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Prof creates on-line Spanish workbook
Students determined to learn Spanish can practise their lessons on-line using an interactive program designed by professor Gary Aitken.
Aitken has developed an electronic workbook students can now call up on the Internet to practise what they've learned in class. His program is textbook specific, unlike the generic language-learning software program the publisher supplies with the book, says Aitken.
Using a series of colored images, Aitken prompts students to identify objects and compose dialogue in boxes underneath the pictures all based on their lessons. The "program exists as a stand-alone complement" to lessons, language labs and workbooks, says Aitken. He created it to reinforce what they have just learned. "I'm a firm believer in the visual aspect of learning to create context and memory hooks."
Over two years, Aitken painstakingly cut, pasted and manipulated electronic clip art to draw everyday objects and situations. He has produced 85 screens of boxed images to match the 14 lessons in publisher Prentice Hall's Arriba. Underneath each image, students can write their answers, then check below against a list of correct responses. The exercises are without reference to English so students "can more quickly associate the Spanish word to the object without English intervening."
The chair of the Hispanic section of Modern Languages and Literature tackled this project after abandoning a bigger one. "We teachers seem to think we all have our own textbooks inside us." He had a contract to develop a language text but abandoned it after discovering the cost of developing accompanying software. "I decided I was not going to leave it alone, I'd done too much, I would develop the software myself." He did on a Macintosh computer using SuperCard Roadster software. There are still a few bugs to work out to make it work smoothly on ordinary PCs. "I didn't think I would get this far." Far enough that students are already going to the Internet address and using the program. "This is distance learning!" Anyone anywhere in the world will be able to access the program on the Internet and use it, he says. "I want to make it freely available on the Web to everyone in North America." Fellow Spanish professors at other universities are chomping at the bit for the address and Aitken hopes to demonstrate it at upcoming conferences. "I hope the publisher endorses it as a complementary resource," he says of a program based on Arriba but uniquely his. "There is not one single element that isn't mine." He wants to retain copyright control because he wants the right to change it. And he doesn't expect to make money from the program. In the meantime, Trent's Web developer Michael Young is developing a "splash" page to introduce the program and provide links for users to a plug-in they need to download before they can start it. (If you don't want to wait, download the plug-in Roadster from the www.allegiant.com site, then go to www.trentu.ca/academic/modernlanguages/spanish/Masarriba.html.
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Last updated: November 20, 1997