Center offers high-tech resources for language learners

by Jennifer Greenstein Altmann
The students enrolled in Simone Marchesi's ''Advanced Italian'' are studying a 1,500-year-old language in a decidedly 21st-century room.

A computer terminal sits at every desk, and at the front of the room is a touch-screen console for the professor where, with a few clicks, he can monitor each student's screen from his computer. If one student's work would be a good teaching tool, he can project what appears on that student's computer onto a large screen on one wall.

The new classroom has vastly improved the students' ability to work with their professor and with each other on their language skills, Marchesi said. ''The lab has shifted the perception of technology-assisted learning from a solitary, student-to-screen practice to a communicative, student-to-student environment,'' he said.

The room, known as the smart classroom, is part of the new Language Resource Center, which opened last fall in the basement of East Pyne following the building's renovation. The smart classroom is just one of the technological gems at the center, which is run by Marianne Crusius.

''What we offer now is a very large improvement on what we had before,'' said Crusius, referring to the facility's previous location in Jones Hall.

The center offers thousands of audio files, videos, DVDs, interactive CD-ROMs and word processing programs for the 17 foreign languages taught at Princeton, all housed in a cluster of rooms filled with state-of-the-art equipment.

The facilities have made it easier for professors and students to access more tools that help with the study of foreign languages. And students who are not in foreign-language classes also use the center extensively because it circulates the University's video and DVD collection.

Students and faculty are flocking to the center. ''The new lab is amazingly busy,'' Crusius said. ''The word is spreading among faculty members, and often it's through the students. They tell their professor, 'My friend is watching a video for class in a residential computer cluster,' so the professor comes and asks, 'Can I do that too?'''

Read the full story in the Weekly Bulletin.