Summary: When properly resourced and when connected to language programs in substantive ways, Language Labs play an important role in helping their users to attain the language proficiency necessary to serve and lead effectively in a global economy.   They also empower their users to expand the quality and breadth of their global social networks by enthusiastically partnering with foreign language programs.  This post is a slightly edited version of an EduCause post I wrote on behalf of Academic Computing Services and is intended to provide an overview of the Stanford Model of Language Lab Facilities.

Traditional audio-lingual oriented language labs with their cubicles and monolithic teacher’s console have died a curiously slow death. Gradually, they are giving way to a more open model.  In the past 10 years or so, language labs have morphed into online assessment facilities and teaching studios in order to support proficiency oriented, outcome driven teaching methodologies.
Language labs have historically been nexuses for innovation in pedagogy and for innovative use of instructional technology in particular. This innovation arises out of necessity; namely, out of the necessity to support huge numbers of students engaged in multilingual and multimodal creative self-expression occurring across diverse and often complex spoken, written, and gestural systems. Modern proficiency oriented approaches to Additional Language Acquisition emphasize active CREATION WITH LANGUAGE and focus on what students can DO rather than on what they KNOW. For this reason labs have to create agile and scalable workflows for intensive use and capture of multimedia and multilingual assets. Put more simply, language labs innovate because they have to. When properly resourced and connected to language programs in substantive ways, language labs help their users to attain the language proficiency necessary to serve and lead effectively in a global economy and empower their users to expand the quality and breadth of their global social networks.
Stanford Digital Language Lab: Below is a schematic description of the language lab model at Stanford University.  In 1999 the Stanford University Libraries reconceptualized the existing Language Lab as the Stanford Digital Language Lab  in order to actualize the Stanford Language Center’s program to deliver large-scale, program-wide online assessment, to expand access to enhanced learning spaces, and to modernize the Lab’s approach to foreign language content archiving and creation.  More recently Academic Computing Services has buttressed the Lab’s infrastructure and support services as part of its own ambitious and comprehensive Learning Spaces Initiative.

Organizational Locus: The Digital Language Lab is part of Academic Computing Services (ACS) and supports Stanford’s largest academic department, the Stanford Language Center. ACS is largely unsiloed; organizational units collaborate freely in fulfilling the ACS mission.

Language Lab Infrastructure
The physical space of the Stanford Digital Language Lab consists of three technology enhanced classrooms: a seminar room, a computer classroom, and a configurable teaching studio with touch screen projectors. Each room has a video capture cart for recording student presentations, sign language assignments, and cultural events. The lab’s 40 dual-boot Imacs with USB headsets and built-in webcams support multilingual computing and communication requirements. The entire lab rests on a raised floor with built-in power and networking.   Imaging support for the Lab’s multilingual software images and teachers’ stations comes from Academic Computing Services.

Assessment in the Language Lab
Simulated Oral Proficiency Interviews (SOPIs): Every Spring the Language Lab hosts over 800 SOPIs for the Language Center. Based on the original SOPI from the Center for Applied Linguistics, these SOPIs were created by the Language Center to assess student progress from, placement to completion of language requirement. These data help guide the Language Center in its mission to guarantee excellence in language instruction. The Lab provides a secure and dedicated testing environment and all of the technical support over a two week period.
Online Diagnostic Assessments (ODAs): ODAs are formative assessments taken in the open lab in CourseWork, Stanford’s Sakai-based LMS. The Lab provides hardware, headsets, cameras, and multilingual training and support for this expanding assessment initiative.
Placement Tests: EFS delivers placement exams in both the Fall and Summer in the Language Lab.

Teaching in the Lab
Orientations and Workshops: The Lab’s computer classroom hosts multilingual computing orientations for students and also serves as a hands-on workshop area for instructors.
Presentational Mode of Speech and Foreign Language Writing
The Language Teaching Studio supports video capture of student presentations in classes focusing on presentational language. The room has augmented lighting and in-room video capture capability to make video capture as simple as possible for instructors. Side-by-side projection systems allow for in-class text annotation and collaborative writing.
The design of the Lab and robust infrastructure allow for a great deal of flexibility and reliability for instructors and allow students to conduct multilingual tasks efficiently.

