A bit of background about the school, the language requirement, and the language faculty's job descriptions:

The Noble and Greenough School (Nobles) is a co-ed independent school, grades 7-12. There are approximately 500 students enrolled. All students must complete a 3 year language requirement in Spanish, French, Japanese or Latin.

Language classes meet for 200 minutes per week... usually for five 40 minute blocks. One of those blocks, per week, is taught in the lab. The DLC was designed to supplement classroom instruction, and not to replace it. (Given the number of sections of language taught at Nobles, this results in the lab being used 38 out of 40 teaching periods of the week.)

Class size is approximately 15 students (smaller section numbers for Japanese)

In addition to teaching 4 (sometimes five) courses, language teachers must also coach two seasons a year, advise (on average) 10 students, and serve on committees.

The Language Lab (more correctly called the "Digital Learning Center") is located in the Fine Classroom on the first floor of the new Science Building. The room was subdivided and carrel spaces were installed in the fall of 1997. There are workstations and carrels for 20 students and three teachers. The room can be used for a single large class or two smaller classes. When it is being used by a large class, individual students from other classes are usually welcome to use free workstations.

Description of the hardware in the DLC

The DLC was able to work because of the emphasis that had been placed on technology in the entire school since 1990. At present, Nobles has a ratio of 1 computer for every two students. For more information about the "underpinnings" of the DLC...

Description of "what's behind the walls"

The challenges that were presented in the summer of 1997 (once we knew what kind of a lab we wanted to have) were the following:

visibility: all eyes were on the Modern Language Department.. could it possibly be too good to be true? Could one have a lab without the video server... or was there a catch?

the training of the faculty: The faculty members had various levels of computer proficiency and were tentative at best about having to add one more thing (training!!) to their already full plate (see above!).

the curriculum/ contact time: would it interfere with the way we taught? Were there things that the computer could do better, longer, more efficiently?? Would we get through the material we needed to cover on time?

the students' reaction: would the lab be a hinderance or a help to student learning? How about those students who had different learning styles?

Examples of things we do in the DLC

For those who would like more detail:
  History/Rationale
  Facility/Design
  Hardware
  Software
  Useful Websites
  Caveats or "Some of the important things we learned while doing this . . ."