--- Forwarded Message from Thomas E Griffin <[log in to unmask]> --- >Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 13:12:59 -0500 (CDT) >From: Thomas E Griffin <[log in to unmask]> >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Use of TV Broadcasts in FL instruction I am looking for ways to use live cable TV broadcasts in the Northeastern Illinois University Foreign Language Lab. The cable system has limited Bprogramming in Spanish, French and Italian, and a few programs in Korean and Japanese. I have been trying to get students and faculty involved in using the cable broadcasts. I first tried offering a recording service to faculty who could play the taped broadcasts in classes. I next tried showing these tapes and live broadcasts all day in the lab to attract students' curiosity. I feel that the problem is that students do not want to see what they already have at home. My chairperson does not want to outlay the expense of subscription if nobody uses the broadcasts. We thought of temporarily disconnecting but an institutional account is not like John Q Public's house. It would cost hundreds of dollars and an interdepartmental administrative hassle to reconnect. Our language department requires students to do web-based cultural and linguistic activities as part of their assignments for general education courses (FL 101, 102 and 103). By the nature of overloaded faculty these assignments need to be somewhat standardized. I do not have the time myself to make assignments that change weekly as the TV programs change. Furthermore, to simply record a few clips to use repeatedly for assignments is not cost effective, since I or any instructor can do that at home. I need to find language learning activities that involve live broadcasts, current events and culture that do not require constant revision and engage students in hearing and writing the target language, but do not intimidate beginning students and overworked faculty who do not want to grade essay answers for classes of fifty students. Which leads me to our next solution for all our lab activities. We are planning to put these on-line using a program called Web-Assign (God willing that the program becomes operational on our server before the end of the millennium.). This program is used for all types of on-line testing and homework; it will even correct students and provide instant feedback in a homework type activity. The difficulty is with the open-ended communication in the target language that is appropriate for live TV broadcasts which teachers all love to see but hate to grade. I need something that a cgi-based program like Web-Assign can easily handle if I input the possible student responses. To keep our instructors involved in the lab component of our courses we need to automate as much as possible, since it is often the lab that undertakes the technology in teaching initiative. Any suggestions? Please reply to the listserv or to me directly. Thomas Griffin FL Lab Director Northeastern Illinois University <[log in to unmask]>