VIRTUAL TRAVEL USING IMOVIE TECHNOLOGY IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

More and more universities now have digital media laboratories with iMac computers and video camcorders available to students along with technical assistance if it is needed. The labs represent a major investment, but are students and faculty really taking advantage of them? After all, most students already have their own laptops and digital cameras, so they may not see the need to use this important resource. One way to bring this technology into the foreign language classroom is to assign projects, such as imovies (movies made using the iMovie software), which can be completed in the digital media lab, saved on a travel drive or DVD-R disc, and then presented in the classroom. For example, students can choose a foreign city or region of interest and make a movie of their virtual trip there. Using the camera on the iMac computer, they can superimpose a photo of themselves on a picture of a famous monument or site. These images can then be assembled into a movie complete with titles, captions, credits and music using the iMovie software. This kind of project provides the opportunity to use the past tense and articulated prepositions in the context of travel abroad. In addition to iMovie software, Apple has just made iTrailer available so that students can create trailers for upcoming movies. Students in the foreign language classroom could collaborate so that one person's trailer could be added to another person's movie, thus providing practice with the future tense as well as the past tense. Projects such as these have shown very positive results at John Carroll University. Students take advantage of the help available at the labs, and demonstrate an excellent command of the technology. They also show increased grammatical and cultural competency in the target language, and a greater motivation to travel and study abroad. Finally, they manifest pride in their accomplishments and enthusiasm to see the work of their peers. These findings suggest that the skills that students learn in the digital media lab are useful not only for learning foreign languages, but are also transferable to other courses and to the working world. Furthermore, projects and presentations could be shared not just with classmates, but also with students in other universities at home and abroad. With so many possibilities for application of digital technology, it is critical that we encourage students to take better advantage of the digital media laboratories available to them.