Workshops and 90-minute Sessions

Description: Phonetics is the study of speech sounds from a physical perspective (such as articulatory or acoustic), while phonology focuses on the patterning of speech sounds. This course introduces both phonetics and phonology. Students will acquire the fundamentals of phonetic and phonological description and analysis with a special focus on Indigenous languages. 

This course is for endangered language community members, students entering fields related to linguistics but whose area of study is not linguistics itself, or for those that are merely curious about the sound systems of Indigenous languages and want to know more.  It is hoped that students will begin to appreciate the role linguistics plays in their own work, either as a tool for teaching or for advancing their own language revitalization work.

Objectives:

• Accurately identify the physiology of the vocal tract and corresponding sounds by articulator/manner/voicing. 

• Transcribe English at a phonetic and a phonemic level. 

• Demonstrate an ability to identify and formalize phonological alternations from Language Puzzles various Indigenous languages. 

• Develop and expand knowledge of language (specifically, phonology) as a system essential to the human condition and the expression of human culture. 

• Develop an understanding the linguistic subfield of phonology.

• Embrace the diversity of the languages of Native America.

• Explain the phonological structures of Native American languages. 

• Solve various Indigenous Language Puzzles using linguistic skills.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: None 

Note: If want to work on own community language, please bring language resources such as dictionary, grammars, and language lessons.

Description: Participants will learn about the theories behind language immersion and why it is so effective at creating new speakers.  Participants will also gain hands on experience in planning for and creating effective language immersion sessions.  The workshop will conclude with a discussion of additional considerations for language immersion as a part of a broader goal of language revitalization. 

This workshop would be ideal for participants who are currently implementing or are planning to implement a full or partial language immersion program.

Objectives:

• Plan, create, and implement an immersion activity

• Create a daily immersion schedule

• Sketch out a long term immersion plan or curriculum

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: none

Description: This workshop is open to individuals or teams who are interested in learning the fundamentals of database design and implementation *from the ground up*.  The workshop assumes that participants are interested in and excited about learning some coding (including at least some SQL, or 'structured query language'), so that they can convert a spreadsheet containing written language examples into a custom database.  Custom database development as taught in this course would be in addition to, or in place of, adoption of vended database products such as Flex, SOOSL, ELAN, and the like.

Participants should be aware that this workshop will guide them through a process that includes (a) accessing software and code from a website, (b) installing and running code on a computer that they have administrative rights on, and (c) working with language examples that (for this introduction) are in written form (that is, we won't be touching on techniques necessary for managing audio or video materials).

Objectives:

• Design and build a relational database (in SQLite https://www.sqlite.org/)

• Query the database and modify the data using SQL

• Identify next steps in order to implement the database in a project of their choosing

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: This workshop would be ideal for individuals or teams who have either some experience in coding (python, SQL, javascript, XML - anything at all) OR who are excited about learning some basics of coding and who are exploring the possibility of creating a custom database for their work. Participants who have done at least a little bit of coding (in any computer language) might feel most comfortable in our workshop, especially at first. At least one participant per team must be at least interested in and excited about learning some coding.

Required equipment and/or materials: 

• A spreadsheet containing some written language materials to learn with (ideally, the examples you bring should be sharable within the context of the workshop - with other participants, and with your instructors)

• A laptop that runs at least Windows10, or MacOS13, or Linux; on which at least one team member has administrative privileges

• An interest and willingness to learn computer coding (you will learn at least a little bit of SQL, 'structured query language', which is a language designed for use with relational databases) 

Note: We would particularly welcome community teams that include at least one nerdy coder and at least one language expert (who may not be a nerd at all).  Multigenerational teams would be wonderful to work with.  We would also emphasize that our workshop focuses on the design and implementation of custom databases, from the ground up -  and not on the use of database-enabled software applications (i.e. FLEx, ELAN, SOOSL).  CoLang participants interested in the latter would be much better served by enrolling in the CoLang workshops that focus on those particular applications.  This workshop focuses on relational databases, and relational databases are not necessarily the best choice for projects that attempt to store large amounts of text data (like lots of pdf or doc files) and want to facilitate full-text search over that material (like a google search).  Instead, relational databases are a good starting point for storing, searching and retrieving information in tabular forms (like, for example, an online dictionary might require).  

