What do you do in the lab?
Filed Under Questions
Several times a week, prospective parents and curious onlookers pop their heads in the lab to see what is going on. It’s probably hard to tell, so I thought I’d write a quick post explaining the different areas of the lab and a general outline of activities.
As this diagram shows, there are four areas in the lab: a Welcome Area, an Instructional Area, a Project Area, and a Training Area.
In the WELCOME AREA, we have a Plasma TV for viewing movies in a cozy carpeted area. This is where lower school classes come to play games or watch videos and where the Classic Film Club sits during their screenings. Above the plasma TV, we have three displays that point to the hallway, which allow us to share with passersby some of what we are doing in the lab.
In the INSTRUCTIONAL AREA, we have one Teacher Station and 24 Student Stations. These are all Intel iMacs outfitted with Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, Apple’s pages, numbers, keynote, iTunes, GarageBand, iMovie, and iChat, and other goodies like Comic Life, Photo Booth, and Skype. We also have an overhead projector and speakers for showing movies and presentations to the class.
The INSTRUCTIONAL AREA features a unique piece of software called DiLL (DIgital Language Lab). This is what teachers use the most when they bring their classes to the lab. DiLL allows teachers to assign listening and speaking exercises to students. Students can listen to audio prompts and hold down the space bar (much like a walkie-talkie) to record their responses in the target language. These responses are then saved to a server and made accessible online, so that teachers can assess comprehension, pronunciation, and speaking skills. See this post for audio clips of what students hear when they are working in DiLL.
In the PROJECT AREA, students and teachers work in groups on multimedia projects. This area is outfitted with 6 22″ TV displays and 6 mac Minis, mounted on the back of each collaborative workstation. Headphones allow up to six students per station to listen to the their projects without disrupting others. All six of the computers are running the new Leopard operating system (Mac OS 10.5), Adobe CS3 products (i.e. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash), Apple iWork, and iLife software.
Finally, in the TRAINING AREA, we have two G5’s running Final Cut Pro for professional video editing. There are no language classes using this software, but the Filmmaking Club has taken advantage of it as well as iMovie and iStopMotion for some of their projects this year. Next to the G5’s are four more iMacs for teacher use. Teachers can scan materials and digitize cassette and video tapes. This is where I usually work with the teachers to train them on new software and work with them to plan new and exciting projects for the classroom.
All told, there are 43 desktop computers and 30 mobile laptops available to the World Language faculty to use with their classes.
With an average of thirty reservations per week, the lab is a busy place! Mix in parent-teacher conferences, independent study and testing, tutoring, and project-planning and you start to get the idea. There are usually two or more activities going on in the lab at any given time. It’s great fun and very stimulating to see so many students and teachers taking advantage of the space and these powerful tools.
Just to put the lab in perspective, many colleges do not have this kind of equipment and space at their disposal specifically devoted to language learning. We are truly lucky and deeply indebted to the many members of the Lab Community who have made and continue to make this resource a reality.