Lessons learned in supporting the Language Center’s Online Assessment programs and in its enhanced teaching studios are being incorporated into a new Digital Language Lab scheduled to open in 2014 as part of the Academic Computing Services facilities in the eagerly awaited SUL-North Project.

Summary: This blog entry demos YouTube’s new drag n’ drop video editor. The editor allows for drag n’ drop editing of your own Youtube video clips and also has a built-in Creative Commons search tab to discover clips to sample, remix, and reuse. The editor allows for simple editing including the ability to add titles, transitions, and music tracks. Browser-based video editing of Youtube content promises to level the playing field for content experts, teachers and students as they construct video-based tools and narratives.

In the sample clip below, 4 different clips were combined, transitioned, and subtitled in less than three minutes.
Sample Clip Created in YouTube Video Editor

The screen capture below, done in Quicktime Player 10, briefly demos how the editor works.   It is best viewed in full screen mode.

In my experience, it is very hard to adapt another teacher’s work.  This is especially true for multimedia teaching objects.   The YouTube Video editor removes the barrier to didacticizing instructional content.  Different teachers are able to apply their own teaching fingerprints to the same content.   With all the hype around one size fits all mega-”teaching” platforms, real teaching (as opposed to putting content online) can fall through the cracks.    This tool’s constraints are actually its strength.   Student created video mashups and other digital storytelling projects will be quite easy to integrate into curricula.
Browser based nonlinear digital video editing in YouTube is here!

Languages (clockwise from top left) Arabic, Hebrew, French, Amharic

The Digital Language Lab adopted the use of  Smart Technology Interactive whiteboards in 2007 as part of a Language Center initiative to buttress advanced level language classes and to support the Stanford EFS program’s demand for frequent in-class video capture of student presentations. This blog entry describes the primary use cases for interactive whiteboards in the Language Lab and includes feedback from seven language instructors about their experience using smart boards in the Lab.    SmartBoards enhance instruction in meaningful ways by improving the quality of classroom video capture, adding efficiency (freeing up time), and expanding modes of pedagogy and ways to create with language.

Smart Board Configuration in the Language Lab

Students doing writing activity in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia.

Borrowing from foreign language teaching pilots in Wallenberg Hall, the Lab uses two smartboards mounted side by side. They are controlled by Dual Boot Language Lab iMacs running a special classroom image managed by the ACS Imaging team.

Primary Use Cases Seen in the Language Lab
The Language Lab did not transition to interactive whiteboards as an experiment but rather in order to accommodate the instructional need arising out of the curricular inevitabilities connected with the adoption of ACTFL writing proficiency standards and as part of Lab innovated workflows to support video capture of student presentational language.  The Lab does use the boards in experimental ways, however, including to serve as greenscreens, as SWALLT Online Webinar portals, and in many other ways.  The following outlines the primary use cases for SmartBoard use in the Lab and offers observations by instructors.

Ramzi Salti Ph.D. - Makes a grammatical point in colorful electronic ink.

Use Case 1 -Digital White Boards
Instructors use the boards as they would a regular whiteboard but with the ability to save and export their notes as PDFs, and with the ability to use the boards’ powerful Notebook software construct text objects, integrate media, etc.  Student work at the boards can also be saved.  The boards tie in quite seamlessly to CourseWork, Stanford’s Learning Management System.  Instructors and students use CourseWork and the SmartBoards in concert to bring up course content and websites and to move data securely back and forth during class.
Use Case 2 –  Video Capture of Student Presentations
Stanford’s EFS program requires in class video capture of student presentations and most foreign language classes have a student presentation component to them.

EFS Student Giving Demonstration Presentation on Break Dancing

The Lab uses Smartboards in concert with video capture carts to accommodate this need. Smartboards are useful in the following ways:

• SmartBoards allow presentation and presenter to fit in the camera’s field of view. This makes giving and receiving feedback on student work simpler.


Presentation Capture with Traditional Projector. Note large distance required to capture slides and subject. Often the subject is in the dark so that slides can be seen.



SmartBoards allow for clear view of Student and Slides in Frame

• Students can annotate their slides as they present, resulting in a more dynamic presentation.

Instructor Responses to SmartBoard Survey
Seven language instructors answered the following two questions about their use of SmartBoards and also provided sample activities for the languages they teach.
1. How do integrate the SmartBoards in 280E into your teaching?
2. How do they enhance instruction in your language class?