Description: This workshop explores a community-based textbook-writing initiative with indigenous children in Papua New Guinea, providing an opportunity for participants to adapt similar techniques. Its aim has been to empower students to research their indigenous knowledge with community elders' guidance to produce a book documenting their own stories.  This workshop is particularly relevant for settings where there is a need to incorporate local indigenous knowledge into the school setting despite limited institutional support for indigenous language or a lack of local indigenous teachers.

This workshop would be ideal for elementary and secondary teachers (including non-Indigenous teachers), language activists, and community members interested in integrating Indigenous knowledge and persons with specialized indigenous knowledge into the formal school system. 

Objectives:

• Understand and critically evaluate the methodology of this project model developed in Papua New Guinea, and discuss the degree to which is would be applicable in their communities

• Consider adaptations to local cultural and institutional contexts and to establish similar initiatives in schools and other educational institutions in Indigenous communities

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: pens/pencils and paper for note-taking

Description: The main sources of data we have for many languages of the Americas, especially dormant or awakening languages, are collections of texts in various lengths. Using such data is challenging, as we do not have the benefits of scaffolding that textbooks and elicitation sessions offer. Moreover, the amount of data in such corpora is usually smaller than what most Corpus Linguistics method assume. But using this data also generates opportunities, as it highlights the centrality of actual language use, in particular discourse functions, and discourse structuring elements in grammatical systems. In this workshop, we will present some methods of working with such smaller corpora and focus on analyzing and describing the expression of discourse functions and systems of discourse structuring markers.

This workshop would be ideal for participants who are interested in working with collections of texts.

Objectives:

• Learn one possible method to working with a small textual corpus to tackle questions about grammar and usage. 

• Learn to explore various discourse level phenomena:

  • The expression of discourse functions such as the main event line of narratives, different types of background clauses, andThe discourse-level function of discourse structuring devices such as discourse markers. 

• Learn to ask and answer questions about

  • How different intra-clausal relations are expressed in your language.

  • How the discourse status of different clauses is expressed. 

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: Laptop

Note: Feel free to bring your own collection of texts if you can; feel free to contact me with any questions before the workshop (sshirtz@asu.edu)

Description: Participants will learn important concepts that form the foundation of dictionary-making, including issues of writing systems, part-of-speech categories, and the relationships between words and meaning. We'll then introduce Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx), an application that allows users to create a database of word and meaning information. Workshop sessions will include a mix of informational sessions and practical tasks to be performed with FLEx.

This workshop is ideal for participants who are somewhat comfortable working with computers (though you don't need to be an expert!) and who would like to begin documenting the words of their language or community, either on their own or with cooperation from other community members.

Objectives:

• Create a language project in FLEx, with at least a few sample entries

• Know how to continue entering word and meaning information into their database

• Be well-prepared to continue learning how to use FLEx and to become more comfortable with its interface

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: 

• Familiarity with using a computer and typing information into forms (recommended but not required). If you can navigate a web form, and if you're willing to learn some important concepts about language, you should be able to work with the basic functions of FLEx by the end of this workshop

• FLEx ties its language data to ISO language codes. If you already know the standard ISO code for your language, it will help speed up the FLEx set-up process. It is also possible to choose a custom ISO language code if you don't want to use one of the standard language codes. If you don't know which ISO code is best for your language, the workshop facilitators can help you once the workshop starts

• When setting up a new FLEx language project, one task will be to set up the writing system for your language--what alphabet or script you will use. If you have already made the decisions about how you want to write your language and how you will be typing it on a computer, this will also help speed up the FLEx set-up process

Required equipment and/or materials: 

• Participants will need to bring a computer that has the memory and processing ability to use FLEx; in most cases, computers that were produced within the last 5 years will be sufficient. You can find the official recommended minimum system requirements for FLEx at https://downloads.languagetechnology.org/fieldworks/9.0.4/ReadMes/SetupFW.pdf

• Participants will need to have language data that they can begin to enter into a FLEx database. This means that (1) participants need to have a way to type their language into a computer (ie, a provisional or official writing and spelling system), and (2) they need to have words and sample documents in their language that they can practice with. At a minimum, one text document with at least 50 words will allow users to have practice with the tools and processes that FLEx offers

