NDLR Modern Languages’ Community of Practice

E-Learning Magazine featured and interesting article this month about using texting to teach native languages.

Here’s a link to the article:
http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=81-1

Gráinne

A Symposium of the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, Friday 12th June, 2009

Dear colleagues,

We would like to draw your attention to the forthcoming Language On-line Portfolio Project (LOLIPOP) International Symposium which will take place in Dublin City University on Friday, the 12th of June 2009. Please consult the symposium website for further details:

www.lolipop-portfolio.eu/symposium/index.html

(Please note that if you click on the hyperlinked symposium title on the website you find our poster advertising the symposium.)

We would appreciate it if you could disseminate this announcement to your colleagues and look forward to seeing you at the event.

Regards,

Veronica Crosbie
Juliette Péchenart
Jenny Bruen

Dr Fionnuala Kennedy
Lecturer in German and Intercultural Communication Waterford Institute of Technology Cork Road Waterford

Last week myself and some of my colleagues attended the EdTech Conference at the National College of Ireland in Dublin, http://www.ilta.net, and attended some very interesting talks.

One of these talks was particularly interesting to those in the language teaching and learning field and it was presented to us by Kristan Brogan and Riana Walsh from the Institute of Technology Tallaght, Dublin. Kristan and Riana are two of the main people involved in a project called The VOCAL Project and they presented a paper entitled “On-line language learning and cultural preparation for residence abroad” and this talk centred around The VOCAL Project (Vocationally Oriented Culture and Language – www.vocalproject.ie).

To find out more about this innovative project which includes the development of a website for learners preparing for mobility placement in vocational settings and it covers ten different languages.

For more information on this go to: www.vocalproject.eu.

Gráinne

Dear Colleagues,

Please find below details of the National Library’s summer programme of
lectures and tours on Irish – Italian Connections.
Kind regards,

Joanna Finegan
Learning & Outreach,
National Library of Ireland

Irish – Italian Connections at the National Library

The National Library of Ireland will host a series of events which will
examine the Irish – Italian connections in relation to two main exhibitions
currently running, ‘Yeats: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats’ and
‘Strangers to Citizens: the Irish in Europe 1600-1800′.

The program includes three lectures:

The Tower and the Spiral: Yeats and Sicily by Dr. Daragh O’Connell
(University College Cork) on Monday 11 May at 7.00 pm

Imagining Ireland in Renaissance Italy by Dr. Eric Haywood (University
College Dublin) on Wednesday 13 May at 7.00 pm

‘In Italy perhaps writing poems…’ Yeats, Italy and Italian culture by
Prof. Enrico Reggiani (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan,
Italy) on Monday 18 May at 7.00 pm.

Guided tours in Italian and English of the Yeats exhibition will examine the
connections between Yeats and Italy. The tours will last approximately 45
minutes, they are free but booking is required.

For further information please contact Gabriella Addivinola, Education and
Outreach, National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2, T: (01)
6030346 or 6030277, E: gaddivinola@nli.ie or see the National Library’s
Current Events: http://www.nli.ie/en/list/current-events.asp

Startin with Smoking-room, The instituto cervantes invites you to an excellent series of films this month. For the complete program have a look at:

http://dublin.cervantes.es/es/cultura_espanol/actividades_cultura_espanol.shtm

Smoking Room:

Proyección de cine

The Spanish branch of an American company is obliged to bring into force the no-smoking policy in its offices. From then on, whoever wishes to smoke during working hours, must do so outside. Ramírez, one of the employees of this small office, made up mainly of men, decides to collect signatures against a measure that he considers both unjust and out of order. What Ramírez wants is to use an unoccupied room in the office as a Smoking-Room. At first it appears that all are in agreement and are going to support him. However, when he comes face to face with each of the employees, Ramírez meets with a series of excuses to avoid forming part of the list. The fact is that most of the excuses for not signing the Smoking- Room list actually conceal others.

La sucursal española de una empresa americana es obligada a poner en vigencia la prohibición de fumar dentro de sus oficinas. A partir de ahora, quienes quieran fumar en horario laboral, deberán hacerlo en la calle. Ramírez, uno de los empleados de esta pequeña oficina compuesta principalmente por hombres, decide empezar a juntar firmas contra lo que considera injusto y fuera de lugar. Lo que pretende Ramírez es que se utilice una sala desocupada en la oficina como sala de fumar, Smoking Room, que dicen los americanos. En apariencia, todos están de acuerdo y le van a apoyar. Sin embargo, en el cara a cara con cada uno de los empleados, Ramírez se encuentra con una serie de excusas para evitar formar parte de esta lista. Lo cierto es que la mayoría de excusas para no firmar en la lista de la Smoking Room esconden otras.
Dentro de
Un ABCdario del cine Ñ. (de la F a la M). Ciclo de cine
Ficha técnica
Título: Smoking-room
Director: Roger Gual, Julio Wallovits
Año producción: 2002
Formato: DVD
Duración: largometraje – 89 min
País producción España
Versión originalEspañola
SubtituladoInglés

Fechas

06/05/2009 (18:30 h)

Lugar
Instituto Cervantes – Café Literario
Lincoln House, Lincoln Place
2 Dublin
(IRLANDA)

Another interesting piece of news this week. As universities cut their human resources, it seems we get more students! Will be able to fish our disciples with two fish and a loaf of bread?

