Faculty Projects by Alphabetical Order

Web-based course organizer.
For first-year German. Click here to view the website.

Steve Blackburn (Arabic, formerly of Trinity C.)

Web page for Arabic course
This project will actualize annotated versions segments of the Qur'an and Hadith for third year students of Arabic at Trinity College

Patrice Brodeur (Arabic, Connecticut C.)

Introduction to the Islamic Tradition
This project is the first phase of a long-term project entitled "Islamic Languages Website". The first phase of this project aims to present the Arabic language so central to the study of Islam because of the Quranic revelation as well as the early development of sacred texts such as Hadith collections and Shari'ah legal compendia. Visual examples of these various written sources combined with appropriate readings will enhance students' exposure to the primary source material of the Islamic tradition in their original Arabic language. A report on the progress of this project is available.

Dario Del Puppo (Italian, Trinity C.)

Student-designed critical editions of a text using multimedia
On the Nature of Texts, offered in Spring 1999, deals with the history of manuscript and book production from antiquity to the present. Rather than write a term paper, students created their own critical editions of a text. Clearly, the scope and depth of critical analysis reflects their learning curve, the limits of a one semester course, and the availability of primary resources. Using primarily FrontPage (and perhaps Annotext and Manna) students will create web pages with hyper links using images and sound (if necessary) to create their own abridged editions of a work. The aim is to have students act as editors of texts they reconstruct for a given audience. In doing so, they have to analyze closely the history of a text (and its most immediate context, the book).

Mary Devins (Italian, Connecticut C.)

Web page for Italian course
A web-based ten-week, introductory Italian course for adults that will include grammar, vocabulary, cultural notes and a reference section. Eventually the course will develop into a two-semester twenty-week course. Each week will include a vocabulary list, specific grammar points, cultural readings, interactive drills, and homework assignments that can be submitted and corrected via email thus saving valuable classroom time. The reference section will have links to cities, museums, newspapers, radio stations, recipes and general tourist do's and don'ts. A report of the project is available.

Lin Domizio (Chinese, formerly of Connecticut C.)

Chinese fables annotated with HyperStudio
She is annotating a series of twelve Chinese fables with multimedia using HyperStudio. These materials are intended to help intermediate-level learners develop their listening comprehension and bring it to the advanced level. A report on the progress of this project is available.

Web-based cultural information for Chinese courses
Website that provides pedagogical information for various Chinese courses (Chinese 309, 303, 405, 406, and Chinese Calligraphy). One portion of the website will be dedicated to exploring ways of displaying Chinese text through the use of Java programming techniques (i.e.: Applet Author) that allow Chinese text to be displayed as a GIF image on a web page.

Charlie Egan, Tek-Wah King, and Lin Domizio (Chinese, Connecticut C.)

Course on Multimedia Chinese
They created a new course in multimedia chinese, in which students learned to work with word processing programs, multimedia and the internet in Chinese. A full report, written by Prof. Domizio, is available.

Mary Louise Ennis (French, Wesleyan U.)

The Painter and French Fiction
"French Fairy Tales: Of Pixies, Parodies, and Politics": The use of computer-based communication through e-mail and online discussion boards, Internet Treasure Hunt, and students' websites to produce "net gains" that reach beyond classroom time and space.

The Painter and French Fiction is similar to the project developed for the course on fairy tales, but it was offered in French and with online PowerPoint presentations developed with student input.

MaryLouise Ennis and Catherine Ostrow (French, Wesleyan U.)

Computerized dictations for French in Action
They are using ERRATA to create computerized dictations to accompany the textbook French in Action.

Octavio Flores (Spanish, Wesleyan U.)

Digitized video for teaching preterite vs imperfect in Spanish
Project intended to create pedagogical materials using digitized video for the teaching and evaluation of the aspectual differences between the Spanish preterit and the imperfect. It will also serve as a pilot project regarding the level of difficulty of digitizing medium size (5-8 minutes) video segments and the delivery to the students.

Elena Fossa and Giuliana Palma (Italian, Trinity College Rome Campus)

Web-based cultural information for Trinity students in Italy
Web-based information on the culture of Italy to be used by students studying at Trinity's Rome campus. It is hoped that these materials will make the students' experiences more meaningful and allow the Rome and Hartford campuses to form a stronger bond. A report of the project is available.

Yoshimi Fukuda (Japanese, Trinity C.)

XMediaEngine exercises for first-year Japanese
He used the xMedia Engine QTDictation template to create exercises to accompany the textbook An Introduction to Modern Japanese which is used in beginning and intermediate Japanese courses at Trinity. The exercises are intended to help students develop their listening and writing skills. A more detailed description of the project and its results is available.

Wilfredo Hernández, Zaira Rivera Casellas (Spanish, Trinity C. and Wesleyan U.)

Web-based assistance for reading poetry in Spanish
Consortial project designed to facilitate the reading of poetry and the understanding of terms related to the study of poetry at the intermediate and advanced level. The project will consist of a web-based interactive glossary of poetry terminology and poem annotations that will go beyond traditional glossing since the web allows richer and more various forms of annotations. A report of the project is available.

