The foreign languages and literatures section (FLL) and the 11-university Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning (CLTL) are conducting a national conference titled "Transformations: Technology, Foreign Languages, and Undergraduate Education" at MIT on October 23-25.
The conference sessions on Friday and Saturday will be held in the Wong Auditorium of the Tang Center, and a Tech Fair on Sunday from 9am-noon will take place in the new Language Learning and Resource Center (Rm 16-644).
Intended for foreign language faculty, administrators and directors of humanities computing and language laboratories, the conference seeks to examine the transformations effected by the web and other multimedia computer technology. This technology is expanding the foreign language classroom into virtual environments and providing links to communities around the world, but also creating demands on teachers and institutions that are working to incorporate it into teaching and learning.
Opening remarks will be delivered at 3pm on Friday by Professor Suzanne Flynn, head of FLL; Professor Philip Khoury, dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science; and Peter Patrikis of the CLTL.
Conference speakers from MIT will be Professor Henry Jenkins of literature and senior lecturer Gilberte Furstenberg and research associate Thomas Thornton of FLL. Faculty members from eight universities will also speak. Almost 200 participants representing more than 20 languages have registered from more than 80 colleges and universities in the US and several other countries.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 21, 1998.
