The FLTC funded six projects this year that incorporate the use of the latest technologies into existing foreign lan-guage courses to achieve specific learning objectives. Grant recipients included five faculty members. A description of funded projects, in the words of the recipients, follows:

My project consists of the creation of a series of six short films created with anima-tion software. These videos will present situa-tions involving a small group of characters and will be used in my ITA1010 class primarily for listening com-prehension exercises and to increase vocabulary acquisition. It is important to stress, though, that videos are generally a very flexible tool, and the series of animated videos I create with my project will lend itself for use as prompts for work-ing with other skills. For example, the videos may be used as starting points for productive speaking activities, or they could be used as models for writing tasks. Additionally, the scripts may be exploited for improving reading skills.

Literature lends itself well to the use of audio and visual materials, both for the texts themselves and for back-ground contexts. The oral tradition in early Arabic literature makes it authentic for today's student to experience hearing, rather than reading, literature as its composer produced it. I propose to develop podcasts which will reproduce some aspects of this early oral tradition, and will create a multi-dimensional atmosphere for entering the environment of other works. In addition, the students will be pro-ducers themselves, creating podcasts that incorporate ideas from the literature, and involve members of the Wayne State University community. These podcasts will be available on our website, with the students' permission, and will demonstrate a unique aspect of our Department's engagement with the larger sphere of the university.

"Let's Learn Polish" is a set of 30 half-hour lessons with exercises and was pro-duced in 1996. These lessons remain the only in-depth video materials professionally made for learning Polish. None of the books currently available for learning Polish (with the ex-ception of one) have video components (or websites with such materials). During 30 very well-produced and entertain-ing lessons, students get to know the Grzegorzewski family, their daily life, problems and joys, as well as Polish traditions. The series applies the communicative approach to language learning, at the end of each lesson there is a segment where the most important phrases are isolated and presented to the student, so the student can repeat them (and read them too). This project involves making the series "Let's Learn Polish" available to WSU students from a Blackboard site.

Last summer I created an online listening comprehension course for students of Rus-sian which is now in effect. Students work through episodes of the popular Russian series "ErelashT on Blackboard with the help of Russian-language vocabulary lists and interactive exercises to test listening comprehension. After six or eight episodes there is a cumulative quiz on Blackboard. At the end of the course, students take an online final. This course was offered during the past Fall and Winter semesters, and has been extremely successful for students at the 2nd- and 3rd-year levels. I would create a similar course for more advanced students. As in last year's project, there would be online vocabulary lists and audio recordings, exercises, quiz-zes, and tests. Technology would allow the Russian pro-gram to enrich its course offerings without significantly in-creasing faculty teaching loads.

I propose to develop several visual presentations which will enhance my History of Ancient Religions course. The project would include: (a) pictures of ancient Athenian art or architecture of religious content, as indeed most Athenian art was. This would help to build up a lecture on Pausanius's second-century journey through Greece and the many reli-gious buildings, shrines, statues and the like that he visited; (b) pictures of the recent archaeological excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem which include extensive new findings on the Temple site plus what may be King David's palace; and (c) Early Christian art, which would greatly appeal to the many students who learn well visually and bring a reality and a sense of presence that would exceed what can be done using only lectures or readings. This work would be useful for any his-tory or literature class that touches on the period as well as for my ancient religions class.