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/demand-for-college-places-surges-to-record-levels-as-jobs-market-tightens-1729650.html

According to the Irish Independent, teachers “obsessed with praising” children are in danger of creating a generation of egotistical pupils. That’s the message of a leading child psychologist who argues that school staff and parents feel they cannot criticise their children for fear of upsetting them.

Dr Carol Craig, director of the Centre for Confidence and Wellbeing in Glasgow, claims that the need to be positive all the time leaves pupils with an “all about me” mentality.

So there you go!
I guess for your students’ sake, don’t bear it in mind when you are grading and marking exams!

http://www.independent.ie/education/praise-agenda-isnt-doing-young-pupils-any-favours-1729572.html

After many requests for localized interfaces MindMeister finally goes international! Well, the first two steps anyway. German-speaking and Japanese users can now mind map in their native tongue, and find out what Geistesblitz really means.

In terms of mind mapping features, we’re proud to present inline image support in this release – you should try out especially the WunderBild function which we’re quite fond of. We’ve also updated the History View with some neat Time Machine-like features as well as making many small changes as usual, hopefully stuff you’ll find useful. Read details below.

Happy mind mapping,
The MindMeister Team

What’s New in MindMeister

Besides localized interfaces the new MindMeister release contains some impressive new mapping features as well. The biggest one is certainly support for inline images – see a list of all new functions below.

German and Japanese interface
When asked why a German company only offered their product in English we usually cited our heavily US-focused demographics – a feeble excuse of course. So that’s why we’re especially proud to launch two localized versions in one go: German and Japanese.

Inline Images
MindMeister users can now visually spice up their mind maps with pretty inline images. Choose from our built-in library, upload them from your computer or insert images from the web – either via direct URL or through an automated Google Image search. more

WunderBild™TIP
This one’s part of the image feature but we like it so much that we thought it deserved its own mention. Click the image button itself (not the dropdown triangle) to automatically add a “wonder” image to the selected idea. Try it out e.g. with your own name, it’s good fun! more

History View Player / Time Machine
The History View now has player controls to quickly jump to the start of the change history and stop/start the replay. You can also choose replay speed and color-highlight changes by modifier. An Advanced dialog allows you to filter the entire history by user and idea.

Many more icons
We’ve added a second icon library with 200 new icons and we’ve extended the MindMeister library with some often requested icons (e.g. Six Thinking Hats). Recently used icons are now saved for quick access.

New embed widget
Publicly embedded maps will now be shown in a much nicer widget with forwarding and bookmarking functions.

Coloring connections
Also frequently requested, you can now choose from six colours for your connection arrows.

Other enhancements
Enhanced RTF export, preview of changes in notification emails, new browser support, various UI enhancements and bugfixes

We’ve also done some work on the website itself, mainly updating the content pages. Have a look at the new information in the About section. In addition to lists of customers and partners there’s now a special Security page as well as a – steadily growing – section on Use Cases of mind mapping.

More Languages

More translations are on the way – next up are French, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese – and if you’re interested in helping us with any additional languages please let us know. Also many thanks to those who have already offered their services, we’ll be surely coming back to you!

The German translation was done in-house (special thanks go to Oliver and Verena – great work!), while the Japanese version was done by our partner act2, who is also our local reseller in Japan (and therefore knows the language a little better). If you’re a native speaker of German or Japanese and you find any missing or erratic translations please send us a quick feedback message using the “Found a mistake” link in the menu bar.

http://www.mindmeister.com/

Mexico city seems to agree with the nature of times, a pandaemia, an earthquake, what else? It certainly helps us to put things in perspective. According to our Erasmus student over there, it’s chaotic but interesting to be in the eye of the hurricane.
I’m only going to post this ‘rant’ this week with an immediate purpose, because I’m quite tired of the ‘refrain’. “But you are on holidays now, aren’t you?”. I’m not sure who is to be blamed for that myth but no, university teachers – at least in my department – have a normal 21 day or so summer leave and during the rest of the summer term, THERE IS LOTS OF WORK TO DO.
I decided to list out the things I did yesterday at work for example, or the fact that I had lunch at my desk while averaging and compiling the grades of 160ish students from 10 teachers, that is without mentioning the cross checking and databasing of med certs and deferrals for them as well. On the other hand, there is the student feedback. As a first year coordinator,it’s my job to go through it and compute it and bring it out in a readable form to the first year team (meeting i’m running to in 40 mins) so we can start planning changing and evaluating performance.
And that’s only the first year part of my job. I teach in second year, third year (corrections coming! ooohhhh!) and masters (supervising two dissertations which are to be handed in, guess when? IN THE SUMMER!!!!!!!!).

So yes, Teacher WORK in the summer and quite a lot. In fact, the summer seems to be quite crammed for all the work we have ahead.

(disclaimer: I wasn’t trying to praise myself or my work as great and hard. I was just trying to make a case to deconstruct the famous myth. Feel free to share your summer work experiences here too!)

The contents of the Report would be taken into account in developing the Government’s proposed 20-year strategy for the language: “It is envisaged that the 20-year strategy for the Irish language will be a blueprint for the expansion of the use of Irish in every urban and rural area in the country.

“We are working hard on this strategy at the moment and it is a key priority for the Government to implement a comprehensive strategy that will enable the language to flourish into the future.”

Pointing out that an estimated 13 per cent of the population was made up of non-Irish nationals, the Minister said: “When you look at the overwhelmingly positive attitude towards the Irish language, there is no difference in outlook between a sample of the total population and a sample of only those born in Ireland.”

Let’s really hope so!!!
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0422/breaking8.html