Much has happened in the world of moving pictures since John Barnes Linnett invented “flip books” in 1868, and Thomas Edison and William Dickson invented the Kinetoscope and Kinetograph to view and record moving pictures, respectively, around 1890. Similarly, foreign language education has made great strides since the supremacy of grammar-translation was seriously challenged in the twentieth century by the needs of those who adopted the Direct Method, Audiolingual Method, Communicative Language Teaching or other methods.

As we redefined in the 1990’s the rubrics by which we as language educators in the U.S. wanted to organize our language acquisition courses, we agreed upon the 5 C’s (communication, culture, connections, comparisons and community involvement). This keynote address will look at the underlying role and technological amplification of a “connections” concept in particular for organizing our materials, one that resembles a supplement to Howard Gardner’s list of multiple intelligences.

If Daniel Goleman can write about “emotional intelligence” and its many connections to our thinking and expressiveness, I see ample justification for exploring the myriad interconnections between our simulated or tangible physical environment, as represented here by geography, and its important impact on where we go, what we see, whom we meet, what we say or do and, ultimately, on who we become. And the real estate agent’s mantra echoes in the background, “location, location, location.” Along with some research on educators’ self-reported background in and familiarity with technology, I plan to explore the role of space and spatial intelligence in language learning as well as the great effect that maps with links to multimedia materials, including video, can have on our students’ language learning, sense of place and cultural sophistication.

SuggestedLinks:
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dh2007/abstracts/xhtml.xq?id=229 Abstract of a previous GIS talk published by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations.
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jgoldfield/present/aacu03_files/frame.htm Interdisciplinary presentation to the American Association of College and Universities.
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jgoldfield/FrenchSocietyGISdraft.pdf Draft of an interdisciplinary article co-authored with a colleague in Sociology for ESRI Press.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i12/12a03301.htm An article by J. Young, “With Digital Maps, Historians Chart a New Way Into the Past”; viewing requires a CHE subscription.
http://64.233.179.110/educators/learning_materials/Earth_Getting_Started_Guide.pdf Google tools for educators wishing to develop GIS materials.