Dear Open Up subscribers and visitors, After 12 productive years as a National Foreign Language Resource Center (2010-2022), COERLL was not refunded for the current Title VI grant cycle. However, we are pleased to announce that COERLL will continue to share Open Educational Resources created by faculty at the University of Texas at Austin. That means that you will continue to have “open access” to all of our OER. Unfortunately, due to staff reductions, we must discontinue our blog, but we will archive it for your reference. The bottom line is this: we are not going away, and we hope you won’t ..read more

Photo credit: Christopher Pinto My two American Sign Language OERs (i.e. ASL 101 and ASL 102) contain over 80 different instructional videos. These videos were designed using multiple platforms, and took numerous hours to record, edit, publish, store and share. When I began designing my first OER for ASL 101, I used a platform called VSDC Video Editing Software. Comparative to iMovie for PCs, VSDC enabled me to add open captions to my work, include images, add an end-screen video and more. From here, I made sure to attribute all borrowed images on a separate Google Doc. This ASL 101 OER spans ..read more

Logo credit: Katherin Patricia Tairo-Quispe Texas Hatun yachaywasim lliwllapaq yachachiykunata qispichichkan COERLLwan kuska. Kaypitaq llamk’achkanku llaqtamanta yachakuqkuna, Runasimi rimaqkuna. Kaypitaq llamk’achkanku Texas Hatun Yachaywasi yachachiqkuna, yachaqkuna hinallataq Puca Puca Qqehuar comunidadkunapiwan Peru suyumanta. paykunam kuska llamk’achkanku kay yachachikuykuna qispichiypi. kay yachikuykunataq Runasimi rimaymanta hinallataq kay simi rimaqkunamantawan. Paykunam ruwachkanku videokunata, qillqakunata, uyarinakunata ima Runasimi yachanapaq. Kaykunataq churakunqaku COERLL chawp ..read more

Do you remember your favorite activity in school as a child? Without a doubt, mine were the games. From hide-and-seek to puzzles, every day I was prepared to live a new adventure. Probably, I am not the only one that grew up with the idea that knowledge, games, and enjoyment should not be separated from each other. The 4-day workshop Games2Teach Collaboratory sponsored by CASLS (University of Oregon) & COERLL (University of Texas-Austin) reminded me of this as an educator as well. Facilitated by Julie Sykes and Stephanie Knight from CASLS, the workshop provided ideas, tools, and skills fo ..read more

Editor’s note: This post is the fifth (and final) in a series by Dr. L.J. Randolph on the subject of critical pedagogy, social justice oriented teaching, inclusivity, and anti-racism in the language classroom. Read the rest here. In this post, I share about how I use a piece of literature that’s almost 100 years old in order to frame a discussion about historical and present-day issues of race and identity. I hope this post helps you as you imagine how you might move from comprehension to critical reflection in your own classes using a variety of resources. The text is “Negro bembón” (“Thick ..read more

Editor’s note: This post is the fourth in a series by L.J. Randolph on the subject of critical pedagogy, social justice oriented teaching, inclusivity, and anti-racism in the language classroom. Read the rest here. I have been teaching Spanish for nearly 20 years. In all of those years, the language departments in which I worked used textbooks to support instruction, in some way or another. While some texts have been better than others, a common thread among all the texts is a lack of representation when it comes to historically (and currently) marginalized groups, such as Black Latinx popula ..read more

Editor’s note: This post is the third in a series by L.J. Randolph on the subject of critical pedagogy, social justice oriented teaching, inclusivity, and anti-racism in the language classroom. Read the rest here. “Yet we don’t get our hands too dirty…We don’t usually listen to stories of escaping war and finding refuge and racism in a new land, despite the fact that these events occur in settings where so many of the languages taught in classrooms around the world are spoken” (Ennser-Kananen, 2016, p.557). I get it. People don’t like conflict. People don’t like discomfort. I don’t like confl ..read more

Editor’s note: This post is the second in a series by L.J. Randolph on the subject of critical pedagogy, social justice oriented teaching, inclusivity, and anti-racism in the language classroom. Read the rest here. One of the easiest, most effective, and seamless ways to integrate social justice is careful, intentional selection of resources. You can be certain that individuals from marginalized communities are already thinking deeply about some of the topics and perspectives that you may be considering integrating into your class for the first time. I recommend selecting open resources that ..read more

Editor’s note: This post is the second in a series by L.J. Randolph on the subject of critical pedagogy, social justice oriented teaching, inclusivity, and anti-racism in the language classroom. Read the rest here. One of the easiest, most effective, and seamless ways to integrate social justice is careful, intentional selection of resources. You can be certain that individuals from marginalized communities are already thinking deeply about some of the topics and perspectives that you may be considering integrating into your class for the first time. I recommend selecting open resources that ..read more

Editor’s note: This post is the first in a series by L.J. Randolph on the subject of critical pedagogy, social justice oriented teaching, inclusivity, and anti-racism in the language classroom. The advice here is for teachers of any language and culture, although the classroom examples given are for teaching Spanish. Thank you to Dr. Randolph for sharing his expertise, and to Luis Avilés, Shavonne Coleman, and Rachel Frankel for their input during the process. As a language learner, I have always been drawn to critical content in the context of language learning—social issues that matter deep ..read more