A Conference was held on October 12 and 13 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Cultura. It brought together colleagues in the foreign language field who had either developed a Cultura (or a Cultura-inspired project) in another institution and/or another language or were simply interested in finding out how to implement a similar telecollaborative project.
The conference was attended by 35 participants from abroad and the US who had come to share their own experiences, practices and questions.
The program offered a mixture of presentations and discussions designed to highlight the content and methodology of Cultura as well as the variety of issues involved when designing such a program.
After a welcoming message by Professor Jing Wang, Head of Foreign Languages and Literatures at MIT, Peter Patrikis, former Executive Director of the Consortium for Foreign Language Teaching and Learning, gave the opening speech, retracing the history of Cultura. The creators of the project presented the original version of the MIT-based Cultura, detailing its goals, content and methodology. Two presentations followed: one by Jim Crapotta and Jesus Suarez Garcia from Barnard College who developed a Cultura in Spanish (with a University in Spain) and the other by several faculty from Brown University. Those included: Beth Bauer who developed a Cultura in Spanish (with a University in Mexico), Lynne deBenedette who developed one in Russian (with a University in Russia) and Shoggy Waryn who helped establish and integrate those two projects at Brown. Several question and answer periods followed these presentations.
On Saturday morning, the Tech Fair allowed several participants (see the program) to concurrently show their own projects in small groups and Saturday afternoon was mostly devoted to a variety of group discussions about such topics as: the integration of Cultura in a curriculum, the role of the teacher and partners or future potential research. The Conference ended with a demonstration of the new Cultura tool and the official inauguration of the Cultura Community Site (in which you currently find yourself). Please feel free to use this site as often as you want and post any comment or question you would like on the discussion boards. This is our collective website!
Finally, the following photos taken during the conference by John Vitaglione, Director of Multimedia Design and Development at the LARC at San Diego State University (thank you John!), will give you a real flavor of the activities and energy generated during the conference.
