As we all know the AP exam has been "suspended". Adriana Benvenuto attended a conference in Washington DC on June 13, 2009 that focused on the expansion of the teaching of Italian. All of the discussions concentrated on the "what" and not on the "how" of the present situation. The bottom line is the College Board wants more money and the Italian government is not providing any more money to support the AP exam. I am in the process of finding out the disposition of all the money that was collected through the Italian Language Foundation, and exactly how much College Board requires to put the AP Italian exam on line. As Paolo Rossi and Marilena Martello have iterated, it is up to us, the teachers, to find innovative ways to continue and extend the teaching of Italian because the bureaucratic representatives from Italy are really not providing the monetary support that we need. "Tutto fumo e niente arrosto" We need to look into private grants, Italian-American organizations, and US government grants to support our teaching, students and expansion of our programs

Article on Strategies for authenic language

Check out this article on teaching world languages; it ahs some good tech strategies that would be great for AP classes, but would work for all language levels.

http://www.edutopia.org/online-language-resources

Online AP class

In trying to think of ways to increase the number of students taking the AP Italian exam, I believe it should be feasible to create an on line AP course for those students who do not have an AP Italian class at there school. Students would have to sign-up and pay just like an on-line university class. (Money paid could go to subsidize the AP Italian program and compensate teachers who give on line students feedback on oral and written exercises)

Those who contribute to the creation of the program could use it to supplement the AP class they teach. I'm not sure about the logistics or legalities of creating an on-line program but I am sure there are many teachers out there who have more expertise in this area than I do, who could help with the technical aspects of the program. We could follow one of the already approved AP syllabus and create and audio-visual course that includes reading comprehension and grammar exercises with instant feedback, oral exercises and written exercises that get feedback from on-line teachers.

Students could create video or powerpoint projects on various cultural topics that could be posted on the AP course website for other to view and use as models or prototypes for their own work. This needs to be a collaborative effort. Feeback and ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks to those who made comments

Thank you to those who commented on the IPOD and MP3 use. You both had some very good ideas. I have to check out that phone recording system, sounds interesting.

More tech solutions for split classes

I just received your message and am writing to share our experiment with blended courses. Perhaps they can be adapted for AP. I am the chair of the department of Languages at the University of Connecticut (as well as a professor of Italian). While we are based on the main campus, we have several regional campuses and so we are experimenting with blended language courses. We are offering 2 hours of language on Interactive television (thus allowing students from 5 far away campuses to participate) and 2 additional hours per week integrating web2 technology, wikkis, blogs, google.docs, Nings, etcetera. The textbook we use is Parliamo Italaino, with Quia. The Quia site is accessible from remote locations and has videos and audios that are compatible with macs and pcs. Besides Italian, we are offering a Chinese course that follows this model and, by Fall 09, we will offer Arabic and French. We hope that, at a time of limited resources, this type of blended offering will allow us to achieve the cap necessary to keep the courses open. I will be happy to share more.
Norma Bouchard

Technology ideas for split classes

Per quanto riguarda il vostro desiderio di scambiarsi informazioni sull'insegnamento a livelli multipli, invito tutti a sentirsi in merito.
Piu` che creare due gruppi separati che lavorano in isolamento, la vera sfida in queste aule "ibride" e` quella di proporre materiali da affrontare in contemporanea (o meglio sequenza) a diversi livelli, nonche` quella di coinvolgere i piu` avanzati nell'infrastruttura, per il livello 4/AP come ripasso e consolidamento e per il livello 3 come apprendimento.

La sequenza delle immagini (picture sequence) e` l'esempio piu` ovvio.
Un'immagine e` bacino di parole, di frasi, di dialoghi, ecc. Si parte dall'input base per poi costruire forme piu` complesse via via.
Resta fondamentale la cura di aspetti tecnici pero`: gli studenti AP devono imparare a farlo entro i minuti concessi all'esame e curando l'aspetto della produzione orale in un contesto artificiale. Un programma gratis per la registrazione della voce con il cronometro e` Audacity che potete scaricare gratis da Internet ed e` di facile utilizzabilita` per registrare, ascoltare e salvare file audio, che poi possono essere ricevuti come allegati dall'insegnante o caricati sulla piattaforma didattica per la valutazione.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/ (per informazioni) e poi http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ (per scaricare il programma)

Questo puo` essere utile a chi non ha un laboratorio a scuola.

Possiamo continuare a sentirci in merito. Intanto cerco articoli per l'insegnamento in situazioni multi-livello: potrebbe essere interessante anche un approccio teorico da affiancare alla raccolta di testi.
From Teresa Fiore (Assistant Professor of Italian at CSULB)

Some technology ideas to use in a split class

If all the AP students have an Ipod or MP3 player or a phone that downloads music and CD selections, the students could download the exercises from the CD's that come with whatever AP practice book you are using. (I have Ace the AP Exam) Then they could then listen to the exercises and do the exercises connected with the oral practice. They could check each other work and come up with questions for the teacher so that we are addressing their specific needs. Some phones also have recording capability so they could record their responses to the picture description and the oral questions. While the AP students are working on their listening skills, teacher could be doing a separate lesson with the Italian 3 students.