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UCLA Center for Digital Humanities. Practical Use of Digital Media: Heritage Language Learners and GE Courses at UCLA Presenters from CDH: Dr. Zoe Borovsky (Academic Services Manager), Dr. Annelie Chapman (Instructional Technology Coordinator), and Brian Lin (Media Assistant) . CDH.
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UCLA Center for Digital Humanities Practical Use of Digital Media: Heritage Language Learners and GE Courses at UCLA Presenters from CDH: Dr. Zoe Borovsky (Academic Services Manager), Dr. Annelie Chapman (Instructional Technology Coordinator), and Brian Lin (Media Assistant)
CDH Heritage Language Reading Project Hypermedia Berlin
background • Academic Services • Labs • Course Websites • Projects • User Services • Network Services
Applications once a year CDH Projects • Project Team: • Eugene Hamai • Project Technical Coordinator • Shawn Higgins Media Specialist • Brian Lin Media Assistant
Heritage Language Reading Project • Heritage Language Students – a definition • A student who is raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken, who speaks or merely understands the heritage language, and who is to some degree bilingual in English and the heritage language • Limited ability to read and write the heritage language
Heritage Language Reading Project • Goals • Provide on-line multi-media materials to teach reading to students with oral proficiency in Thai and Korean • Self-paced, self-correcting exercises
HLRP: Challenges • Thai and Korean are Less Commonly Taught Languages • Instructors had different pedagogical approaches • Thai has fives tones, only four of which are marked--how important to heritage learners? • Technical staff did not read the languages • Instructors were not used to working with technology • Grant proposal (funded by Dept of Ed.) was written with minimal input from technologists
HLRP: technology • Why Flash? • Hidden “requirements”: • Desire for more complicated and interactive exercises • Heritage learners ARE tech-savvy audience • Cross-platform and cross-browser • Font representation • Exercise layout and functionality • No keyboard input – heritage students do not type in target language
Heritage Language Reading Project • the heritage site • Teach, Practice, Test • Beginning – Intermediate levels • Vowels & Consonants • Words, • Sentences • Short Stories
HLRP: What we learned • Get involved early: preferably when proposal is written • Be realistic: One language would have been better • Establish roles (e.g. who finds images) at the beginning • Technical staff cannot proofread a language they do not understand • PIs should sign off on grad student work before implementing • Test new material on paper—content proofing takes time
Heritage Language Reading Project • What worked well • Interactive exercises: Flash & action scripting • Student programmer who knew the language and learned the technology • Authentic content: stories about other Heritage students • Common spelling mistakes
Hypermedia Berlin Asst. Prof. Todd Presner (Germanic)
Hypermedia Berlin • Revamp a GE course using digital technology • Interdisciplinary: incorporate art history, history, literature, architecture, film • Focus on context as well as text: teach the city in both time and place • Use the site in the classroom, i.e., lecture from it • Integrate student projects
Berlin: the technologies • Need to navigate in both space and time • Flash • Zoomify • Hypermedia Berlin • Username: berlin61 • Password: spring2004
Berlin: The Challenges • GSRs with little technical expertise • Create content templates in Dreamweaver • Enlist the help of tech savvy itcs during lab sessions • Undergraduates asked: does this class have a text? Is this a lit class? • Mixture of traditional and new media assignments
Hypermedia Berlin • Why did it work? • Faculty buy-in; Presner had tried before and was less successful • We used technology that GSR could learn to add content: opened our lab as a project workspace, spent our time teaching • We used technology that students could learn to add content
Summary • Humanities scholarship has fundamentally changed: instruction needs to keep pace • Students taking humanities courses have changed (many more come from Heritage backgrounds) • Interdisciplinary courses require multi-media on demand—not just in the lab • Initially students will ask: • where’s the text? but eventually: • why should we write papers when we can contribute our own digital projects? • Sometimes, we can make it work!