Digital Literacy and Modern Languages: How to Make a Digital Video

Abstract

In this article, you will learn how to integrate digital literacy and Modern Languages through digital videos. The first part of the article is mainly addressed to teachers and instructors and will extensively discuss pedagogical questions. It looks at how the digital video can help teach and learn the four language skills. In the second part of this article, i.e. the actual tutorial, you will learn how to make your own teacher/student-generated videos. The tutorial will explain how to combine and edit text, video and audio in a variety of ways, in order to serve different teaching and learning outcomes in Modern Languages, as well as looking at what software and applications can assist this purpose. In the final section, I will present a number of pedagogical activities using digital videos and what learning outcomes they can help achieve. Introduction Computer technology has been embedded into the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages for decades. After the early drill-and-practice approaches of the 1960s and 1970s and the development of specific software for language learning in the 1980s and 1990s, since the turn of the millennium we have entered a new phase of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) in which multimedia and computer-mediated communication (CMC) have become common practice in teaching and learning. The Internet, text-based online virtual reality systems and learning management systems, such as MUDs (multi-user dungeons, i.e. multi-player real-time virtual worlds), MOOCs (massive open online courses), Canvas, Blackboard and Moodle, have allowed easy remote communication and co-sharing of teaching and learning resources, so that instructors can experiment with blended teaching, personalised instructions , new collaboration models and a wide array of innovative, engaging learning strategies. The latest generation of apps and e-textbooks, games and simulations, new digital tools to edit and present verbal and audiovisual materials, discussion boards, web workspaces, e-portfolios, and machine assessment have multiplied and diversified the opportunities to work on the four language skills (reading, speaking, listening, writing) both individually and collaboratively. Software companies such as Adobe, often in collaboration with hardware companies such as Apple Inc., for example, have worked towards app suites that allow users to communicate and express their creativity in original ways. This has added a new toolbox to expand our everyday communication and advance our digital literacy. These digital tools offer