Instructor 1 – Emiko Yasumoto Magnani – Japanese

1. How do you integrate the SmartBoards in 280E into your teaching?



Emiko Yasumoto Magnani conducts kanji activity.

1) I  let the students play some games such as cross words puzzles to identify some Chinese compound words.
2)   I let the students expose to some authentic materials such as a Japanese newspapers and some CM video clips to watch.
3)  I write down some notes while teaching them with the slides and uploaded those slides with the notes later on coursework.

2. How do they enhance instruction in your language class?
Obviously the students these days are more technology oriented, so it is easier for them to participate in and come in up front to write their answers on the smart board.  (which sometimes they hesitate to do so with a regular blackboard.)

It’s a nice environment to have some handy technology to explore some authentic materials on the web when we want to.

Instructor 2 – Issayas Tesfamariam – Amharic


1. How do integrate the SmartBoards in 280E into your teaching?
2. How do they enhance instruction in your language class?
The SmartBoards enhance instruction in my language class tremendously.
Before I started using SmartBoards, it was difficult for the students to see how, for example, the verbs were conjugated. Or took them longer time to absorb the concept. However, with the SmartBoards, I use different colors to illustrate the “formula” for conjugating the verbs. To give you an example, to conjugate the present/future tense of the verb “to eat”/”meblat” using pronouns goes as follows:
1st person singular : Ene (I) e_____leu
2nd person singular : Ante (you/male) t_____ leh
Anchi (you/female) t______lesh
Ersow (you/polite ye_____lu
3rd person singular: Esu (he) ye_____l
Eswa (she) t______belalech
Esachew (he/she pol.)ye______lu
1st person plural: Egna (we) en_____len
2nd person plural: Enante (you/plu) te______lachu
3rd person plural: Enesu (they) e_______lu

Thus, all I have to do with SmartBoarads is to write “bela” in different colors and clone it ten times (the number of pronouns).
Then just plug each cloned “bela” into the spaces above. They see and understand it clearly.  …what used to take me longer periods to cover conjugation of verbs is almost cut by half.
To answer your first question, I integrate SmartBoards in my teaching by having the students go on board and conjugate various verbs as indicated above. It helps them immensely.
To answer your first question, I integrate SmartBoards in my teaching by having
the students go on board and conjugate various verbs as indicated above. It helps them immensely.
Instructor 3 – Kiyomi Nakamura – Japanese
1. How do integrate the SmartBoards in 280E into your teaching?
I really enjoy the SmartBoards in the “Japanese through Films” class. Since this class is the film class, I do not use the SmartBoard as a blackboard. I use it as a viewing screen instead.   Since there are two SmartBoards in the classroom, I use both at the same time.  While projecting a film on one SmartBoard, I project the vocabulary sheet on the other.   In this way, students are able to see immediately the vocabulary they do not know.  This usage is very pleasing to the students.
2. How do they enhance instruction in your language class?
In a regular classroom there is only one screen in the room. Thus students concentrate more on their paper vocabulary sheets than on the movies. This means that students eyes are always looking down. By using the SmartBoard, students can focus more on the films, and as a result, their language abilities are improve more.
Instructor 4 – Ali Miano – Spanish

