Italian dignitaries to attend Grand Valley celebration

The Consul from Italy, Carlo Romeo, might enjoy doing an Italian crossword puzzle during his upcoming visit to Grand Valley State University. Or perhaps he and Peter Secchia, former ambassador to Italy, will go head to head in a round of Italian Jeopardy, or play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, in Italian, and then relax during a performance of Italian Sea Stories. The prestigious guests are among those who will attend a celebration, "Italy and the Sea," created by Grand Valley students from several departments.

The celebration, on Friday, November 16, will be held at Loosemore Auditorium and Atrium, in DeVos Center, 401 W. Fulton, on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus.
Events will begin with an interactive Fair-Forum in the Atrium at 10 a.m., followed by live music performances of Sea Stories at 11 a.m., and a reception beginning at 11:45 a.m. The events are free and open to the public. Additional guests attending the events include representatives from the Sister City Committee and the Italian Consulate of Detroit. Media are encouraged to attend.

The celebration was planned after Grand Valley Italian instructor, Gisella Licari, was contacted by the consul from Italy about an annual program to promote an interest in the Italian language and culture abroad. Celebrations are planned through 93 active Italian Cultural Institutes throughout the world. “The Italian and the Sea” was chosen as the theme this year to incorporate poetry, literature, art, geography and more, to help in the discovery of the Italian language and culture.

“The Mediterranean sea has long had an impact on the language and culture of Italy,” said affiliate professor Licari. “The sea is ever-present and layered in Italian socialization, culture, employment and history.”

In addition to learning about the cultural importance of the sea, her students will be showcasing how using technology has assisted their mastery of the Italian language. They worked very closely with the university’s Language Resource Center to create their projects and were able to pool their resources on Blackboard, an online management system for course materials. Their research and activity encouraged collaborative learning and drew in participants from other academic areas, including Instructional Technology, College of Education and the Department of Music.

Catholic Central High School students, under the guidance of Chris Jones, will also be presenting a program, “Italy and the Sea: From Paintings to Poetry.”

For more information contact Gisella Licari at x18544.

PROJECT DETAILS:

Italian 101 Students
Elementary Italian students were given a set of Italian vocabulary words about the sea, and their translation into English. Their task was to prepare flashcards with an Mp3 audio clip of the correct Italian pronunciation, an image of the word and the proper spelling in both Italian and English. Students used the same vocabulary sets to create different types of virtual games and board games. Some of the games being showcased will include: bingo, word searches, cross word puzzles, board games, and interactive games.

For the public event Nov. 16, there will be approximately 10-12 stations manned by students and equipped with MAC computers for visitors to try the interactive flash cards and play the created games.


Italian 280 Students
In this collaborative project between Modern Languages, the Language Resource Center, and the Department of Music, three groups of Italian intermediate-advanced students have written stories focusing on the sea. Using iMovie, each group recorded their story text in Italian, selected images to portray the story and included English subtitles. Student composers from Grand Valley’s music department wrote lyrics to accompany the text of the story.

A live music performance will accompany the showing of the iMovies during the November 16th event. The iMovies will soon be available worldwide as podcasts available through an rss feed from the Language Resource Center’s Web page.

“These are all very creative and sophisticated stories,” said Licari. “The goal was to incorporated not only the Italian language, but also the many characteristics of the sea, how it feels, smell, tastes, and what it sounds like. They were very sophisticated and creative in their use of metaphor and onomatopoeia.”


Italian 201 Students
Intermediate Italian students created blogs (online journals) about the various aspects of the Italian Sea. In additional to textual information written and shared in their blogs, students collected Web resources and images relevant to their topics, which included Porti italiani (Italian Ports), Agricoltura mediterranea (Mediterranean Agriculture), and Cinema del mediterraneo (Mediterranean Cinema), among others.