Friends and colleagues,
The IALLT Anniversary Committee invites you to join us as we take a retrospective tour of the times, the technologies, and the people who have influenced the development and implementation of language learning technologies and of the IALLT organization over
the course of its 50-year history. For the next months, between now and the FLEAT VI/IALLT '15 conference at Harvard in August, we are going to flash back to share highlights of IALLT's history.
Additionally, as we take that tour, we invite you to participate in our
IALLTrivia Hunt and submit your answers to enter a drawing to win an IALLT membership for the year. (If you are a winner and your institution already covers your IALLT membership, you can sponsor a new member of your choice!) The winner's name will be
drawn and announced at the conference.
And, of course, we encourage you to contribute your own memories of IALLT and language learning technologies.
Until the conference begins in August, the focus of our anniversary activities will be the
IALLT @ 50 blog. There you will find the IALLTrivia questions, posts about planned anniversary activities, shared memories, and a form to share your own memories. Join us on the blog! And, if you tweet,
please use the hashtag
#iallt50.
We kick off our Anniversary News with a picture and an item from IALLT's first decade (1965 - 1974).
Today's Quick Pic
Do you recognize the technology pictured here? Do you know how this kind of language lab worked? What is the earliest lab you remember?
People and Places of IALLT
You may know that in the 1960s, long before desktop or personal computers were in use, computer-aided language instruction was already a term and field of research. Did you know that one of our past presidents was involved in some unique research on adaptive
CAI involving dozens of controlled slide projects for the teaching of Spanish reading and writing? Moreover, that research took place at a university that hosted one of our IALLT conferences! For more on this project and to get answers to two of this week's
IALLTrivia questions, check out
this blast from the past document.
The questions: which past president and which university?
Technologies of the Times
In reading through the document, a manufacturer's name familiar to "old-timers" pops up. Although that company no longer exists, the audio recording technologies it developed were common in language labs across the country for years. This company also trademarked
a name that became the generic, commonly-used term for this process/product today.
Two more IALLTrivia questions: What is the name of this company and what (audio-video) product did it name? (Hint: check out Wikipedia.)
Eager to join the celebration?
Registration for FLEAT VI is now open!
