CREATING INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA CALLWARE: THE CAMILLE EXPERIENCE


The CAMILLE Consortium

During this session members of The CAMILLE (Computer Assisted Multimedia Interactive Language Learning Environment) Consortium, will report on aspects of their experience in developing some of the most large-scale interactive multimedia CALL resources as yet produced. The presentation will seek to offer prospective developers some insights into the complexities of the task of developing such packages. In particular, the presenters will focus on four areas of interest: (1) a discussion of what is actually involved in creating such resources; (2) an overview of some of the technical issues that have arisen; (3) a consideration of what pedagogical strategies are appropriate to such learning environments; and (4) an examination of some of the issues involved in evaluating such resources.

Biography:

The CAMILLE Consortium is a group of five European universities who, with funding from the LINGUA Bureau, have undertaken the task of developing the CAMILLE (Computer Assisted Multimedia Interactive Language Learning Environment) courseware programme and platform. During the last three years the Consortium has created ab initio courses in Dutch, Spanish and French and advanced level courses in French and English for students in business and industry. The current members of the consortium are the University of Teesside (co-ordinators and project managers: Chris R. Emery & Bruce D. Ingraham); Université Blaise Pascal (project manager: Thierry Chanier) and the Université D'Auvergne (project manager: Mokrane Refaa) both in Clermont-Ferrand, France; the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain (project manager: Ana Gimeno Sanz); and the Haagse Hogeschool in The Hague, Netherlands (project manager: Jan Brouwer).


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«FACE-TO-FACE AT A DISTANCE»: TELEMATICS AND LANGUAGE LEARNING


Charles Jennings

New telecommunication technologies are offering many opportunities for the delivery of education, none more so than in the field of language learning. Telematics, the co-joining of telecommunication and computer-based systems, is beginning to be implemented for a range of language learning applications across Europe.
The potential for creating interactive telematic environments, where teachers and learners can work together, within «virtual» worlds, has developed to the stage where these virtual worlds have moved out of the realm of fiction and into reality. Students can learn language face-to-face at a distance, working with their peers and with tutors located half-way across the world, gathering authentic texts from remote databases on other continents, and exploring the culture and society of foreign countries from the PC on their desktop.

Biography:

Charles Jennings Associate Professor in Electronic Communications Director of CECOMM, Southampton Institute, UK Professor Jennings has been involved in researching and delivering telematics-based education for the past 10 years. His organisation ran the first wholly «electronic courses» in Europe in 1985. He has worked on a number of language-related telematic projects including ELNET (The European Business & Language Learning Network) and The Multimedia Teleschool, a large-scale European Commission funded project which delivered language courses to over 1000 students throughout Western and Eastern Europe during 1992-1995. He is currently working on a number of projects, including one providing a «virtual resource centre» for multilingual learning activities for small and medium-sized enterprises throughout Europe and Canada.


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CANNOT WITHOUT PROCÉSS OF SPEECH BE TOLD: LEARNING FROM THE FAILURES OF COMPUTATIONAL MODELING

Willard McCarty

As a technology, it is the nature of computing to progress. In computer-assisted language learning, for example, we see great strides being made yearly, and perhaps now can rightly claim that the field is coming of age. The more intellectual and philosophical our outlook, however, the more problematic an argument from progress becomes. To learn what is happening as human language makes its difficult way through the computational process, we need to face squarely the crudity of the device and where it fails us. Paradoxically, it is in this failure that the computer serves us best, illuminating by a kind of negative capability how we may think and learn. That it functions as a mirror, showing us to ourselves by revealing what we uniquely do, should come as no surprise. At least from the time of Homer we have been dreaming about and constructing mechanical simulacra of human life, which continue to adumbrate humanity by their failures to achieve it. The closer they come, the deeper the gulf appears to be, and the further we can see into the terra incognita of inner space. Thus my talk will be an adventurous exhortation to look to the scientific content arising from the failures of our language engineering.

Biography:

Willard McCarty received his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 1984. He is founding Editor of Humanist; member of the Executive Council of the Association for Computers and the Humanities; Assistant Director, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, which he helped to establish; and associate member of the graduate faculty in the Department of Classical Studies (Toronto). He teaches graduate courses and faculty workshops in humanities computing at Toronto and a Summer seminar at Princeton University, and frequently lectures on the subject throughout North America and Europe. He has published widely in both humanities computing and classical studies and is currently completing a book on naming in the Metamorphoses of Ovid together with an electronic edition of the poem.


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