Report from the 2014 CALICO with IALLT Conference
By Edwige Simon, Foreign Language Technology Coordinator at the Anderson Language & Technology Center, the University of Colorado Boulder.
The 2014 Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) conference was hosted by Ohio University (Athens) May 6-10. This year’s theme was “Open, Online, Massive: The Future of Language Learning?”
(University of Prince Edward Island)
On Wednesday evening, keynote speaker David Cormier (Manager of web communications and innovations at the University of Prince Edward Island) kicked off the conference with a thought-provoking talk entitled Teaching and Learning in a World of Abundance in which he discussed the affordances of MOOCS as a disruptive and unique educational innovation and the challenge of choosing from the abundance of resources available to educators today.
Throughout the conference, more than 200 faculty, language educators and language center professionals showcased their latest work in the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning through 11 pre and post conference workshops, over a 120 sessions and 20 digital poster presentations. The sessions covered a wide range of topics, including MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning), gaming in language education, language MOOCS, professional development, OERS, CALL research, learning analytics, as well as issues pertaining to hybrid and online language learning.
Between sessions, attendees visited the exhibition hall to (re)discover organizations such as the Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR), the International Association for Language Learning Technology (IALLT), the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL), the Language Acquisition Resource Center (LARC), OWL Testing software, EUROCALL and Rosetta Stone, primary sponsor for the conference this year.
Next year’s conference will be held by the University of Colorado Boulder Language & Technology Center (ALTEC), home of the FLTMAG. Stay tuned for more information about dates, deadlines, conference themes and travel information!
