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Students as Designers and Content Creators: An Online Multimedia Exchange between the U.S. and Spain
9/29/2003
The multimedia aspect of the interchange is the feature most commented upon by students. Yet we know that like language, images are part of a grander system of meaning and structure, and students need ways to decode, interpret and reflect upon images and their implications. The project would benefit from a component providing principles of media literacy.
Applicability
We are immensely privileged to have had the website programmed within a few months, at no expense, as part of a class project. These kinds of expert supervisory and computational resources are normally available to humanities projects only when they go through much longer funding and development cycles. Obviously, we could not demand functionality beyond the limitations of the student programmers’ own goals or abilities, but the collaboration did yield features we did not know we needed until we had them.
The creation and maintenance of virtual communities is not intrinsically difficult. Each generation of students becomes more familiar with online tools. In 2003 many students have access to scanners to digitize photos, or to digital still cameras. However, the centerpiece of the multimedia experience, the online digital video, remains time-consuming and beyond the means of most students to handle autonomously. Alliances between media and language departments to share the task might be feasible. It must be stressed that editing and compressing videos for the purposes of this project requires decisions based upon linguistic as well as esthetic criteria, and the individual teacher is crucial in this role. While the project is certainly labor-intensive on the faculty side, the process has been gratifying.
Support for MITUPV Exchange was provided by Foreign Languages and Literatures and the Class of ’51 and ’55 Funds for Excellence in Teaching and the Class of ’72 Fund for Educational Innovation at MIT; infrastructure support at the UPV was provided by the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenier’a del Diseo (ETSID) and the Office of Justo Nieto Nieto, Rector.
References
C. Kramsch, et. al., "Authenticity and Authorship in the Computer-Mediated Acquisition of L2 Literacy," Language Learning & Technology, Vol. 4, No. 2, September 2000, pp. 78-104, retrieved July 26, 2003 from http://llt.msu.edu/vol4num2/kramsch/default.html
J. Nielsen, Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity, New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis, 1999.
L. Perez, "The Effectiveness of the Internet in the Foreign Language Classroom," in Technology Tools for Today’s Campuses, J. Morrison, ed., 1997, Horizon, University of North Carolina, retrieved July 27, 2003 from http://horizon.unc.edu/projects/monograph/CD/Language_Music/Perez.asp
Rafael Seiz (rseiz@idm.upv.es) is lecturer in English as a Foreign
Language at Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.
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