Who We Are

Although my name appears at the top of this page as the main presenter, it is only fair to mention here Simon Rak, who generously brings to this workshop his expertise. Here is some biographical information about the two of us.
My name is Juan Ramón de Arana and I am from Madrid, Spain. I have a Licenciatura en Filosofía y Letras (Filología Hispánica) from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. In 1988 I entered the University of Missouri at Columbia as a graduate student in Spanish. Later on, I transferred my doctoral studies to Washington University in Saint Louis, where I received my Ph.D. writing a dissertation on Juan Benet. I am currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at Ursinus College, where I have been working for two years. As a member of the Modern Languages Department, I am also an active participant in the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant awarded to the Ursinus-Lafayette Consortium in 1996. I developed an interest in technology and language teaching as a graduate student at Washington University in Saint Louis, where I started to learn HTML and design exercises in my (scarce) free time. At that time, my main goal and concern were to make the classroom environment and the learning process more interactive. Almost immediately, I realized that computer technology and, especially, the Internet, were revolutionizing our academic and personal interaction with reality. Since then, I have been integrating this technology in my teaching responsibilities as much as I can. I personally favor the development and diffusion of Web applications because of the high responsiveness of this medium and the wide audience it can reach. But, of course, like many other instructors teaching with new technologies, I wish I had more time to produce more and better applications. As for now, I continue to work on my courses and the Spanish Language Exercises, a web site devoted to the development of supportive language materials for instructors and students of Spanish. I hope that this workshop helps you find new ways to integrate technology in your own teaching. E-mail: jarana@ursinus.edu Home Page: http://mld2.ursinus.edu/jarana Spanish Language Exercises: http://mld2.ursinus.edu/jarana/Ejercicios		Simon Rak is a sophomore student of Computer Science and Mathematics at Ursinus College. Originally from Prague, Czech Republic, he moved to the US as a high school student. At Ursinus College he works in close contact with both the Mathematics and Computer Science Department and the Modern Languages Department. Last summer, as an independent research project, Simon built an Intranet server from scratch for Ursinus College. As my student assistant, Simon has written numerous cgi's for my Spanish Language Exercises. He also helps me with JavaScript debugging problems and, on a regular basis, gives me advice on all sorts of software and hardware questions. While pursuing his undergraduate studies, he is employed at Ursinus College in the International Learning Center as a Technical Assistant, an opportunity created by Middlebury College through its Project 2001. E-mail: sirak@ursinus.edu Home Page: http://mld2.ursinus.edu/sirak