Pasaporte a España: Project description

As study abroad programs become increasingly popular, there is a growing need to provide students with an adequate preparation for this experience. The task of orienting students is challenging, and often their questions go unanswered. Although the Internet is full of useful sites of a touristic nature, there are no resources specifically geared toward students preparing to study abroad in Spain. Pasaporte a España is a website designed to provide an introduction to many practical aspects of the study abroad experience. Through contextualized activities, students can familiarize themselves with daily situations that will be commonplace for them in Spain. Pasaporte a España includes Quicktime movies that offer images of Spain with interactive exercises and simultaneous feedback. This website has a collaborative dimension in that it includes observations and comments by students who have already study in Spain, as well as an electronic bulletin board that increases interactivity among students. We believe that Pasaporte a España offers study abroad students a type of orientation that is not available anywhere else. We hope that this website will serve as a model for similar sites about study in other countries.

This project has been made possible in part by a grant by the Teaching and Learning Center at the University of Kentucky.

Website design David Slade Inmaculada Pertusa http://www.wku.edu/~inma.pertusa/ Western Kentucky University

Technical contributor Renata Fernández

Photography Michelle Chaplow (All the pictures with the letters: MVC) http://www.michellechaplow.com Inmaculada Machí Inmaculada Pertusa David Slade

Javascripts. Thanks to: Dan Beeby, Tri-College Mellon Language Grant. http://lang.swarthmore.edu/makers/index.htm The JavaScript Source http://javascriptsource.com

Special thanks to all the students that collaborated in this project with their opinions and comments