The Aswaat cArabiyya project represents the efforts of a large number of individuals and institutions who contributed to various aspects of its development. We would like to recognize their contribution and thank them for bringing this project about and making it available to learners and teachers of Arabic worldwide.
The project was conceived by Dr. Mahmoud Al-Batal, currently Associate professor of Arabic in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas. In 2000, Dr. Al-Batal was serving on the faculty of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and was interested in developing web-based listening materials for Arabic that would benefit the needs of learners and teachers. He applied for and received a two-year grant from the US Department of Education that funded the original design of the project, the acquisition of video materials from a number of TV stations throughout the Arab world, and the purchase of a server to house these video materials at Emory University.
The original technical design of Aswaat cArabiyya was done by Mr. Johnny Waggener, Multi-Media Specialist at the Emory College Language Center (ECLC) who worked with Dr. Al-Batal to develop the program. During the development process, Dr. Al-Batal and Mr. Waggener received invaluable support from Mr. José Rodriguez, Director of Technology at ECLC, Dr. Alan Cattier, Teaching and Research Manager of Emory's Information Technology Division, and from a number of talented undergraduate students who took part in capturing, editing, and uploading the video content of the site. The Emory Aswaat cArabiyya's student team included Shady Eldaeef, Amy Watve, Benny Tran, Ola Al-Baldawi, Khaled Krisht, Reza Nadimi, and Eugene Epstein.
Selection of the original video content was done by a number of teachers of Arabic who carefully listened to long hours of recording and chose selections. We are very grateful to Mr. Abbas Al-Tonsi, Dr. Dalal Abu El-Seoud, Ms. Heba Salem, and Ms. Shahira Yacout, of the Arabic Language Institute and CASA at the American University in Cairo for all the materials they have contributed to the project.
In 2006, Dr. Al-Batal moved to the University of Texas, Austin and the Aswaat cArabiyya project was consequently moved to UT. All project materials and server support were transferred from Emory to UT in 2007. Once at UT, Dr. Al-Batal applied for and received a grant from Liberal Arts Information Technology Services (LAITS) at UT to change the design of the Aswaat cArabiyya project to make it more compatible with a FLASH environment and to continue the development of the video content and the activities based on it.
The UT Aswaat cArabiyya project has been managed by Ms. Emily Cicchini, Special Projects Manager at LAITS, with strong support from Mr. Joseph TenBarge, Assistant Dean for Technology, Dr. Carl Blyth, Director of the Texas Language Technology Center (TLTC), and Mr. James Henson, Associate Director of LAITS. Design of the newAswaat site at UT was done by Ms. Suloni Robertson, Art Director/Web Designer at LAITS and Mr. Ran An, Web Developer at LAITS; video content and delivery was reconfigured for FLASH by Mr. Daniel Garza, Video Services Manager at LAITS, and Mr. Scott Herrick of UT's Division of Instructional Innovation & Assessment (DIIA).
Once again the Aswaat cArabiyya project was fortunate to have a superb team of students who have handled numerous tasks within the project, ranging from listening to tons of video materials to identify possible content to capturing and editing video selections. The UT Aswaat student team has been led by Laura Welch, Katelyn Downing, and Drew Paul, who have served as Line producers of the project. Team members have included Lama Alhasan, Rabiya Ali, Madeline Clark, Tatiana Zhiltsova, Libby Nutting, Sheila Weaver, and Brandon Wilson.
We are also grateful to Mr. Nader Morkus, Lecturer of Arabic at UT, who provided global and intensive listening activities that accompany a number of the selections included in this site.
The project has also received generous financial support from the UT Arabic Flagship Program (AFP) and the National Middle East Language Resource Center (NMELRC) that provided funding to some members of the student team working on the project.
The video content included in the Aswaat cArabiyya project came from a variety of Arabic TV stations throughout the Arab world. Tens of hours of programming were purchased from these stations, and they allowed us to obtain copyright permissions for educational, non-profit use of these programs within Aswaat cArabiyya. We would like to acknowledge these TV stations and thank them for their invaluable support for this project:
- Al-Jazeera TV, Qatar
- Radio and TV Union, Arab Republic of Egypt
- Middle East Broadcasting Company (MBC), London and Dubai
- Lebanese Broadcasting Company (LBC), Lebanon
- 2M TV, Morocco
- Syrian, TV, Damascus
In addition, the School of Arabic at Middlebury College gave us permission to use a number of the lectures that were delivered at the School in the past twenty years. We would like to thank Middlebury College and the current director of the Arabic School, Dr. Mahmoud Abdalla for giving us the permission to utilize some of these lectures in the project. We would also like to thank all the Middlebury guests whose lectures were used in this project.
To all these individuals and institutions we want to extend a heartfelt Shukran. This project would not have been possible without your help and support.
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/aswaat/video_s.php
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario