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Friday, February 18, 2011

Anna Kaminski receives Critical Language Scholarship

Undergraduate Office Assistant Anna Kaminski has been awarded a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) for Arabic. This competitive scholarship offers intensive summer language institutes overseas in thirteen critical need foreign languages for summer 2011. The CLS program is part of a U.S. government effort to increase the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages. Through this opportunity, she will be sent to one of five countries, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, or Egypt from June to August for intensive Arabic instruction and cultural immersion. Anna is a double major in Art and Global Studies.

MELP featured in the MN Daily

The Minnesota English Language Program was featured in the February 8 Minnesota Daily. The article highlights the growth that has occurred within MELP in the past 3 years, while underscoring the importance of welcoming international students to the U of M community.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The DCL: Planning ahead for media-rich courses

CLA language instructors: The Digital Content Library (DCL) is an efficient way to share films with your students. The DCL is pleased to digitize films, but as their services are growing in popularity, they would greatly appreciate as lead time as possible. The Language Center can help by submitting content to the DCL on behalf of language instructors. When planning classes that are media-rich, please contact your departmental liaison or email elsie@umn.edu to discuss your needs.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

iTeach Workshop - March 2 - Fair Use in the Second Language Classroom - Co-sponsored by the ESL Forum

The Fair Use Doctrine is probably the most important exemption to copyright protections for educational settings, allowing many uses of copyrighted works for the purposes of teaching and research[1]. Yet, knowing how to apply the fair use doctrine in the second language classroom can be quite confusing, both in terms of developing teaching materials and in providing guidance for student projects. Please join us as Nancy Sims, copyright librarian for the University of Minnesota, gives us some insights into the world of Fair Use for educational purposes.

[1] http://www.lib.umn.edu/copyright/fairuse.phtml

Fair Use in the Second Language Classroom - Co-sponsored by the ESL Forum
Presenter: Nancy Sims, U of M Libraries
Wednesday, March 2
12:20 - 1:10 p.m.
Jones 35

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

iTeach Workshop - Feb 17 - Creating Accessible Course Materials

Creating Accessible Course Materials

Language instructors are constantly creating new course materials to make use of authentic resources. We create Word Documents and PDFs, and upload countless images into our Moodle course websites. But how often do we think about the accessibility of the materials we create? For many of us, it's probably not something in the forefront of our minds. Thankfully, the University of Minnesota has a new web resource - accessibility.umn.edu - to help instructors improve the accessibility of their course materials for the widest possible audience, regardless of ability. Please join us as Phil Kragnes of Disability Services and the Office of Information Technology shows us simple ways to improve the accessibility of the materials we create for our students.

Creating Accessible Course Materials
Presenter: Phil Kragnes, U of M Disability Services and OIT
Thursday, February 17
12:20 - 1:10 pm
Jones 35


For more information about the topic of accessibility in education, see these recent articles from The Chronicle of Higher Ed:
Universal Design, Usability, and Accessibility
ADA Compliance is a 'Major Vulnerability' for Online Education Programs
Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online