Vermont Academy Partners With Middlebury Interactive

SAXTONS RIVER, Vt. - May 16, 2013 - PRLog -- Vermont Academy and its World Languages Department are proud to announce our upcoming participation in Middlebury Interactive, an innovative educational program that will further enhance language learning at Vermont Academy. Middlebury Interactive will provide Vermont Academy students unlimited access to its web-based world language courses in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Latin and Spanish. These online courses will compliment VA's more traditional classroom instruction and expand student's global opportunitites.

For almost one hundred years, Middlebury College's method of language instruction has enabled thousands to master languages quickly. The Middlebury method uses immersion learning to gain a stronger base of comprehension and to accelerate language acquisition. Middlebury Interactive will bring this method to an online community.

Using authentic sources, clever exercises and drills, the program sets up a well-organized and focused curriculum where the teacher can be more of a facilitator than a lecturer. The program allows teachers to support and encourage active learning both in and out of the classroom.

Academic Dean and Spanish instructor Fanning Hearon is thrilled with the opportunity this collaboration presents. "Our department looks forward to being a pioneer in our field by welcoming and embracing the remarkable web-based program as one of our primary sources for teaching language. Not only will this put us ahead of the competition in how languages are taught in the classroom, but this is also a unique opportunity for Vermont Academy to partner with our neighbors to the north on one of their signature academic programs. We are positive that current parents and students will be excited about this new curricular development."

World language department chair Laura Frey sees this partnership with Middlebury Interactive as another opportunity to advance Vermont Academy's global programs initiative, which currently includes the trimester in Spain and the service learning trip to Belize, as well as a new trip lead by Frey to Peru this summer.

"This connects us to Middlebury College, one of the leaders in foreign language teaching. They are renowned worldwide for their world language instruction and acquisition program."

Frey notes, "As we embrace the concept of "backward design", which is knowing what our end goals are in each level of language class, we can take full advantage of the program by using the rich variety of activities that ask the students to write, speak, read and listen in the target language all within a very well-designed and highly structured curriculum.

"The challenge presented to us as educators will be to figure out the balance between the advanced technology and the use of it within a traditional classroom. We're excited about that challenge."



An added bonus for Vermont Academy is that this project will include significant upgrades to the technological infrastructure on campus. The majority of this will work will focus on providing faster, more efficient web access to students and faculty alike. IT Director Jeff Harrington and his staff will spearhead these improvements to increase the school’s data bandwidth over the summer.