Binghamton University’s second annual Conference on Foreign Language Teaching highlighted new advancements in teaching, from new instruction methods to technology in the classroom.
Saturday’s event featured more than 30 workshops, including some promoting cultural awareness and using graphic novels and technology in the foreign language classroom.
The conference was held by the department of Romance Languages and Literature, with assistant professor Chesla Ann Bohinski as conference chair. It aimed to show teachers from middle school to graduate school new ways to teach foreign language.
Bohinski said the goal of the was conference to help teachers on every academic level improve the way they teach language.
“The attendees here are not only from Binghamton [University],” Bohinski said. “Students are not going to want to take languages here if they didn’t have a good background and a foundation in high school.”
According to Katharine Krebs, the vice provost of international education and director of international programming, knowing foreign languages is a necessary skill in the modern world.
“What our alumni are telling us is that the work is becoming so international,” Krebs said.
The keynote speaker, Candace Black, is a French teacher at Eastridge High School in Rochester. She discussed a specific method of teaching that focuses on incorporating modern technology into the classroom setting.
“Students are bringing their devices anyway, and for teachers for the past five years it’s been a backlash of ‘put your phones away, put your iPads away, put your laptops away,’ and what they’re not realizing is it’s just an amazing device,” Black said.
Black said that she chose the title of her speech, “The Magic of Technology,” after seeing the unprecedented positive effects technology has in the classroom.
She said educators need to adapt their methods to more technologically-advanced students, and the typical class should become more interactive.
“The reality is if you’re waiting out this Internet thing, you’ve got a long time to wait; it’s here to stay,” Black said.
In her speech, Black detailed specific apps and websites that can be used to enhance both the teaching and the learning experience, such as Prezi, which she describes as a creative alternative to PowerPoint that allows students to do more than simply read off of a slide.
Heather Dravk, a French professor from Messiah College in Pennsylvania, attended this conference to learn teaching strategies from other educators, and said she found the keynote speech helpful.
“A couple of the sites I thought were very useful, and I’d like to play with them, and even if I spend just five to 10 minutes in a class using those apps,” Dravk said. “I think that can be fun for me and the students.”
Julia Ludewig, an adjunct lecturer for German 101 and 102, said she attended to learn new methods of teaching from the workshops and the speaker.
“For me it was overwhelming in the sense that there are so many things that I would like to incorporate into my classroom,” Ludewig said. “But I see the point of starting small, and just picking one.”