We want to exchange ideas about educational technology in language and cultural acquisition. Using our peer language tandem web platform, LinguaeLive.ca as an example, we will share our own experiences with transnational peer learning. We want to encourage discussion and debate about technology as enrichment (rather than replacement) of the classroom, deep internationalization, and teaching and learning across cultural difference.

LinguaeLive is a free web platform founded by Professor Jennifer Ruth Hosek in Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Queen’s University that is being developed by a team including Mayu Takasaki, also of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

LinguaeLive allows teachers to connect their students to practice each other’s languages in peer e-tandems. The site allows any instructor to connect with colleagues teaching complementary language classes across the globe. These instructors can then link their students for peer-to-peer communication. LinguaeLive.ca can help students improve their language and cultural skills and make connections abroad and therefore is an excellent example of the use of technology to enhance transnational teaching and learning.

This session is proposed by Dr. Jennifer Hosek and Dr. Mayu Takasaki of the Languages, Literature, and Cultures Department at Queen’s.

Clare joins us from Classics at Queen’s!

I would like to learn more about photography and photo manipulation (photoshop). I don’t have that many skills to share because I am just starting out with graduate work, but my project involves infra-red photography of ancient papyrus documents which allows the ink to be seen more clearly on the image than is possible in visible light. I also use online databases in my research. Currently I am considering the best way to catalogue/organize hundreds of images and descriptions of papyri. Becoming more proficient with technology in general would be excellent for me, and I am interested to see what other work people are doing with their research involving technology.

I am a graduate student at Queen’s University in Classics. My research is in papyrology and involves using infra-red photography to read damaged, stained and/or faded ink on papyrus. I have always admired those who have moved forward with projects seemingly ahead of their time: for example, in the Classics, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae founded by Marianne McDonald (working with Theodore Brunner and David Packard) created a searchable database of Ancient Greek texts, begun in 1972!

Marc has already proposed a fantastic session on a “paper Twitter” and we’re delighted that he will be bringing his research and brain to THATCamp QueensU all the way from Littératures francophones et résonances médiatiques at Concordia!

My name is Marc Rowley, and I am a Master’s student at Concordia University in Littératures francophones et résonances médiatiques. My thesis research surrounds the question of Twitter as a medium for social critique, specifically comparing and contrasting this hypertextual form to traditional media such as comedic novels, in order to identify commonalities and divergences in their practices and effects on readers. I hope to attend THATCamp to broaden my network of new media researchers, and to realize an artistic project: the creation of a “paper Twitter”, which will help participants, myself included, more clearly identify which structures on Twitter are universal properties of human communication, and which are inseparable from its hypertextual form….I entered the MA program in Littératures francophones et résonances médiatiques in September 2012, and have decided to focus my research on the social critique capacity of Twitter: specifically, to compare and contrast this type of critique with that found in literary forms throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the comedic novel. Outside of school, my interests include theatre (both creation and consumption), writing (mostly essays, with some creative projects as well), eating locally, and lots (lots) of reading (from Tolkein to Rowling to Houllebecq)

Sarah joins us from English at Queen’s!

I am a third-year undergraduate student at Queen’s University, and especially enjoy studying literature from the Victorian Era. During the summer, I work for an organization that runs programs for children that involve literature and storytelling, and am involved in documenting their experiences online.