CECI is collaborating with the University of Bergen to produce Operación Futuro, a multimedia application designed to assist in the teaching of intermediate Spanish. The application is divided into three integrated modules or interfaces: Historia Interactive, Libro, and Tópicos.

The Historia Interactiva presents lessons in the form of a nonlinear interactive story that is told over 7 consecutive days. The story depicts a young Colombian couple planning to get married and has several outcomes depending on the students' decisions. The students' task is to collaborate with this couple in finding solutions to setbacks: money problems, work search, college costs, love and family relationships, etc. In order to progress through the application, students need to familiarize themselves to local conditions, culture, traditions, etc. The video is based on non-scripted dialogs, and the emphasis of the application is on the understanding of cultural situations and correct use of Spanish in different contexts, listening and oral skills, and oral and written activities in a cross-disciplinary context.

The Libro module is an electronic book viewed through a customized AM2 based html browser. It integrates hyperlinked grammar and cultural materials structured by units, indexes, menus, tables and a glossary. It presents different types of activities, exercises and assignments that draws from the content of the interactive story to illustrate vocabulary, communicative functions, grammar structures, literature readings and cultural topics. The materials are accessible through any World Wide Web compatible browser. The browser can also be used independently from the interactive stories as a generic Web browser.

The Tópicos module is a searchable encyclopedia of information related to Hispanic culture, geography, customs, literature etc. Information from Topicos are also integrated into the electronic book and available throughout the interactive story.

The three interfaces share a common media database of searchable materials that allow the teacher and/or student to directly control and customize of all multimedia materials used by the application. Operación Futuro was developed with AthenaMuse2 and is running on a Windows platform.

Screen shots

• Historia Interactiva - Scene
• Historia Interactiva - Preliminary View
• Historia Interactiva - Hotel Room
• Historia Interactiva - Navagation
• Work Area - Proyectos
• Work Area - Entonaciperacion

Project team

• Ana Beatriz Chiquito - Project Director and Visiting Researcher at MIT CECI from University of Bergen, Norway
• Lestra Litchfield - Project Manager and Multimedia Producer, MIT CECI
• Kirky DeLong - Application Software Designer, MIT CECI
• Peter Luka - Application Software Designer, MIT CECI
• Justin Lapierre - Application Software Designer, MIT CECI
• Luis Romero - Visiting Application Software Designer
• Mireya Quintero - Visiting Application Software Designer
• Cyrus Dolph - Graphic Artist

For more information

Please contact Ana Beatriz Chiquito, at achiqui@mit.edu.