1. How do integrate the SmartBoards in 280E into your teaching?
The smart board allows me to display multiple websites and images, so that students can see, e.g., the class agenda or vocabulary lists on one board and our CourseWork Forum on the other, or compare Velázquez’s realist version of Las Meninas with Picasso’s various cubist versions.
2. How do they enhance instruction in your language class?
They create more possibilities and opportunities for interaction among students with course materials and with each other.
Instructor 5 -Ramzi Salti – Arabic
1. How do integrate the SmartBoards in 280E into your teaching?
2. How do they enhance instruction in your language class?
I loved using the smartboard for my Intermediate Arabic class last quarter.  It was a great way of drilling new vocabulary with special attention to spelling.  I would “reveal” the correct spelling with one touch after asking the students about the spelling.  It saved me time and was visually interesting for them.  I also liked coming in early and pre-preparing for class so that by touching a document it would open up and be color coordinated to help with conjugation, verb tenses etc. Finally, it was great to save the notes from the lecture and email them to students or make them available online for them to download at their convenience.
Instructor 6 – English as a Second Language – Seth Streichler
1. How do integrate the SmartBoards in 280E into your teaching?
2. How do they enhance instruction in your language class?
Perhaps the most desirable and distinctive characteristic of the SmartBoards is their versatility. For any type of presentation, the SmartBoards enable the instructor and the students to highlight, clarify, and elaborate upon the specific content of a presentation or projected document. Naturally, the electronic markers are useful for this purpose, as are various PowerPoint, MS Word, and Internet features. More specifically, the SmartBoards are especially useful for discussions of students’ written work, as elements of the text can be clearly highlighted, commented upon, and modified as needed. Another valuable feature is the ability is to use both boards simultaneously, displaying separate aspects about a single topic; this enables the instructor or student to transfer between projections as needed, thus reinforcing audience comprehension of presentation or lesson content. In light of these considerations, 280E can be immensely valuable not only for standard class meetings, but also for office hours (individual or small-group consultation sessions out of class).
Instructor 7 – Lyris Weideman – Portuguese
1. How do integrate the SmartBoards in 280E into your teaching?
I have used them mostly in my advanced class, in which the goal is to bring students’ competence to the Advanced level. The SmartBoards allow me to a) Project texts used for reading assignments and work in front of the class with linguistic structures, bringing to students’ attention points such as sentence/paragraph/text structures, different vocabulary and stylistic resources, etc. With SmartBoards, for instance, I can highlight various resources used by the author using different colors, ask different groups to mark with different colors different features etc. b) Watch in class short videos from the internet and make notes on the SmartBoard about what we are watching. c) Project my Kindle-edition textbook instantaneously and again, underline, highlight, etc. different points of the text using different colors. d) Instantaneously connect with a Portuguese-speaker via Skype and have everyone watch and listen to what that person has to say.
2. How do they enhance instruction in your language class?
They enhance instruction in my language class because I can do all of my Internet-related tasks (see above) without having to connect my computer using 3 different kinds of cables and wait for ne connection to be established. I seldom use my computer, actually, but rather put my material the CourseWork and access it very quickly through SmartBoards Time is not wasted with setting up and changing from one task to another is really seamless. SmartBoards also enhance enormously my students’ oral presentations. When using PowerPoint, they move effortlessly from one slide to the other by just touching the screen. Moreover, because the SmartBoards are so reliable, they concentrate more in their linguistic production than in the mechanical part of the presentation, which is much smoother than when they use a computer and a screen that is not touch-sensitive, like in traditional classrooms. In sum, Smart boards give one the best delivery with very little effort.
Blog Post Conclusion
Overall, with the support of the ACS Imaging Team and ACS Technical Services, SmartTechnology Smartboards have added great dimension, texture, and flexibility to language instruction in  the Digital Language Lab. They are reliable and enhance engaged time in substantive ways.
Joseph Kautz – Head, Stanford Digital Language Lab

I have good news and I have bad news about Language Labs.
First, the bad news… There are no rules.
Now, for the good news… There are no rules!
Why?  Two reasons.  Reason one is the vast scope of a Language Lab’s purview.  A Language Lab’s core domains comprise three of the biggest concepts in human thought, namely Language, Culture, and Technology, (LCT) which can each be characterized as essentially limitless and in a state of constant change.

The second and complementary reason for a movement away from restrictions and limitations (rules) in the Language Lab is availability of disruptive technologies in instructional settings.   The almost ubiquitous integration of easy to use technologies and custom classroom workflows in the Language Lab empower instructors and students.  The Language Lab is now a “mashup pit” where patrons fuse Language, Culture, and Technology in efficient, complex, and replicable ways. This opens up limitless options and softens operational rigidity.

Put more simply, drawing from vast multilingual wells of Language, Culture, and Technology, Language Lab patrons can now call upon diverse technologies as part of the process of self-expression in much the same way Maestros call upon orchestra members in conveying a composer’s vision.

Put even more simply, easy ways to encode, transmit, receive, and render meaningful communication surround us as individuals and can also be integrated into modern Language Lab facilities.   This functionality and flexibility applied against a canvas of Language, Culture, and Technology eliminate barriers and limitations and make traditional policies and procedures obsolete.  The rules go away if we will let them.

