Pre-conference Workshops

• 3rd Pre-conference Workshop: NLP in CALL
  New Light Penetrates or No Longer Pertinent?
  
  
• >XML Technologies for Language Learning
  
  
• Uses of web-enabled databases in CALL

• Project based Language Learning in a Multimedia classroom

XML Technologies for Language Learning

FEE 80 EUR
Maximum number of participants 25

This one day workshop will present XML technologies, with an emphasis on how they can be relevant for CALL. The main point is that much of CALL activity, indeed much of Humanities research activity, consists of creating annotations on text and multimedia, and XML technologies are admirably suited for building (or asking students to build) such annotations, from simple exercises to complex multi-dimensional cross-linked structures.

The first (and longer) part of the workshop will present essential XML technologies: XML and Namespaces, XML Document Type Definitions and schema languages, XSLT (language for transforming XML data) and XLink. The presentation will be practical and combined with hands-on exercises. The second (and shorter) part for the workshop will present a Web-based authoring tool for creating multimedia annotations, especially annotations to web pages and digital video. This authoring tool is the Web version of the desktop multimedia authoring tool [1] that has been in active use at several US colleges and universities since 1997; it has also been featured in the NYTimes technology section on November 12, 1998.

Tentative schedule

The Workshop Organizer

The workshop's organizer, Professor Alexander Nakhimovsky, has published extensively in the area of XML and Java programming. [2][3], both accessible from [4]. He is also a co-author of three Russian language textbooks and has written on the pedagogy of language teaching [5],[1].

References links:

[1] Alexander Nakhimovsky. "A Multimedia Authoring Tool for Language Instruction: Interactions of Pedagogy and Design". Journal of Educational Computing Research vol. 17(3) 261-274, 1997. Available also at http://csproj.colgate.edu/adnlinks/manna.pdf or http://csproj.colgate.edu/adnlinks/manna.ps.

[2] http://csproj.colgate.edu/conf.htm

[3] http://csproj.colgate.edu/CurPubs.htm

[4] http://csproj.colgate.edu/adn.htm

[5] http://csproj.colgate.edu/RussPubs.htm