New England ITA Network

• Includes Best Practices for technology & pedagogy
• Hard-to-find demonstrations of realistic classroom scenarios
• Easy to use—fast & dirty
• For TAs & ITAs
• Quizzes—what would you do?
• Includes hot topics (w/ videos & running commentary)
• Each segment has student perspective, TA perspective, expert perspective
• (Experts may focus on teaching and/or content)
• Video examples—Encouraging Participation—very helpful & realistic
• Issues: included no response from Ss, dominating student, unclear Q from undergrad
• Quick Tips, Dig Deeper (theory, etc.) links to other web resources
• Developed by: Lori Breslow @ Teaching & Learning Lab at MIT, Jane Kennefick @ Columbia, Jane Dunphy @ MIT
• Launch date depends on fund-raising

• Uses term in isolation, term in sentence, question from students, non-Chemistry usages
• Some resources for making the terminology interactive
• Send audiocassettes or CDs to Ss during pre-term, for them to work on before they arrive
• Focuses on stress patterns rather than articulation
• 1st iteration—list of 72 entries—audioclip, word, statement, question, nonacademic
• Section on professional handwriting
• U Washington wanted to buy the materials—to develop for publication
• Wants to have up and running for Spring 2006
• Hope to develop for fields other than Chemistry (Physics, etc.)
• Collaboration at Brown—ITA Program, Chemistry faculty, Language Resource Center
• Moving toward a possible WIKI-version (web-based) that others could add to
  • A smaller terminology project exists on the web at Harvard (for Chemistry courses)
  • [Virginia will send a link to the group for Chemweb project at Harvard]

• Invite guest speakers (career office, award winning ITA, panel of experienced ITAs, panel of undergraduates, people to teach acting techniques, tour the local high school)
• Work with departments, take workshops about curriculum (reach out to colleagues, learn how to “talk the talk” in academia)
• TA training to-go (UConn) take a variety of training sessions to departments
• Developing listening skills, using the patterns of North American speech—reductions, linking, etc. (American Accent Training, Whaddaya Say?)
• Use food network videos to highlight stress, intonation, effective speaking styles
• Videos with examples of what NOT to do in teaching (Ferris Beuller, Harry Potter)
• PBS site—Do you speak American? (Examples of regional dialects)
• Washington Week in Review—high-level discourse, turn-taking, etc.
• I Love Lucy—Lucy tries to teaching Ricky “proper English”

• An idea book for ITA trainers, not a handbook
• Similar to the New Ways in Teaching series published by TESOL (New Ways in Teaching Pronunciation, New Ways in Teaching Culture, etc.)
• Something like a Recipe book for ITA training (ingredients, what works, variations)
• Ideas may involve pronunciation, technology, pedagogy, assessment, feedback, and many other topics—we will submit ideas and then look at what categories make sense
• We want a section of the book to include our favorite resources for ITA training (books, articles, videos, web sites, etc.)
• The audience for the book is each other (NEITAN members) but by sharing ideas with each other we also hope to produce something that is useful to our field

1. Allison Petro will send everyone a template for submissions—by October 30, 2005
2. Each NEITAN member should submit at least 5 ideas—by January 2, 2006
3. Submissions should be sent to Catherine Ross and Jane Dunphy
4. Catherine & Jane will print out a copy of the full set of ideas for the May meeting
5. Once we see the range of ideas, we can see if they naturally group into categories
6. (UConn can probably publish such a book, if we do a good job!)
7. Decide in May what the next steps are in this project

• Catherine Ross: catherine.ross@uconn.edu
• Jane Dunphy: dunphy@mit.edu

NEITA Members

• Boston University
• Brown University
• Harvard University
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Northeastern University
• University of Connecticut
• University of Massachusetts
• University of Rhode Island
• Worcester Polytechnic Institute
• Yale University