So what guides a Language Lab’s service model when there are no more rules?

At Stanford, where the Digital Language Lab supports the assessment program of the Stanford Language Center, e.g. Online Diagnostic Assessments (ODAs) and Simulated Oral Proficiency Interviews (SOPIs) and where frequent video capture of student presentations occurs, the service model is geared toward guaranteeing a known good assessment infrastructure and toward partnering with programs that are focusing on presentational modes of communication to ensure that the Lab’s teaching studios are resourced for workable, on demand video capture and serving.  Here, the Lab depends on support from Academic Computing, in The Stanford Libraries.   This support model is a larger discussion and I will address it in a future blog post.

In addition to supporting the Language Center’s touch point assessment innovations, the Stanford Digital Language Lab navigates rule-free waters by
a. listening to instructors and saying “Yes” when possible, even when deadlines are tight and resources limited.
b. looking to ACTFL National Foreign Language Standards in packaging lab work flows and workshops,
c. and by building relationships with publishers.

In a broader sense, all language lab implementations derive from a set of values, or, more likely from a constellation of value sets.  My goal in writing this post is to look at a potential value system to guide modern Language Labs, which are burdened and liberated by the absence of rules and limitations.  Without mincing words, an apt value system I have found is the value system outlined in the Manifesto for Agile Development.   When Language Lab culture and values are in alignment with those expressed in the Manifesto for Agile Development, an Agile Language Lab implementation becomes possible.

It is one thing to fill a lab space with technology.  Lab infrastructure is an important component in the creation of an Agile Language Lab, but it is really the value system underlying the Lab’s support philosophy that determines what can really happen in any Language Lab space.

The need for Agile Language Labs has emerged organically out of agile software development paradigms, and so it is not surprising that the culture around their use should follow in the same spirit as the culture characterized in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.   What follows is an annotated version of the Manifesto for Software Development that attempts to explain how this value system pertains to new generation, Agile Language Labs.

Manifesto for Agile Software Development – (Original Text in Bold)

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Comment: We are “doing it and helping others to do it” in the Language Lab by integrating participatory values and processes, providing agile infrastructure, and by cultivating a mutually respectful collaborative culture with faculty in the Lab.

Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Comment: Ubiquity and mobility untether faculty and students from antiquated, fixed monolithic systems for helping language instructors.   Agile classrooms follow a dynamic studio model in how they operationalize pedagogical interactions.  Augmented classroom lighting, moveable furniture, interactive whiteboards, video capture setups, room transparency, expanses of whitboard, etc., all combine to allow instructors to “stage” communicative scenes and scenarios in real time and to easily record student performance and presentational language.

Working software over comprehensive documentation – Comment: Rather than referring lab patrons, teachers, and students to wikis, and other veiled forms of user manuals, new Labs have anticipated or surveyed faculty and students in order to prepare reliable and dynamic workflows.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation – In an Agile Lab, Lab personnel work directly with faculty to innovate in real time
by creating disruptive technology recipes. These may be novel, one time solutions or much larger.  Lab managers spend time in Lab spaces during instruction and events to document bottlenecks and customize new solutions.  This can only happen with a truly collaborative ethos in place.
Responding to change over following a plan – Comment: Success in responding to this call in the Agile Manifesto above all characterizes a truly agile language lab environment. Equipped and staffed properly there is little reason to ever deny language faculty requests. This is particularly true where faculty have had access to substantive professional development in communicative science. The days of barriered access to Lab facilities due to inflexible scheduling and linear approaches to allocating lab time and resources are over in the Agile paradigm.
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. Comment: Agile Language Labs must still organize and allocate time, space,  and personnel resources efficiently, but, overall, boundaries can be characterized as being porous, or semi-permeable.

Authors of Original Manifesto

Kent Beck Ron Jeffries
Mike Beedle Jon Kern
Arie van Bennekum Brian Marick
Alistair Cockburn Robert C. Martin
Ward Cunningham Steve Mellor
Martin Fowler Jeff Sutherland
James Grenning Dave Thomas
Jim Highsmith
Andrew Hunt

Conclusion: Agile Language Lab Environments are, in fact, an actual part / dimension of the Agile Software Movement and so are logically encompassed in the Agile Manifesto value system.

