This is the presentation I gave on behalf of the National Network for Interpreting project (http://www.nationalnetworkforinterpreting.ac.uk) at ALT-C 2010.
I started off with this deck to tell the audience about the aims and priorities of the NNI project, my own background and interests, how we've been doing our work and how successful we have been. Then I moved on to a hands-on demonstration of our interactive resources and technologies I have been using to create them.
The National Network for Interpreting is a UK HEFCE-funded project led by the University of Leeds Centre for Translation Studies and with partners from the Universities of Salford, Westminster and Bath. The aim of the project is to remedy the severe shortage of language interpreters in the UK by getting 16-18-year-olds interested in the art and craft of language interpreting. We organise regular face-to-face sessions which are always very popular, and we wanted to leave a legacy of equally popular, interactive and engaging online resources.We wanted to be cool, fresh, fun, and ‘down with the kids’ -but also professional.In any case: full details about our project on our website - you’re welcome to visit it: all the resources there are publicly available.
This is a Wordle from our website: www.nationalnetworkforinterpreting.ac.uk. As you can see, we are all about Interpreting and working with languages, creating interactive resources and multimedia materials that we make freely available online. Not only that, but we have also recently started entering important competitions and the results have been excellent, too. More about that later.
This is a Wordle from my own website: http://suchadrag.wordpress.com. I am an instructional designer with a background in languages and a great interest in learning technology. I work a lot with Articulate Studio 09 and I use many other tools to make the e-learning resources I build more interactive and engaging.
The National Network for Interpreting project I am privileged to be a part of wanted to stand out from the crowd. And we do.
These are a few of the building blocks on which we have based our online presence: engaging resources that question, challenge, and encourage users to think outside of the box; these resources are Flash-based and include audio and video components. Feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed of our website because we have been getting a lot of love so far from our users, Jorum and Epigeum (our resources were shortlisted for their prestigious annual awards at ALT-C 2010), and you’ll be missing out if you don’t follow us, too.
That’s it for the presentation part. You are warmly invited to visit our website and follow me on Twitter if you have particular questions about the technology used to build our interactive multimedia resources.