“Mary Claypool: MIIS-Middlebury language program a boon for students” |
| Mary Claypool: MIIS-Middlebury language program a boon for students Posted: 14 Sep 2010 02:30 AM PDT Monterey County is fortunate to have a wide range of educational assets, from the K-12 and community colleges to the universities. Earlier this year, the Monterey Institute of International Studies became a graduate school of Vermont-based Middlebury College. Middlebury, founded in 1800, is one of the country's top liberal arts colleges and is particularly strong in languages, international studies, environmental studies, science and literature. This merger can become a real asset not only to our community but to our middle school, high school and college students. The two schools established the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy, a residential summer language immersion program for middle and high school students. Started in 2008, the academy is in its third year of programming and offers four-week sessions in Arabic, Chinese, French, German and Spanish. The academy is designed to meet the learning styles of middle and high school students in a fun and challenging environment. Students live in language-specific residence halls, participate in language instruction and speak their target language in every activity, such as cooking classes, group hikes, sport competitions and social events. Recently, Middlebury entered into an agreement with K12 Inc., a technology-based education company, the nation's largest provider of proprietary curriculum and online education programs to students in kindergarten through high school. The partnership, Middlebury Interactive Languages, will create and distribute online language courses. For more than a decade, Powerspeak has been a leader in online world language learning, providing courses to the entire K-12 student population as well as many public schools, school districts and charter schools across the country. It provides more than 30 world language courses for students in grades 3-12.The current courses provide entry level experiences for the public school and consumer markets, and the new product line will be initially targeted to the high school market. The courses are designed specifically for children and are built around the way they learn, with engaging interactive games, avatars, a rewards-based system and interesting stories. Language learning is nearly an $80 billion market worldwide, but only $5 billion is being spent in the U.S. The number of students taking foreign language courses in elementary and middle schools is only 31 percent of the total student population in the U.S. The number of students taking foreign language courses in high school is only 48 percent of the total student population. Textbooks still represent 95 percent of the expenditures on learning materials for foreign language in classrooms. Online courses represent 4 percent of the market, but they are growing at a rate of 50 percent a year. Research shows that students who are engaged in online learning will spend more time and achieve more impressive results. U.S. schools and students need online language learning resources because of budget constraints, which means schools cannot afford to offer multiple languages, reducing language options for most students. Other factors are teacher shortages and the fact that finding and attracting teachers in languages other than Spanish has become difficult in most areas of the U.S. To effectively function in the global economy, learning one or more foreign languages has become important, and students must prepare themselves. With budget cuts, we can no longer depend solely on the K-12 school system to educate our children without our participation. It is more important than ever for parents and students to be diligent and aware of all the resources available to them, to include online courses. For information on online foreign language courses, go to www.middlebury.edu.mil. Mary Claypool is executive director of the Monterey County Business Council. Send questions relating to small business to mclaypool@mcbc.biz or write to "Mind Your Business, P. O. Box 2746, Monterey 93940. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Content Keyword RSS To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment