PACE Roundtable: Ideas for infusing technology into the language classroom

Friday, April 28, 2017
12:20 - 2:00 p.m.
Bruininks Hall 420B
Register Online (required)

Lunch Provided by AfroDeli

Looking for ways to integrate technology into your teaching to enhance students’ learning experience? Please join us for an afternoon full of ideas and great conversation. This roundtable will showcase five projects in a roundtable format. Participants will have a chance to engage in informal, small group conversation with the presenters and learn new ways to incorporate technology into their teaching.


Featured Technologies and Projects: VideoAnt, Radio Ambulante, Flipgrid, Apple Numbers and PlayPosit


Interactive listening with VideoAnt
VideoAnt is a University of Minnesota-created web-based video annotation tool. Its simple interface makes it easy to create discussion board activities directly linked to authentic web-based videos. It has the potential to turn the often solitary experience of at-home listening homework into an interactive, social experience - one in which students can collaboratively work to understand, analyze, and assess second language audiovisual texts. This roundtable presentation will cover the basics of setting up VideoAnt, student reactions to using VideoAnt as outside of class listening practice, and a discussion of pros and cons of the tool from the instructor perspective.

Radio Ambulante in the Spanish classroom
Radio Ambulante is a weekly Spanish language podcast from NPR that "tells Latin American stories from anywhere Spanish is spoken, including the United States.” The unique content, combined with the fact that each episode has an accompanying transcript make this podcast a great tool for the Spanish classroom, from beginning through advanced levels of instruction. This roundtable presentation will show how an instructor used an episode of Radio Ambulante on Peruvian cuisine in her intermediate Spanish class to create a four-day multiliteracy lesson to accompany the textbook chapter on food.

Using Apple’s Numbers app on the iPad to speed up grading with rubrics
With a little investment in setup time, Apple’s iPad spreadsheet application can help speed an instructor through scoring multi-criteria rubrics like those used for oral exams. The Numbers app has a little-used feature called Forms that can make entering and adding all the numbers from a rubric faster and less frustrating than using a calculator (and trying to remember if you just added the score for fluency or task completion, or do you need to start over adding from the beginning again!). This presentation will include a brief reflection on evaluating this technology use via the SAMR model. Interested participants will receive a copy of the Numbers spreadsheet file used by the presenter as well.

Using Flipgrid as a tool to create video discussions
Instructors register for a Flipgrid account and then create a grid for the classroom and can add unlimited discussion topics. Instructors can pose questions or prompts – students can create video responses, watch each others’ videos, and respond to each other. Video responses can be up to three minutes long, so this is a good way to promote sustained speaking. This roundtable presentation will cover the basics of setting up Flipgrid, and discuss practical applications for its use in the beginning and intermediate language classroom both to promote discussion among students and conversations between students and instructors.

Improving the interactivity of listening materials with PlayPosit
Working on listening activities can be a monotonous or tedious exercise for students. Through tools such as PlayPosit, what is traditionally considered passive content can be transformed into an interactive experience for students, with time-embedded activities. In this roundtable, participants will work on their choice of audiovisual materials and use various tools available on PlayPosit to create an interactive exercise with questions targeting specific segments of their material. Examples of time-embedded questions include: Multiple Choice, Free Response, Fill in the Blank, Polling, and several others. Finally, participants will also explore ways to closely monitor the progress their students are making.

Presenters: Stephanie Hernandez and Sara Mack, from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Beth Kautz and Ginny Steinhagen from the Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch; Sean Killackey from the Department of French and Italian; and Hossam Elsherbiny from the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures

The PACE Project is funded by a grant from The Language Flagship.

TandemPlus Film Evening

Wednesday, April 19, 2017
5:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Coffman Memorial Union, MISA Room

TandemPlus and the TandemPlus Student Association are hosting an evening of socializing, food and entertainment in the MISA room of Coffman Memorial Union for the participants of Tandem. This is an opportunity to hang out with your partner, meet other participants of Tandem, and relax from your studies. During the evening we will be showing the 2013 film Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, a loosely-based comedic rendition of the classic Chinese epic that tells the tale of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, detailing his journey and many shenanigans. Enjoy the movie with Coca-Cola floats, delectable Mesa pizza, and an assortment of Jimmy John's sandwiches! All participants of Tandem are welcome to attend.

If you have any questions, please email tandem@umn.edu.

PACE Roundtable: Ideas for infusing technology into the language classroom

Friday, April 28, 2017
12:20 - 2:00 p.m. (lunch provided)
Bruininks Hall, 420B
Register Online (required)

Looking for ways to integrate technology into your teaching to enhance students’ learning experience? Please join us for an afternoon full of ideas and great conversation. This roundtable will showcase five projects in a roundtable format. Participants will have a chance to engage in informal, small group conversation with the presenters and learn new ways to incorporate technology into their teaching.

The projects and technologies showcased are VideoAnt, Radio Ambulante, Flipgrid, Apple Numbers and PlayPosit. A description of the five presentations will be available next week.

Presenters: Stephanie Hernandez and Sara Mack, from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Beth Kautz and Ginny Steinhagen from the Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch; Sean Killackey from the Department of French and Italian; and Hossam Elsherbiny from the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures

The PACE Project is funded by a grant from The Language Flagship.

LC Reservation Request Form: New Waitlist Option

If the Language Center can’t fulfill your reservation request now, maybe we can later!

There is a new checkbox on the reservation request form to be put on a waitlist if the room or resource you request is not available. This waitlist will go into effect with Summer 2017 reservations, which we begin entering April 17, 2017. The checkbox is selected by default, but you can deselect it if you prefer not to be placed on a waitlist. If you are on the waitlist, and the room or other resource becomes available, it will be reserved to you automatically and you will receive an email notification.

Summer Session Reservation Requests Entered April 17, 2017

The Language Center will begin entering general Summer Session reservations on Monday, April 17, 2017. You may submit reservation requests before that date, and they will be held until then. To have the best possibility of receiving the rooms and equipment you need, please submit by April 17 at 9:00 a.m..

See the Language Center Reservation page for details on policy, and to make an online reservation request. Summer classroom hours are listed below to help you plan your requests.

Summer 2017 Classroom Hours
Please refer to these hours when requesting Jones classrooms:

May Session (May 22 - June 9)
Monday – Thursday: 8:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Friday: 8:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Summer Session (June 12 - August 4)Monday: 8:00 – 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday: 8:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Wednesday: 8:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Thursday: 8:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Friday: 8:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Late Summer Session (August 7 - September 1)Monday – Friday: 8:00 – 4:00 p.m.