide feedback and scoring. You can produce sophisticated Web-based teaching materials without understanding anything about the code (XHTML, Cascading Stylesheets and JavaScript) behind the scenes. We will look at some of the activities available, how to download the software, and discuss how to deploy Hot Potatoes projects in Blackboard.

   Registration is required as space is limited. Please register by emailing dcanfie1@utk.edu, dialing 974-6494 or visiting the Language Resource Center.




3. The LRC invites you to a workshop in the CMC Series: Introduction to Wimba Voice Tools (1 to 1.5 hours)
   *) Tuesday, November 14, 10:30 AM, HSS 205
   *) Thursday, November 16, 1:30 PM, HSS 205
   
   Goals: Horizon Wimba Voice Tools is a suite of applications that allow you to record and send voice over the Internet. With these online voice tools you can increase oral practice and interaction for your language students outside of the classroom. Think of email, written assignments, and written chat sessions. Now rethink those activities as oral exchanges. You will soon discover ways to extend what you do orally in the classroom to study outside of the classroom. We will show you the tools and share ideas on using them for your classes.

   Registration is required as space is limited. Please register by emailing dcanfie1@utk.edu, dialing 974-6494 or visiting the Language Resource Center.




4. The LRC invites you to a workshop in the CMC Series: Blogs for Instructional Purposes (1 to 1.5 hours) Friday, November 17, 11:00 AM, HSS 206
   
   Goals: Blogs can be integrated into learning activities to achieve a variety of pedagogical goals. For instance, they can reduce plagiarism and help students critically assess online sources. They encourage students to revisit, revise and comment upon concepts and to evaluate and respond to the thinking of others. As students to engage with positions divergent from their own, blogging can potentially enhance analytic and critical thinking skills. Perhaps most importantly, blogging recalibrates communication patterns so that knowledge-sharing is increasingly student-to-student and student-to-instructor. Finally, blogging has the potential to shift learning from classroom-only to something more diffuse, ubiquitous, and concretely embedded in real world issues and events. Come explore the nuts and bolts of blogs and discuss pedagogical applications of the blogosphere to your course.

   Registration is required as space is limited. Please register by emailing dcanfie1@utk.edu, dialing 974-6494 or visiting the Language Resource Center.




5. The LRC would love to collaborate with you on Foreign Language Informational Technology projects!
   Our goal is to identify projects that imply a significant demand for IT resources, such as staff time for consultation or content creation, or other significant needs. We are interested in hearing about any project that might make such demands, whether it is a research, instructional or administrative Informational Technology project.

Beginning Spring Semester 2007, the LRC will collaborate with faculty and instructors in the development of instructional, research and administrative projects. We need to plan our allocation of LRC staff time and other resources as carefully as possible. Therefore, if you are planning such a project, we ask you to submit a request with an outline of the proposed project during the month of November for next semester. While we will collaborate on as many projects as possible, this selection process will allow us to determine which projects we can support for Spring 2007.

We anticipate that the project application process will be collaborative and consultative, so please do not hesitate to contact Doug Canfield if you have questions. Clearly, we will continue to provide support for activities that constitute "normal operations", and this application process is not intended for such activities.

Please submit your requests by December 1, 2006 for consideration.

• “Maria Full of Grace,” the last film of the Spanish 211 “Ciclo de cine” will be shown on Monday November 6 @ 4:00 PM and on Thursday November 9 @ 9:00 AM.