General Information
Faculty and consortia all around the country and the world are daily creating useful instructional materials that either take advantage of resources on the Web and/or that reside in the Web environment. Theoretically, these Web situated materials should then be accessible to other instructors wherever they happen to live and teach. Unfortunately, the reality is that with the sheer magnitude and on-going growth of the Internet, these resources are not readily located, identified, or accessed. One of the most vociferous complaints made by teachers is the amount of time it takes to locate useful Web based materials. Language teachers are facing the same dilemma that other Internet users are encountering that of organizing the multitudinous, non-centralized resources in a way that allows efficient and effective use. One approach to resolving this dilemma has been in the development of collections of language-related Web sites; some incredibly comprehensive and well-organized collections have been created (examples listed below). This approach, however, simply replicates the existing proliferation model---instead of innumerable individual Web pages, we now have rapidly multiplying collections of Web pages. Furthermore, the comprehensiveness of these collections in itself can be an impediment when one is looking specifically for language learning materials. In addition, materials developers currently have no way of tagging their materials to direct search engines to them to facilitate cross-utilization.
The mission of GEM’s Path to Language Materials (PLM) is to create a centrally accessible point on the Internet--- a portal--- through which language instructors can search, browse and share appropriate instructional materials. PLM will serve as the language "path" for the Department of Education’s umbrella portal, the Gateway for Educational Materials (GEM). As with GEM, success in the PLM endeavor requires joint participation by the full community of language professionals including university professors, K-12 teachers, materials developers, and non-profit organizations in both the shaping of this vital resource and in its dissemination. We as a community will be able to "tag" appropriate resources so that they can be collected, connected and searched for centrally. Together we will be able to utilize and disseminate a common "metadata" system to organize language learning resources on the Web. In this way, PLM will serve to strengthen effective and efficient use of Web based resources within the language teaching community. For more information on PLM, its sponsoring institution, meeting transcripts and discussion points, see: http://www.csulb.edu/~krocap/plm/.
(Pre-) Council Activity: Path to Language Resources (PLM)
Other Member(s): Judi Franz (UC Irvine), Lisa Layne (Pepperdine University), Lawrence Glatz (U of Denver) Also: Tomas Garcia (LAUSD), Suzanne Orcutt (Stanford University), Kevin Rocap (PSRTEC, CSU Long Beach), Myron Schirer (Friends University), Nawal Moussa (Candian Foreign Services Institute)
A planning meeting was held on Wednesday, May 17th which brought together a diverse group of language educators including folks such as Joy Peyton (CAL), Nancy Morgan (Gateway to Educational Resources), Katherine Ingold (NFLRC/LangNet), Peter Liddell (Eurocall), Jenise Rowecamp and Marlene Johnshoy (CARLA), and Kazumi Hatasa (Purdue) among others. Representatives from IALL, CALICO, some of the AATs, Bob Peckham, Mike Ledgerwood and others involved in language teaching and technology were also invited (see invitation below).
The goal of the meeting was to strategize ways to bring to reality a method for organizing language teaching and learning materials on the web. We had basically pre-established that the Department of Education’s "Gateway to Educational Materials" (GEM) would be the most effective way to realize this goal given its federal funding, established infrastructure, and commitment of human and other resources required to actually "get the job done". Furthermore, as the Dept. of Ed’s focal effort in organizing instructional materials, there is an underlying assumption that other federally funded activities (FIPSE grants and others) will be directed in the future to coordinate their efforts with GEM. Rather than create a "new parallel wheel", and without the same access to resources, we felt that supporting GEM as it’s "pathway" or "arm" or "link" specifically to language materials would be the most productive way to direct our efforts.
Pacific Southwest Regional Technology in Education Consortium
Dear Colleague,
I am writing with a special invitation for you to participate in an exciting and, we hope you'll agree, an important initiative to help identify, collect and catalogue web-based language resources for teachers. We are inviting you to a daylong information sharing and planning meeting for this initiative to be held from 8 AM to 3:30 PM May 17 in Culver City, California. Your invitation to attend includes an offer to cover your travel (for out-of-area guests) and one-night of accommodations for the meeting (the night of May 16). This letter provides more detailed information about the purposes and specifics of the initiative and the organizers of this meeting.
A primary purpose for this initiative is to improve both K-12 and adult language learning by helping to improve the ability to search, browse and retrieve quality web-based resources designed for and by language teachers. As an expert and leader in the arena of foreign languages, bilingual education, TESOL, deaf education and/or world languages you bring critical knowledge and experience for helping to develop and critique this emerging initiative as well as for coordinating our collective efforts and helping us all to build on existing resources rather than "re-inventing the modem."
Allow me to briefly introduce myself and other organizers/facilitators of this meeting. My name is Kevin Rocap and I am the Director of Program and Development for the Center for Language Minority Education and Research (CLMER) at California State University, Long Beach. In that role I direct two U.S. Department of Education funded projects: the Pacific Southwest Regional Technology in Education Consortium (PSRTEC), funded by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), and the Equity through Distributed Education Network (Project EDEN) funded by the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE).
