This seminar will focus on the possibilities and pitfalls of using mobile devices in the language classroom, and in an individual’s own language-learning process. Our technological focus will be primarily the smartphone, but many of the applications available for mobile phone are designed to work on tablets as well. The key objective for the course is to help teacher-trainees develop a rubric for a) identifying the role of a language application within the acquisition and instruction process and b) evaluating whether the benefits of using an app outweigh the drawbacks. The focus of the course is not just to learn specific applications, as new and better applications will have emerged by the time you graduate from MIIS. Rather, language teachers will use research, critical analysis of language learning products, and hands-on experience to answer the following questions:

• What stages of the language acquisition and language teaching process are most amenable to incorporating mobile phones?

• How best to mitigate the breakdowns and inequalities that technology use introduces into learning ecosystems?

• How can place-based learning re-imagine the role of the language classroom and course materials?

• What is the role of the language teacher in a world of autonomous and mobile learning?

Course participants will design a mobile-assisted lesson appropriate to their desired teaching context, and will create a pitch for a new application for mobile learning, or an improvement to an existing application for mobile learning.