Progress Update

In the last week, I've made some progress on getting information to create multilingual podcasts. I've found a number of children's literature books in languages other than English at the LOTE Bookshop in Ascot Vale. I have also found a number of native speakers of Greek, German, and Spanish to read. I'm exploring how to create podcasts, using My Podcast as a guide.

In the next few weeks, I plan to create the podcasts, upload them to our class wiki page, and then to create materials for monolingual teachers to use to foster the mother tongues of their students.

I'm off to Perth tomorrow for an IB workshop at Scotch College. I'm looking forward to going out there, as this will be my first time in WA.

LOTE Bookshop

If you're in Melbourne and are looking for resources in languages other than English the LOTE Bookshop in Ascot Vale is a great place to start. They have resources in many languages and can source materials from overseas as well.

Bilingual Perceptions

I need to recount this story-it's a true, personal account of being bilingual in Melbourne. My husband, a bilingual (German/English speaker) who has lived and worked in 8 countries over the last ten years and who fully functions in both languages told me the following story last night.
He was recently promoted to take over the management of a project, and went into his local cafe for his daily vanilla latte. The barista greeted him with a jovial, "Good Morning Boss! How ya goin?" My husband replied, "Oh, so you've heard already. News travels fast." The barista, not missing a beat, answered, "Yeah, but couldn't they at least have found someone who speaks English?"

Needless to say, my husband was dumbstruck, as am I, at this statement. When perceptions like those exist about multilingualism in 2007 Australia, where are we headed??

Peter Hellier becomes bilingual!

For those of you in Australia, this You Tube link shows Peter Hellier speaking Italian. It's a nice plug for the importance of multilingualism.

Multilingual Resources #2

The Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross Cultural Communication (RUMACCC) at the University of Melbourne is a great resource for promoting multilingualism.

The Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre is a specialist resource centre supporting school curriculum development and programes in LOTE, ESL, Koorie and Aboriginal languages, Multicultural, antiracism, and human rights education, Civics and citzenship, and Studies of Asia.

UNESCO's webpage on cultural and linguistic diversity in education gives an overview of language policies, mother tongue maintenance and support, and their position on the multilingual internet. It's an interesting source of information.

As I continue to explore the use of podcasting to maintain and foster mother tongue development, I will add more resources and information to my blog.

Multilingual Resources #1

Over my years of teaching and working as a workshop leader for the IBO, I have gathered a number of websites, articles, and resources which I have found useful. I'll add to this list in upcoming posts, but I thought it would be a good idea to get started now.

One of the most important researchers in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is Dr. Jim Cummins from Canada. His website is a fantastic resource and includes articles like, "Bilingual Children's Mother Tongues: Why It Is Important for Education".

Multilingual Matters is a publishing company which concentrates on all areas of language learning and acquisition.

Bilingual Options provide services to families and children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Bilingual Options is here in Melbourne.

TCK's or "Third Culture Kids" are those children who spend a good portion of their childhood or young adult life growing up in a culture(s) that is not their parents and who develop a relationship to both cultures. TCKs are often the children of diplomats, business executives, international school teachers, missionaries, or servicemen and women. I've included this link here because I'm particularly interested in TCKs and their journeys. Having worked in international schools, I taught TCKs. My children will be TCKs because they will have parents from mixed backgrounds. I am American, my husband is German, and we currently live in Australia, with our future plans being to return to Asia. Our children will certainly be TCKs and will need to learn how to negotiate and operate in more than one language and more than one culture.

Multilingualism Seminar

I went to a multilingualism seminar on Sunday 12 August at the University of Melbourne. The Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross-Cultural Communication hosted the event. There were 5, one-hour lectures to choose from. I attended "Issues in Raising Children Bilingually", "Practical Suggestions for Helping Your Child Learn Your Language" and "Family Movies, Blogging, and New Communication Media in Raising Children Bilingually". All three seminars were fantastic and offered helpful and practical ways for parents to raise their children multilingually, which is of personal interest to me, as my husband is a native German speaker. The last session on new media was fantastic and showed a number of ways in which a bilingual family is using new technologies to foster their children's mother tongues. The use of blogging, email, keypals, and DVDs was inspiring and offered so many awesome ideas. I got very excited by the possibilities and with this, my first foray into blogging, figure I can try it out and see how it works. The lecturer didn't mention the use of podcasting as a way to foster mother tongue maintenance and development. I plan to contact him and see what he thinks of my idea of using podcasts to help foster the mother tongues of my students.

Introduction

As part of my Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education degree at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia, I am taking a course called, "New Learning". In this course, we are exploring new technologies and the pedagogical applications to teaching and learning. You can check out our class wiki and learn about the areas that we are all investigating.

I have decided to explore the use of podcasting in languages other than English in order to support the mother tongue development of children who do not speak English as their first language. I would like to podcast popular children's literature, translated into different languages so that children can access these stories in their mother tongues. I feel it is vital for schools and communities to support these children's efforts to maintain their mother tongues.

My interest in this area grew out of my work with the International Baccalaureate Organization and my current position at Mowbray College in Caroline Springs, Australia.

I need to investigate the copyright issues related to podcasting. I plan to look into this in the next week, so check back for updates.

As I learn more and work towards my goal, I will update my blog, at least once a week.