These projects enjoy a joint mission for integrating meaningful use of technology into K-12 education and adult literacy, with Project EDEN having a specialized focus on teacher pre-service (to prepare tomorrow's teachers to use technology). Brochures for these projects are enclosed for your information. These projects are supporting travel, accommodations and meeting logistics for participants. We have a keen interest in collaborating to identify and improve access to resources for high quality multilingual, multicultural and standards-based education. And, as Secretary of Education Richard Riley does, we feel that the opportunity to learn multiple languages is an important standard for all learners. For many learners, having access to primary and second language learning opportunities is also, significantly, a key to equitable education. It is this emphasis of our work that spurs us to host this meeting.
While our Center is hosting this meeting as apropos to the joint missions of our funded technology projects and our Center mission, this initiative is also, and importantly, an effort organized by a group of doctoral students in Educational Technology at Pepperdine University (of which I am one) who share research and professional interests in the arena of appropriate technology uses for language learning, acquisition and development. We recognize this as an opportunity to do outreach to our shared networks of contacts from among key language education agencies and organizations, and to invite other key individuals and organizations to participate as well, in order to facilitate an opportunity for inclusive planning and collaboration among key stakeholders.
Thus, a related purpose of this meeting is to come together from across our respective, but overlapping, disciplines such as foreign languages, bilingual education, ESL/ESOL, deaf education and world languages to share information and strategies that can contribute to optimizing the usefulness of the web for a variety of language teachers working in a variety of venues. In this meeting we would like to share information and strategies regarding what we collectively understand to be the current "state-of-the-art" in locating language resources for teachers on the web, to engage in dialogue about current and possible outreach/education strategies to our respective constituents/members/clients in this regard and to talk about current and potential web tool/search engine/portal development to help improve the usefulness of the web to language teachers.
In this vein we will also be sharing (and seeking) information about ways that individuals and organizations can help to catalogue web pages and collections through appropriate use of metadata (information about the resources that makes locating them easier, e.g., author, subject, title, languages, etc.), metatagging (a process for including metadata in the HTML of web pages/sites) and databases of web addresses, or "collections," drawn from among our colleagues in our respective disciplines/practices, or within and through our respective organizations. This emphasis will be supported by linkages to and information about relevant ERIC initiatives and the GEM Project (the gateway to educational materials on the web) as key, related, federally-funded information organization and retrieval projects.
The important issues in an endeavor like this, as many of you are already well aware, are not fundamentally technical, but human and organizational. For example, the understanding and development of appropriate "control vocabularies" that both honor the content of information and help make it more easily accessible involves human interpretive judgment that spans disciplines and systems of meaning. We expect dialogue and planning to be an enlightening and engaging time for all. And, in that good spirit, we hope that you will be able to join us and help us all gain a deeper understanding of how language learning is or could be changing in a webbed world!
Enclosed please find more information about this initiative provided by Pepperdine doctoral student organizers, with a partial listing of invited organizations.
We hope that you will join us. We would appreciate your RSVP, in any case, to Yadira Guillen at (562) 985-5806 by May 1, 2000. Once confirmed, we will provide you with information for setting up travel arrangements through our campus travel agency. We anticipate that out-of-town guests will be staying at the Wyndham Hotel in Culver City (to be confirmed). Also, please feel free to contact me with questions/comments. I can be reached at the number above and by e-mail: krocap@csulb.edu. We look forward to seeing you on May 17.
Sincerely,
Kevin B. Rocap, Ed.M.
Director, Program and Development, CLMER
Director, PSRTEC and Project EDEN
Dear Language Educators:
We are a group of professionals from California State University Long Beach, Stanford University, The Friends University, and Los Angeles City Unified School District who would like to extend an invitation to collaborate on a doctoral project we are undertaking through our program at Pepperdine University. We propose to facilitate a gathering of language professionals including university professors, K-12 teachers, materials developers, and non-profit organizations, to help shape and create a viable Internet portal/resource that meets the needs of the language teaching community. Please see the attached mission statement for our joint venture.
We, in collaboration with the PSRTEC and Project EDEN, would like to invite you to attend an open planning session to be held in Culver City (see attached letter). We perceive your ideas and guidance as paramount to the success of this venture along with other language educators who preliminarily represent:
American Association of Teachers (AAT)
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
California Association of Bilingual Educators (CABE)
CALICO
CARLA
ERIC
IALL
Departments and Language Centers at various colleges and universities
Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS)
National Association for the Education and Advancement of Vietnamese, Laotians,
Hmong and Cambodians (NAFEA)
National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education (NCBE)
National Foreign Language Resource Center
TESL
TESOL
US Department of Education
IALL’s role in relation to this project can lie at one of a number of points on a continuum--- from simply providing information about PLM through its electronic and non-electronic publications as a service to its membership, to serving, perhaps, as a collection point for individuals who may have one or a few bits of instructional materials and thus don’t fit clearly within the scope of the collections that GEM typically deals with. That is, GEM looks for institutional submissions, or ---if from an individual --- collections of materials. As such, it fails--- as it currently exists--- to capture those individual or small cluster of faculty-developed gems that lie throughout the Internet. IALL could serve both itself and its membership by providing an institutional affiliation for those "gems". A particular advantage to this approach is that it could contribute significantly to IALL’s efforts to outreach to K-12 folks.