Viz

SPAN 103: Intermediate Spanish

Instructor: Diane Pearsall
Spanish
Winter 2012

Course Description
This course continues the study of complex sentence patterns and reviews basic patterns in greater depth, partly through the discussion of authentic short stories. Students practice all four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) in Spanish.

Project Description

¡Vamos al Prado!: A virtual museum tour for Spanish 103 created with the Moodle Language Lesson Module


The Prado Virtual Museum tour gives elementary Spanish students (Spanish 103) an opportunity to learn about Hispanic culture through its art. Painting is a good choice since students relate well to representational art and thus can develop the necessary linguistic tools for describing and analyzing works of art and offering opinions backed up with specific examples. It is also a way to find commonality in the 20-something countries where Spanish is spoken. And new technologies (like virtual museum tours, the availability of high-quality images, videos, and information about artists) now make it possible to study art in more authentic ways.

The Prado modules begin with a history of the museum and then take students on a "tour" where through images, video and accompanying exercises and activities, they analyze works of major artists. As a culminating task, students record their own art presentations (in Podcast) on a different Hispanic painter, and then view and evaluate the presentations of a number of their peers.