SALRC Sponsored Workshops

The Use of Technology in the South Asian Language Classroom, December 3rd and 4th, 2004

Participants | Schedule | Resources | Workshop Home

An SALRC workshop on "The Use of Technology in the South Asian Language Classroom" was held at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, on December 3-4, 2004. Jointly sponsored by the SALRC and the North Carolina Center for South Asia, these meetings brought together twelve instructors, administrators, and graduate students of South Asian languages to discuss how to best implement technology in the classroom, to assess the 'state of the field' for South Asian languages, and to discuss future directions and standards that the SALRC will promote.

The three workshop sessions were chaired by Steven Poulos (Director, SALRC), Rakesh Bhatt (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), and Harold Schiffman (University of Pennsylvania), and featured four presentations on key issues of introducing technology in language classrooms:

Christopher Jones (Carnegie Mellon University) demonstrated how new and widely available technologies may be implemented in college-level language classrooms.

Robert Blake (University of California, Davis) gave a presentation on the use of media, computer-mediated communication, and classroom management software in distance-learning environments such as "Spanish without Walls." For an HTML version of his presentation, click here.

Robert Smitheram (Consultant, Middlebury College) discussed the design and implementation of successful teacher-oriented technology and pedagogy workshops at Middlebury College's Center for Education Technology.

David Germano (University of Virginia) offered a demonstration of the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, a comprehensive repository of textual and audio-visual materials on Tibetan, Nepali, and other cultures of the Himalayas. Germano also discussed how the THDL is being implemented for Tibetan and Nepali language instruction.