Yep, just like the title of this blog suggests, this post is to let you know that the ITAL project is coming to an end this May 2019.
Looking back, it has been an amazing journey. What we did helped many students, instructors and people from the Texan-Italian community; that feels very good. One of ITAL's most important outcomes is the creation of a model and storytelling ecosystem that can be replicated for any language, anywhere. ITAL now is a blueprint for anyone interested in infusing community-building storytelling and interactive media creation into the classroom.
The entire ITAL site are examples upon examples of stories that can be told - and activities that can be done -to help language educators transcend the classroom setting and encourage their students to connect with the local community that uses the language/culture they're studying. We believe that taking a foreign language should prepare us to be a global citizen, travel abroad, just as it should help us connect with the many fascinating foreign diasporas that exist right here in America.
ITAL was created on a volunteer basis. After we started charging for memberships in Spring 2018, the money raised by ITAL has been reinvested into the project itself in the form of prizes for students, website maintenance and payments to the super talented artists whom we hired for the creation of sleek animations and designs that we found crucial to the ITAL experience. We deemed important that ITAL always offered high quality content that could shake students’ senses and we are proud to have always provided it.
Another element that made ITAL unique was the collaboration between Antonella Olson, a veteran instructor of Italian, and us, a professional boutique-sized media company. Thanks to our personal relationship, we were able to create ITAL. Had it not been for such a relationship, it would have been practically impossible for any small-sized company like ours to work alongside a professor for such a long period of time, in such a prolific fashion.
The sheer real cost of the effort would have rendered the creation of this project impossible. In other words, the biggest success of ITAL was to actually exist.
This is it, folks, the final countdown. We will be stopping all payments this April 2019; therefore your month of May will be free.
Thank you for watching and participating.
Ciao ITAL! Thank you for inspiring me and immersing me in entertaining, interactive stories. You have enriched my classroom experience and given me the opportunity to see the words/grammar structures I've learned playing out in real-world scenarios. I have greatly enjoyed my experiences as an ITAL creator, especially being able to meet Texan-Italians, learn more about them, and develop my writing skills.
So so sad to see ITAL go. This has been such a big part of my Italian education here at UT. I am not sure you know the impact that has come with ITAL. You have inspired so many students including myself to continue our education in Italian outside of just the classroom. Through ITAL and taking classes, I realized just how much I enjoyed getting to learn the language and the beautiful culture that surrounds it. Because of you both I got to pursue my interest in being a writer in so many different ways. I did my very first interview through ITAL last semester and had such a great experience. You found such inspiring stories throughout your travel…
Dear ITAL,
E’ difficile! Yes, it’s hard… It’s very hard to accept that ITAL will no longer be a component of our curriculum and it’s even harder to say in a few words how grateful I/we are to you for sharing such a precious project with us. Just last Saturday during the presentation for Italian at the World Languages Day, each member of the Italian team mentioned ITAL in her or his segment. We used clips from a few of yours videos (how many are there? 80? 100? I lost count…there are so many!). Through them, we were able to convey the essence of the Italian culture and the relevance of Italy and Italian to our audience of parents, hi…