Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
About
INNOVATOR 2005: Defense Language Institute
7/28/2005
COMPUTERS AND VCRs were connected to SMART boards at DLI.
| INNOVATION: | INNOVATOR: |
|---|---|
| Bringing Digital Technologies into the Immersive Foreign Language Classroom | Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center |
Challenge
At the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, Monterey (CA), Dr. Jack Franke (a professor of Russian and coordinator of the European and Latin American School) and his colleagues realized that using digital technologies in foreign language classrooms would offer new possibilities for learning, as well as efficiencies for the institute.
The appearance of portable MP3 players in 2002 prompted a search for a complete technology solution. The main challenge identified was to convert existing analog technologies to digital ones.To put this conversion into perspective: Previously, students were issued Walkmans with about 200 audiotapes; today, they are issued an MP3 player and 12 to 15 CDs. The cost savings is more than a hundred dollars per student. Each year, the center trains 3,200 students from the armed forces in up to 75 languages and dialects.
Technology Choice/Project Design
One of the major technology components was to be the SMART board from SMART Technologies (www.smarttech.com). The institute had considered GTCO CalComp’s InterWrite SchoolPad, but SMART boards had already been deployed in DoD and “We went with the tried-and-true,” Franke explains. The Defense Language Institute is the largest foreign language institute in the United States; consequently, it was not feasible to install 500 SMART boards in a short time. The project design called for those schools that had begun the digitization project earlier to receive the interactive whiteboards first.
The project evolved in three stages.TEC-1, the first phase of the Technology-Enhanced Classroom project, incorporated a portable SMART board and LCD that could be moved between classrooms. TEC-2, the second phase, was the intermediate stage during which SMART boards were installed into each classroom over 15 months. A computer and VCR were connected to each SMART board. TEC-3, the third and present phase, is the inclusion of notebooks in the classroom for collaborative learning and taskbased instruction, along with a wireless networked campus.
Key Players
The key beneficiaries are both students and faculty. Textbooks were digitized into Acrobat format and MP3 files were embedded into the books. All exercises and laboratories were digitized in MP3 format and linked to manuals or textbooks. Rather than search through boxes of more than 500 tapes, the instructor can immediately find a given sound file or book electronically on the server.Results
This project resulted in huge savings in time and money, both of which savings are invaluable in an institute that intensively teaches seven hours a day, every single day of the year. Instructors can now send textbooks and sound files across the globe instantaneously and distribute entire courses on a couple of DVDs.