The first significant development was the successful ad hoc provisioning of the ASL Prototype App created by Cathy Haas and her students in the Language Lab.  Using Apple’s Provisioning Portal we were able to provision devices so that our App can run on actual iOS hardware, rather than just in XCode’s Simulator.  Norway had warned me in the beginning that getting an App onto real hardware was a complex process with a steep learning curve related to security certificates, device ids, and the Provisioning Portal.   To make matters even more complicated, Apple’s XCode, the  is a moving target.  Version 4.0 looked completely different from Version 3.0.  With some help from Todd and also by using Apple’s provisioning assistant, the Cathy Haas ASL Prototype made the leap to real iOS devices.  Getting our app to run on a real iOS device as opposed to XCode Simulator was an important milestone in our efforts to master iOS publishing because suddenly  we could hold our project in our hands on our own phones.

The next major step in the project came in the form of a total reworking of the code by Todd Branchflower.  Todd responded to a request for developer support, which I placed in a LinkedIn Group set up to accompany Stanford’s iOS Development Class.   Todd rewrote the code so that the alphabetical list of video items through which users scroll was self-created.  The code looks into the “video” directory and creates topic headings based on the subdirectories in this parent directory.   When these subdirectories are called  A, B, C, D, etc., the device UI shows the familiar “address book” interface.   But Todd was able to accommodate my request to allow these subdirectories in “videos” to be any string.  This allows the author to organize clips into topics and themes and to do it in any writing system.

Finally, Olle Erikson of the Møller-Trondelag Resource Centre, and I will be deconstructing what we have done over the past few months at SWALLT’s annual conference.  The theme for the conference is Language Learning Centers and Internationalization: Supporting Global Connections.  We will be demonstrating that global collaborations can yield innovative deliverables and will discuss how Open Source assumptions and commitment to Agility guided the creative process.

Joseph Kautz

Tegnordbok Iphone Screenshot (note superb video quality)

I contacted the developers and requested permission to use their code.  Olle Erikson responded and graciously made the code available under a Creative Commons license.

I installed the iOS SDK, purchased an Apple Developer License, and started hacking my way through the code.   When it looked like this project might actually be feasible, I approached Cathy and her students with the idea  of creating an ASL prototype.  There was enthusiasm and Cathy began planning the content to be captured.  I staged the classroom for shooting video by removing tables, arranging lights, and setting up the capture cart.  Using Cathy’s list of signs,  students then took turns performing and filming each other against a portable blue screen.   The project signers were Mariel Pareyda, Zimberlyn Bolton, Melissa DeMers, Brendond Martin, and Kali Lindsay.  Cathy’s TA’s, Lydia Santos and Kevin Jordan, also volunteered to sign and did some amazing interpreting work.  In addition to signing, student, Melissa DeMers, took digital stills of the video shoot.  Alvin Addo and Melissa DeMers also created artwork to serve as the app’s icon and logo.

Stills from Video Capture in Class - Photo by Melissa DeMers

Lighting was the most challenging aspect of the project, but we did increase the production quality iteratively as we progressed.  Kenneth Chan and Connie Rylance both offered useful suggestions.

All of the video assets for the project were created in one to two days in Quicktime Player.

Opening Splash Screen

Icon Version by Alvin Addo

Icon Version by Melissa DeMers

Screenshot of Kaltura Module in CourseWork

Glossing the signs was done by students using Kaltura in CourseWork.  After the video was shot in the Lab, I realized I had no way to know what the signs meant.  My lack of organization actually led to an interesting workaround; collaborative glossing.   I uploaded the clips to a CourseWork (Powered by Sakai)  Site with Kaltura enabled.  Kim Hayworth and Christine Dougherty assisted with enabling Kaltura in the Language Lab Studio CourseWork Site.  (All of the Lab’s teaching spaces have CourseWork sites.)  I then emailed Kathy’s students with screencast instructions on how to change file names in Kaltura.    Kaltura did my work for me in many ways by allowing students to gloss the signs they had contributed.  Proofing the glosses was also simplified for the instructor.  Kaltura made something hard to do, easy, fast and flexible.

FLTAs collaboratively authored these resources in less than 2 hours using Web 2.0 technologies supported by Academic Computing Services and ITS.