Playing a New Video Game, Italian Style (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

  ILAT note: I thought this new article might be of interest. Though it does
not directly address the topic of this listserv the potential exists for
something innovatively similar to be done for an endangered indigenous
language.  Phil

  ~~~

  Playing a New Video Game, Italian Style 
02/08/06

  http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/12037.html
 An interactive project developed at the USC College Language Center allows
students to travel in a virtual world while enriching their linguistic skills.
By Kirsten Holguin
    Screenshot of the Virtual Italian Experience game in development.
Photo/USC College Language Center
Sitting in a small _caffeteria_ in Milan, Italy, the first-year Italian
language student finishes her cappuccino. Only when she gets the _conto_ does
she realize she doesn’t have enough euros to pay. 

Luckily, the USC College student knows what to do. With a few clicks of a
mouse, she takes a quiz, aces it and watches as virtual money fills the account
on the screen in front of her. 

That, of course, is the beauty of a video game. 

Thanks to the Virtual Italian Experience (VIE) video game now in development at
the USC College Language Center, students soon will be regularly taking such
computer-generated trips to Italy without leaving campus. 

As players progress from a classroom on the University Park campus to a tour of
Italy, the game is designed to engage students and enrich their learning of
language and culture. 

“The game speaks to every type of learning style, and that’s what I like most
about it,” said Edie Glaser, VIE project manager and Language Center
administrative manager, who first envisioned the game. 

The VIE game, now 25 percent complete, also marks what may be a first in the
use of creative technologies to improve college language instruction. To her
knowledge, Glaser said, USC is the first to develop a virtual learning
environment for use in a foreign-language curriculum. 

Through a number of features, the game emphasizes intricate linguistic skills
along with cultural awareness. The creators hope that after playing the game,
students will be able to discuss Italian politics and Italy’s role in Europe,
talk about contemporary Italian society and discuss the Italian diaspora around
the world. 

At about the same time that Glaser first envisioned the plan for VIE, Francesca
Italiano, director of the College’s Italian language program, completed writing
the beginning Italian textbook, “Allegro!” Her first textbook, “Crescendo!”
(Heinle, 1994), has been the most widely used intermediate Italian text in the
English-speaking world. 

In 2002, Italiano began working with Glaser and Dan Bayer, executive director
of the Language Center, agreeing to use the content in “Allegro!” for VIE. 

In short order, Glaser hired a graduate screenwriting student from the USC
School of Cinema-Television, an avid gamer and computer science student from
the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and a native Italian teacher, Paola
Matteucci, from the College to work on the project. 

Since then, a number of students have taken part in designing the game. USC
College graduate student Brooke Carlson is one. After learning Italian and
studying in Verona as part of his coursework, he now helps the VIE team with
programming, entering XML code into a Flash interface and adding content to the
grammar section. 

Recent College graduate Patrick Reynolds is the backbone of the Flash design
and programming. 

With funding from a two-year National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant,
the VIE team plans to complete the game by June 2007. 

Getting the NEH grant was a long shot, but it vindicated the team’s efforts,
Bayer said. 

“Language programs do not usually receive grants from the NEH, but our
proposal showed how the game, combined with classroom experience, will advance
learning about contemporary Italian culture and society,” he said. 

Bayer estimated that it would have cost about $1 million for a software company
to create a game like VIE. The Language Center developed the interactive concept
outline for VIE for one-tenth of that amount, he said. 

This spring, students, staff and faculty with backgrounds in Italian, 3-D
modeling, animation and video-game design are pitching in to help develop and
beta test VIE. 

When the game is finished in 2007, Prentice-Hall has first right of refusal to
publish and market VIE to universities across the country. USC students will
always have free access to the Virtual Italian Experience. Italian students
will be able to connect to the game via a downloadable application. 

“At USC College, we want to make the learning experiences of our students as
meaningful as possible. Sometimes this means looking in unexpected places for
solutions,” Bayer said. 
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