Tucker Multimedia Center for foreign languages Blog and Forum

The TMC hosted presentations over the weekend that showcased preliminary looks at honors theses and research topics. 

An overview of the presenters:

Sarah Keckler ‘10 is translating a popular Japanese novel into English.  The novel was written on a cell phone,  like five of the ten 2007 best-selling  novels in Japan.  Her thesis will explore the genre as a whole, including its implications for Japanese society and a study of the authors and publishing process. Keckler is double-majoring in Business Administration and East Asian Languages and Literatures, with a concentration in Japanese.

Nicholas D. Lanoue ‘12 presented on the cultural role of European football (soccer) in Germany, focusing on the 2006 World Cup.  His research project explained the organization of the German Bundesliga and addressed the phenomena of German regionalism and the revitalization of German nationalism at the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Lanoue is triple-majoring in Accounting, German, and Philosophy in preparation for a career in international finance.

Kelsey Wright ‘10 presented her thesis project, which investigates the influence of  the regional Andalusian culture on the works of Spanish authors from this region. The project especially emphasizes representation in poetry. Wright is a Mathematics and Spanish double-major.

Dr. Cristina Pinto-Bailey discussed the importance of Portuguese as a world language in countries such as Angola, Mozambique, East Timor, and Brazil, with a focus of Brazil as an emerging power in the Western Hemisphere.  She also presented an overview of the new Portuguese program at W&L.

 

Middle of the semester means mid-term examinations in the TMC.  And in preparation, there are audio exercises to do, videos to view, and workbook activities to complete prior to asking the TMC Assistant for the exam.

TMC Technical Assistant Tracy Richardson (Class of 2011) from Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA,  was interviewed by reporters from France’s TV5 while attending classes at the Alliance Française in Paris where she is doing a semester abroad.  TV5 is celebrating its 25th year on the air.  See the news story at  –  http://www.tv5.org/TV5Site/publication/galerie-285-16-TV5MONDE_et_les_Alliances_francaises.htm

  

In this workshop, participants took a look at how world language educators are using a wide variety of Web 2.0 platforms to communicate collaboratively among themselves and with their students.  Examples included blogs, wikis, Nings, social bookmarking, microblogging (most famously, Twitter), podcasting and vodcasting (aka YouTube/DailyMotion).  

Using an easy to follow template, participants divided into work groups in which they explored one of these platforms in greater depth.  They then created a Jing (free screen capture + voice recording) to explain what their platform was and demonstrate how to use it.

Steve Geinitz visited the TMC recently to talk about “Tell Me More”, a highly sophisticated language-learning platform.

Who knew that what started out 16 years ago as the Tucker Multimedia Center with the first Culpepper grant would have evolved into such a flourishing hub of campus activity? And now that we have our own blog, we’ve really moved into the 21st century. Writing this first blog post makes us feel a little sentimental, so to start out we thought we’d reach into the archives and share a little pictoral history of that familiar place on the fourth floor of Tucker hall. Enjoy.

(click pictures to enlarge) 

In the beginning…

     

 

 

Kickin’ it old school…

   

 

 

TMC Life…

  

 

 

NO FOOD OR DRINK…

  

 

 

The first installation of Sanako (and a familiar face)…

 

 

 

Some former TMC assistants…

 

 

We hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip back in time. Stay tuned for future posts.

TMC AOD