Tek-Wah King (Chinese, Connecticut C.)

Digital materials for first-year Chinese
His grant allowed him to experiment with digitized audio in cooperation with Maria Montzolis in the Connecticut College Language Lab. The audio he chose accompanies A Text for a Changing China and will be provided to Connecticut College Chinese students via the World Wide Web in RealMedia format. The project report is available.

Julia Kushigian (Spanish, Connecticut C.)

Multimedia annotation of historical texts for Spanish
She and her advanced students developed multimedia materials using ERRATA to supplement the historical texts which they read.

Culture for low-intermediate Spanish using multimedia
She developed multimedia materials with the xMedia Engine to be used in a course for "false beginners." The materials comprise a "virtual museum" where students can improve their language skills while learning about artists and their works within a historical and cultural context. This project was recently extended with the cooperation of Prof. Kushigian's colleague, Cristina Hernandez and a report on the progress has been submitted.

Sonia Lee (French, Trinity C.)

Digital video segments for a French course on film
She is creating a collection of images and digitized video clips, annotated in French and English, to help the students in her film courses better understand and discuss the technical aspects of the visual art of film.

Kenneth Lloyd-Jones (French, Trinity C.)

Translation exercises using Errata
He worked with ERRATA on translation exercises.

Naogan Ma and Shaozhong Ma (Chinese, Trinity C.)

Chinese Character Recognition
They are developing exercises to help students discrimate between easily confused Chinese characters. These exercises, based on a HyperCard template, will help learners of Chinese in to recognize these characters, pronounce them properly and to learn their meanings. A progress report is available.

Jose Lopez-Marron (Spanish, Connecticut C.)

Web pages for Business Spanish
The purpose of this project is creating a web page that will include the Marketing/ Public Relations/ Accounting projects created by the students of the Business Spanish for Global Communication course at Connecticut College as their final project during the 1999 Spring semester. The class of sixteen students was divided into four groups, each group putting together a marketing mix, a publicity campaign, and an accounting report for a product to be sold to a Spanish-speaking public in either Latin America or within the United States.

Seiji Naito (Japanese, Wesleyan U.)

Web-Based Multimedia for Japanese
He is creating web-based multimedia materials based on videoclips from authentic Japanese TV programs and movies. His project will include drills, exercises and quizzes in addition to the presentation of the materials with glosses and other annotations.

Catherine Ostrow (French, Wesleyan U.)

Pilot Project to Digitize Audio
She is participating in the audio digitizing pilot project at Wesleyan. She will participate in the digitization of the materials for her French 106 course. The CTW Mellon Project, along with Information Technology Services is developing procedures for the delivery of digitized audio in preparation for Wesleyan's move to digital audio (funded in part by a Keck grant) beginning in summer 1998. A report of the project is available.

Giuliana Palma (Italian, Trinity C.)

Multimedia for Intermediate Italian
She developed multimedia presentations which highlighted and interrelated the themes and language used in novels, poems, plays, films and music which she presented in her intermediate Italian course.

Levana Polate (Hebrew, Trinity C. & Wesleyan U.)

Declaration of Independence
Small project to incorporate into all her Hebrew classes a study of Israel's Declaration of Independence using xMedia Engine.

The goals are to:

• acquaint students of all levels with the historical events that led to the Declaration of the State of Israel
• familiarize students with the principles stated in the document
• have students use this study to broaden their listening and pronunciation skills
• have students broaden their comprehension skills
• have students gain a deeper understanding of Israeli culture and history

The goals for this project are to:

• make the story accessible to Hebrew 201 and higher level students,
• familiarize students with two poems of Hannah Senesh
• introduce historical and cultural elements of the period,
• have students continue to develop listening and pronunciation skills,
• have students continue to develop comprehension skills,
• familiarize students with some components of Hebrew syntax.

Annotation of "Hatikvah"
Further Mellon project grants have allowed her to use MacGALT to annotate the Israeli national Anthem, "Hatikvah". A report of the project is available.

Annotation of "The Wall"
Using MacGALT, she annotated Yosi Gamzu's Israeli song "The Wall". A report of the project is available.

Annotation of "Sheer Lashalom"
A Mellon project grant allowed her to annote the protest song "Sheer Lashalom" (Song for Peace) using MacGALT. A report of the project is available.

Annotation of the poem "Isaac"
Using MacGALT, she annotated Yehuda Amichai's "An Arab Shepherd Searching for his Goat on Mount Zion".

Multimedia reading of playlet: Politika
Levana wrote a short play about an Israeli couple living in New York during the Gulf War; this play was performed and videotaped by students and will later be digitized and annotated using MANNA. Finally, she will do a project on Sarah Ahronson, based on a book by Devorah Omer.

Annotation of video "No problem"
Work with digitized segments of a video tape that portrays new immigrants to Israel in real life situations. The goal is to expose first year Hebrew students to vernacular Hebrew. The project will include transcript of the narrative and dialogues, multimedia annotations, glossary, as well as written and spoken exercises.

