University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts
tltc
Events

Lecture Series Archive

Each year, the Texas Language Technology Center sponsors free public lectures delivered by distinguished visitors to the University.  Lectures foster a sense of community among language learners.  Information about previous lectures is archived and made available on this page. 

video Links to streamed video recordings are included.

Spring 2008 Lecture


Paige D. Ware Who: Paige D. Ware (SMU), pware@smu.edu
What: Instructional Technologies to Facilitate Literacy and Language Learning
When: April 14, 2008, 3 p.m.
Where: UTC 3.132
   
Bio:

Paige D. Ware, Ph. D, has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Literacy Acquisiton of the School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University since 2003. Prior to earning her Ph.D. in Education, Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of California at Berkeley in 2003, she taught English as a Second Language (ESL). Fluent in Spanish and German, she was a Fulbright scholar in Germany before moving to Spain, where she taught in a bilingual Spanish-English elementary program for several years. An instructor in the Creative Writing Program at Berkeley, she was nominated by her colleagues to become a teacher consultant with the National Writing Project.

Dr. Ware's research background includes collaborative, qualitative research projects that examine how instructional technologies can be used to facilitate literacy and language learning. She has presented widely on the use of multimedia technologies for fostering critical literacy with elementary school and middle school children, and her publications focus on the use of web-based technologies for promoting second-language acquisition. Her research has been funded through fellowships at UC Berkeley and through awards from the Berkeley Language Center and the Berkeley Center for German and European Studies.

In March 2006, Dr. Ware was selected as a recipient of SMU's prestigious Ford Fellowship in recognition of her research on the integration of technology into second language teaching and learning. Her work has addressed issues ranging from the linguistic development of middle school children participating in online mentoring partnerships to the development of cross-cultural awareness among college students involved in international collaborative projects. With the Early Career Ford Fellowship, she will continue to pursue her current research on the grammatical development of intermediate- and advanced-level English as a Second/Foreign Language students. This project currently involves pre-service and in-service teachers at SMU and English language students in Spain. She will expand the project to include several more international sites across the next two years.

Fall 2007 Lecture


Gilberte Furstenberg Who: Gilberte Furstenberg (MIT), gfursten@mit.edu
What: Developing Students' Translingual and Transcultural Competence: The Cultura Project
When: Monday, Nov 19, 2007 at 4:30 P.M.
Where: MEZ 0.306
   
Detail:

In her talk, Gilberte Furstenberg , Senior Lecturer at MIT, will present this telecollaborative, Web-based, intercultural project, the goal of which is to develop – within a language class – students' in-depth understanding of the values, beliefs and attitudes that underlie another culture. She will detail the approach and content of Cultura and focus on the process by which students from two different countries collaboratively construct an understanding of each other's cultures.

Designed at MIT ten years ago thanks to a grant from NEH, and originally involving students in the U.S. and in France, Cultura has since been adopted by other institutions and adapted to other languages, such as German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.
Bio:

Gilberte Furstenberg was born and educated in France where she received her Agregation. She taught English at the University of Paris-Nanterre, then moved to the United States where she became a correspondent for the French news magazine L'Express. Her next career move brought her to M.I.T. where she has been teaching French for the last twenty years. In her courses, from the very beginning to the advanced levels, she makes use of authentic print, video and multimedia materials in order to integrate culture into the language curriculum. She also favors a cross-cultural approach to the study of materials, as a way of accessing the different underlying values in French and American cultures.

Her research interests lie in the development of interactive multimedia programs for learning French and developing an understanding of its culture. She is the principal author of A la Rencontre de Philippe, a pioneering interactive fiction and Dans un quartier de Paris, an interactive multimedia documentary. Both have won national and international awards and are published by Yale University Press. She is currently involved in the development of a Web-based cross-cultural project, entitled Cultura, which provides a unique comparative approach for understanding another culture.
Video: videoQuickTime streaming, 384 kbps

Spring 2007 Lectures


Dorothy M. Chun Who: Dorothy M. Chun (Germanic Languages, UC-Santa Barbara)
What: "What Makes Students Click: Computer Environments for Language and Culture Learning"
When: Monday February 5, 2007; 3 p.m.
Where: MEZ 0.306
   
Bio: Dorothy M. Chun is Professor of German and Applied Linguistics in the Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  She edits the online journal Language Learning and Technology and is currently director of the Ph.D. Emphasis in Applied Linguistics at UCSB.  Her areas of research involve second language acquisition (L2 phonology and intonation, L2 reading and vocabulary acquisition).  She has conducted studies on cognitive process in learning with multimedia and has developed CD-ROMs and websites for language acquisition.
Video: videoQuickTime streaming, 384 kbps
Richard Kern Who: Richard Kern (UC-Berkeley, Director of Berkeley Language Center)
What: "Literacy and Technology: Where We've Been and Where We're Heading"
When: Monday April 16, 2007; 3 p.m.
Where: MEZ 0.306
   
Bio: Richard Kern is Associate Professor of French and Director of the Berkeley Language Center.  In addition to teaching in the language program, Professor Kern also teaches courses in applied linguistics and foreign language pedagogy.  His research interests include second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, reading, writing, and linkages between technology and literacy.
Video: videoQuickTime streaming, 384 kbps
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