The Digital Native Language Learners are Here: How Do We Effectively Teach
Language to the Digital Native? 

                                   October 21st-22nd, 2010 
                                   College of the Holy Cross
                                  Worcester, Massachusetts 

                   (Presentation events on Friday, October 22, 2010)

When Marc Prensky coined the phrase in 2001 'Digital Native' in his article
"Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants", he identified a new type of learner
that had found their way onto higher ed and K-12 campuses. From birth, they
have been surrounded by the toys and tools of the digital age such as
smartphones, laptops, the web and video games. Most of us reading this call
fall into the "Digital Immigrant" category. This new world of technology has
not been a part of our entire lives. With this gap in experience inevitably
comes a gap in expectations between educators and students.Acknowledging
their arrival is one crucial step towards closing the gap in understanding
between the digital native learners and the digital immigrants teaching.
Next follows the question, "How do we effectively teach language to the
digital native?" In order to continue providing excellence in language
programs, there needs to be a critical look at how digital natives acquire,
consolidate, process, and utilize information and knowledge. This is key to
wisely investing in electronic resources and instructional technologies for
these learners. In turn, this understanding will assist language faculty in
modifying their pedagogy to optimize the language learning potential of
these new learners.As language educators, administrators and instructional
technologist work to balance the needs and preferences of these 'digital
natives' with the mission and standards of college and university language
curricula, the time has come to move beyond the identification of the
digital native language learner and to address their learning needs
actively. To this end, the New England Regional Association for Language
Learning and Technology will devote its 2010 fall conference to showcasing
the innovative ways that educators use instructional technology to engage
our digital natives in learning languages and how best to maintain their and
enthusiasm and momentum. The program committee is extending a call for
papers and posters in which language faculty and instructional technologists
share the strategies and instructional technologies that will energize our
students to learn languages while fostering the intellectual capacities
needed to excel. College and university language faculty, language resources
specialists are invited to contribute results of their practical experience
and research to help map out how technology used to optimize success in
achieving the intellectual objectives of language learning programs in
higher education.Potential topics include:

- Where are digital natives from: instructional technologies used in K-12
learning environments

- R U on-line: Language resources and integrated learning and practice in
K-12 or college/university environments

- Profiling the digital native:Identifying the digital language learner's
skills and weaknesses

- Placement, progress, and technology

- Going native: Learning to speak our students' language and teaching them
to speak somebody else's

- Accompanying the Unaccompanied Minor: Technology, Psychology and Language
Learning for Different Ages

- Whose country is it anyway: Technology and institutional
missions

-Technological Darwinism: Are digital dinosaurs fit to teach today's
students

- No More Teachers, No More Books: Educational Evolutions

- Burying the Fossils and Fossilized Errors: Generating Excitement and
Improving Linguistic Accuracy through Technology

- Assistive technologies

- Information overload
- Privacy and safety

- Piracy and Privateering: Navigating copyright and teaching students to
copy right

Please send a 250-300 word abstract of the paper or poster you wish to
propose to Michelle Cheyne ([log in to unmask]) by Monday, September 17th, 2010.

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