Maps & cities
Map based project intended to give students of Hebrew an insight in the evolution of the State of Israel over the past fifty years. This will be mostly based on the use of maps but will also include video, digitized audio and text as well as Hebrew and geographical exercises.

Multimedia reading of playlet: "The Patriot"
Playlet written by Levana Polate to designed to illustrate the different political positions in Israel towards the Peace Process. This project will be based on the digitized video of this playlet that will be annotated, glossed and transcribed. Additional exercises will be included to enhance retention of information.

Ana Pérez-Gironés (Spanish, Wesleyan U.)

Web-based archive of multimedia pedagogical materials.
She is creating a database of pictures, texts exercises and other materials for use in Spanish courses.

Pilot project to digitize audio
She conducted a pilot project involving her Intermediate Spanish courses to develop procedures for the delivery of digitized audio.The project had the cooperation of Wesleyan's Information Technology Services and the CTW Mellon Project, and additional support from a Keck grant. The project was tied to the transition from analog to computer undergone by Wesleyan's Language Laboratory during the summer of 1998. A report of the project is available.

Ana Pérez-Gironés & Róger Sánchez-Berroa (Spanish, Wesleyan U.)

Use of electronic mail and web in Spanish language courses
They explored the possibilities presented by electronic mail, the World Wide Web and chat sessions to promote and improve the communication skills of their students. A report of the project is available. View the course website!

Zaira Rivera-Casellas (Spanish, Trinity C.)

Annotation of "Garabatos" using xMediaEngine.
She is annotating the Pedro Juan Soto's short story "Garabatos" with multimedia using MacGALT. She hopes that the materials she develops will allow students and instructors of Spanish alike to better understand the Puerto Rican experience in the United States.

Michael Roberts (Classics, Wesleyan U.)

Web-Based Ovid
He is developing a web-based presentation of the story of Apollo and Daphne from Ovid's Metmorphoses which includes a glossary, annotations, a bibliography and audio and visual materials.

Yoshiko Samuel (Japanese, Wesleyan U.)

Situational Conversation in Japanese
She received funding to photograph and digitize materials to be used in her courses. A report of the project is available.

King-Fai Tam (Chinese, Trinity C.)

Annotation of Chinese literary essays
He is creating a reader of fifty literary essays written from 1919 to 1949. He is translating these works as well as annotating them with vocabulary, grammar and cultural notes and incorporating audio and video clips. Pre- and post-reading exercises and activities will also be made available.

Tim Vance (Japanese, Connecticut C.)

Annotation of Japanese materials using Guided Reading and Director
He augmented the materials he developed using the Guided Reading template. He used Director to allow more sophisticated annotations and more elegant display of Japanese on-screen.

Melissa Vogelsang (formerly of Connecticut C.), Annemie Arnold (Wesleyan U.), Johannes Evelein (Trinity C.), Vera Grant (Wesleyan U.)

German vocabulary database
They are creating a database of German words with illustrations and sound. This database will be used as a source for exercises to be used in intermediate-level German. Future projects include expanding this database to include Russian and Hebrew as well as other languages. This group recently received a grant from Ameritech to continue this work with Denison College.

Nancy Birch Wagner (German, Trinity C.)

Multimedia presentation of the life of August Sander
She is integrating pictures, audio, video and text materials into a presentation on the life and work of August Sander. These materials will include her videotaped interviews with Sander's daughter. She recently received additional funding to continue her research for this project in Germany. A report of the project is available.

Rieko Wagoner (Japanese, Trinity C.)

Japanese Verb Conjugation Drill
She is creating a series of vocabulary drill cards which incorporate audio for use with An Introduction to Japanese, the book she uses in the beginning and intermediate Japanese classes. A report of the project is available.

Françoise Weaver (French, Trinity C.)

Website for a course on spoken French
She is writing a vocabulary manual which covers topics in the French daily press and delivering this manual over the World Wide Web.

Continuation of a web site designed for a spoken French course.
Françoise Weaver will improve her current web site by making some technical improvements (i.e.: better organizing of the information on the pages, facilitating navigation through pages), adding more content to current chapters and add new ones. She also plans on increasing the multimedia aspect of the website by using more audio. A report of the project is available.

Xiaomiao Zhu (Wesleyan U.), Lin Domizio (Connecticut C.), Hsiao-Ching Hsu (Wesleyan U.), Tek-Wah King (Connecticut C.) and Naogan Ma (Trinity C.)

Multimedia Textbook
They have been working on a computer-based multimedia textbook for first-year Chinese.

Xiaomiao Zhu (Chinese, Trinity C. and Wesleyan U.)

Pronunciation drills for first-year Chinese
Consortial project based on the development of pronunciation drills for a first semester Chinese course, using Echo, an Hypercard based application that was created at Wesleyan. The project consist sof writing 5 drills for the introductory part and one drill for each of the 11 lessons.

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