Eduardo Lage-Otero, Ph. D. Blume Language & Culture Learning Center Culture Podcasting: Globalizing the Local Trinity College 2,144 FTS (50% female, 50% male) 11 languages currently taught: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Spanish Second language requirement since 2009Second language requirement Language Center Goals Provide a convenient space for language teaching and learning Serve as a central repository of language resources and pedagogical expertise Raise awareness about language and culture learning on campus The BlumeCast project addresses some of these... BlumeCast Project Goals Raise awareness about Trinity's cultural diversity Showcase a variety of web resources and technologies Engage faculty and students as content creators Promote media literacy Highlight the Blume Center as a hub for language and culture learning on campus, aka, P.R. Why Podcasts? Ease of authoring and variety of distribution methods Ability to foster community building and intercultural communication A form of asynchronous computer mediated communication (listen at will) BlumeCast Project: The Basics Definition: Audio recordings distributed via syndicated feeds (aka RSS) Format: mp3 files plus multimedia content (i.e., images, maps) Length: Around 5 minutes Size: < 10MBs Content: Excerpts from online sources BlumeCast Project: The Studio BlumeCast Project: The Tools Garageband (Mac-only) Drupal site o Custom RSS feeds o Custom submission form o Modules (e.g., AudioField)AudioField Google Spreadsheet Mapper o Map up to 400 locations o 6 templates for balloon design Google Spreadsheet Mapper 2.0 BlumeCast Project: The Stats Number of podcasts o 20 Languages represented o 12 Arabic, Bulgarian, English, French, Galician, Hebrew, Hungary, Italian, Nepali, Romanian, Russian, Spanish Cloud-based Podcasting Tools(video)http://soundcloud.comvideo Cloud-based Podcasting Tools- Vocaroo Cloud-based Podcasting Tools- Poderator Cloud-based Podcasting Tools- SoundCloud Open Source ContentCreative Commons Some Questions For Discussion: What types of projects should Language Centers work on? How do we measure project success? Center success? What approach should we take towards copyright and fair use in the age of mash-ups? Are you working on similar projects? Thank you!