By Amelia Ijiri, Adjunct Lecturer, Kyoto Sangyo University, and Betsy Lavolette, Associate Professor, Kyoto Sangyo University Introduction As teachers worldwide retooled to move classes online, formal and informal teacher resources for professional development (PD) experienced unprecedented growth. This
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By Lauren Taylor, Spanish Teacher, Frisco Independent School District, Frisco, TX Introduction This year, I find myself in the unique position of teaching both virtual and face-to-face classes and it has forced me to analyze the way that I design
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By Florencia Henshaw, Ph.D., Director of Advanced Spanish, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign As someone who gives workshops on technology integration and has a site with over 130 tech tools listed in it, one of the questions I am most frequently
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By Andres Antonio Daniel Labra, Saint Louis University The Podcast Project is a collaborative online resource designed by a team of graduate students and faculty from the Language Resource Center at Saint Louis University. The platform, which uses WordPress and
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By Svetlana Korshunova, Princeton University Many heritage students cite “identity” as the principal reason for studying the language; they come to class to explore and assess the deep-rooted cultural, emotional, and aesthetic values of their language against the broader social
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By Shannon Donnally Spasova, Michigan State University Many language teachers, especially those of us who teach languages with a different alphabet, have remained dependent on paper and pencil assignments for student homework. And, while there are a lot of good
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By Erin Frazier, Kanda University of International Studies Introduction The digital shift to online teaching has sometimes meant leaving some of our more interactive and engaging activities to the wayside as we adjust to the new format. This is especially
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By Kaitlin E. Thomas, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Spanish, Norwich University With national protests and unrest occurring simultaneous to the outbreak of the global pandemic COVID-19, 2020 was an exercise in maintaining pre-pandemic curricular momentum while adequately and appropriately addressing
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By Carmen Granda, Amherst College The pandemic has created many challenges in and outside of our classrooms. Although much professional development for instructors in the last months has been focused on how to design engaging virtual classes for our students
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By Laura Marshall, Assistant Director, Russian Flagship Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison Despite the many challenges that 2020 has presented, there are some silver linings for language learners and educators. This may seem counterintuitive to anyone who has pondered see-through masks
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By Sandhya Shanker, Director, Community Language School, Michigan State University, and Elizabeth Ablan, Graduate Assistant, Community Language School, Michigan State University Whirlwind. Curveball. Whiplash. Unexpected. Unprecedented. These were just a few of the words swirling around as we transitioned
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By Jonathan Risner, Associate Professor, Indiana University Bloomington For some six years, I have regularly taught a 300-level film analysis course in Spanish at Indiana University Bloomington. I structure the course in a way that the first half of the
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By Kevin Anzzolin, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Stout For most if not all educators in the United States, spring semester 2020 can be largely defined by a single but weighty word: “pivot.” By mid-March, the COVID-19 pandemic had forced us
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By Svitlana Malykhina and Nadiya Prokopyeva, Boston University Introduction BU Russian Poetry is a comprehensive multimedia Open Educational Resource (OER) where students read poetry and experiment in a laboratory for new forms of analysis while developing their
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