NDLR Modern Languages’ Community of Practice

The 2007 National Digital Learning Repository (NDLR) Symposium took place on Tuesday 11 December at Trinity College Dublin. The conference was well attended with representatives from education, government and industry from both Ireland and abroad.

Apart from the excellent keynote presentations from Phil Race and Chris Pegler, it was very encouraging to see a strong representation from the modern languages community in both the Community of Practice and Using Resources in Your Teaching and Learning presentation strands. These included the following (truncated) titles:

• Integrating the NDLR with Blackboard – Laura McLoughlin and Paul Gormley, NUIG
• Japanese Interactive Courseware for Writing – Ann Marcus Quinn, UL
• Autonomous Language Learning Using Collaborative Learning  – Feeney et al, IT Tallaght
• The NDLR CoP Blog as a Community-Building Medium – Paul Gormley, NUIG  

All presentations will be available as podcasts from the NDLR Project website shortly at www.ndlr.ie

In the latest of our podcast series Barbara Geraghty talks about the development of the Interactive Multimedia Courseware for Reading and Writing Japanese Script project.  This courseware CD was developed by Barbara along with Ann Macus Quinn and Kumiko Kurebayashi at the Japanese Section of the Department of Languages and Cultural Studies at UL, and was recently awarded a 2008 EU Language Label for innovation and the promotion of learner autonomy.

This podcast will be of great interest to those involved with the development of multimedia courseware and learning technologies in general.  Barbara discusses the design issues, technologies employed (Flash and MP3 audio files), product iterations, usability and functional considerations that impacted in the development of the courseware; and highlights future research and development possibilities for the project.

Pictured above are Kumiko Kurebayashi, Ann Marcus Quinn, Barbara Geraghty and Mr Shinji Yamada, First Secretary of the Japanese Embassy.

Click here to listen to the podcast. Barbara can be contacted by email at barbara.geraghty@ul.ie.

Video highlights of the IoT Language Policy and Planning Network meeting held October 22 at IT Blanchardstown are now available in Window Steaming Video format. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Anne Gallagher from the Language Centre – NUI Maynooth, focusing on Further Perspectives on the Future of Languages in the IoT Sector.

Streaming video 1 presentations: (43 mins.)
Michael Moriarty, Head of Innovation and Global Partnering with Enterprise Ireland
Andrew Colgan, Policy Advisor in the Human Capital and Labour Market Department of Forfás
Paul Caffrey, Senior Inspector in the Department of Education and Science; Member of the European Commission’s Working Group on Languages

Streaming Video 2 presentation: (19 mins.)
Justin Sinnott, Senior Executive Officer of the Institutes of Technology Section, Higher Education Authority.

Streaming Video 3 presentation: (16 mins.)
Nicola Horgan, Director of the Export Orientation Programme Irish Business and Employers Federation (IBEC)

Further information from Riana Walsh, IT Tallaght (email) and Kristin Brogan IT Tralee (email).

The fourth biennial conference for languages in higher education, jointly organised by CILT, the National Centre for Languages and the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies will take place at the University of York on Tuesday 8th and Wednesday 9th July 2008.

The 2008 conference theme is Transitions and Connections and the conference papers are arranged into the following blocks:
1. Working across sectors
2. The curriculum
3. The language learning environment
4. Languages and employment

To submit a proposal complete the online form (word doc | PDF) and send to llas@soton.ac.uk by 31st January 2008, and full details can be found at the LLAS web site here.