Note: Participants from the same community are welcome to work together on one computer, with the same collection of sample language data. Although we recommend that participants bring a sample document in their language, it is also important that at least one participant from each language group is able to speak or understand the words that are used in that sample document

Description: This workshop will consider: what teachers and learners need to know about how sounds are made; different types of knowledge about sounds and sound systems and how these affect pronunciation; instrumental analysis for learning and teaching pronunciation; the adaptation of a grammatical description or pronunciation guide written for linguists for use in a community language classroom; the relationship between writing systems, descriptions, and transcriptions of sounds; using community verbal arts, such as poetry, songs, or other media, as tools for teaching pronunciation; and the use or development of language resources for sounds and sound systems.  

This workshop would be ideal for participants who want to focus on aspects of what one needs to know to learn to pronounce words and sentences and to teach pronunciation to others in community contexts.

Objectives:

• Decode and demystify the study of the sounds of languages

• Develop a vocabulary for talking about sound patterns

• Become aware of the resources for teaching pronunciation of Indigenous languages

• Develop a small set of materials for teaching pronunciation that can be immediately used in an Indigenous language learning context (whether classroom, Master-Apprentice, home, or elsewhere).

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: None

Required equipment and/or materials: Participants may choose to bring their own laptops but are not required to do so. 

Description: This workshop teaches how language documentation data can be used resourcefully by linguists and community members to create story books. The workshop brings native speakers’ insights from the Andes of Bolivia in producing a set of story books in Southern Bolivian Quechua and Southern Bolivian Aymara.

This workshop would be ideal for community members and linguists who work on language documentation. 

Objectives:

•  Design and produce story books for minority languages with fluent speakers and storytellers

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: notebook and pens/pencils for note-taking

Description: This workshop will consider: what teachers and learners need to know about how written systems are developed; knowledge about sounds and written systems and how these affect pronunciation and teaching; the value of writing systems for language revitalization; the challenges of writing systems for language revitalization; how to adapt a grammatical description or writing system developed by linguists for use in a language teaching classroom; the relationship between writing systems, descriptions, and transcriptions of sounds; using traditional knowledges as tools for teaching pronunciation; and the use or development of language resources through writing systems.  

The workshop is geared towards those who are thinking about how to develop materials for community contexts. 

Objectives: 

• Consider the value of writing systems for language revitalization

• Create an accessible way to talk about the writing systems of Indigenous languages

• Identify challenges of teaching Indigenous language through written systems and proposing creative and relevant pedagogies

• Consider what needs to be in a toolkit of resources for teaching written materials in the participant's chosen language

• Consider how teaching through written systems can be rooted in cultural and traditional knowledge.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: None

Required equipment and/or materials: Participants may choose to bring their own laptops but are not required to do so.

Description: This workshop will introduce students to the ideas behind deep learning and how they can be applied to language documentation and revitalization. We will make chatbots, computer descriptions of grammar, and we will learn how computers can learn the meanings of words.

This workshop would be ideal for community members and students involved in language documentation, who need tools to make their work faster and easier.

Objectives: 

• Gain experience in computer programming and Natural Language Processing. Both skills can help accelerate the work of language documentation, as well as bring younger community members, who might already be adept at programming, into language work. 

• Make basic natural language processing tools for their languages, including basic chatbots and parsers.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: Familiarity with (or a desire to learn) computer programming is necessary to complete this class.

Required equipment and/or materials: Participants would need two things: (1) a laptop computer, and (2) digitized text in their language, which will be used to train computer learning algorithms.

Description: This workshop introduces a procedure of documenting lullabies and children’s songs. It also addresses the following related topics: (i) benefits of using songs especially lullabies in Indigenous language teaching and learning, (ii) differences between traditional songs and translated Western songs, (iii) process of lullaby documentation and project development, and (iv) ways of sharing documented songs in various domains of language work.

This workshop would be ideal for participants who, teach their community’s language, study their own community’s language, research with the community members, or study documentary linguistics.

Objectives:

• Identify potential benefits of using songs in Indigenous language teaching and learning

• Observe and analyze differences between traditional songs (lullabies/children’s songs) and Western songs (e.g., English Quatrain)

• Develop and prepare a lullaby documentation project

• Suggest ways of sharing the to-be-documented lullabies and songs for your own needs 

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: none

Description: Creating a language learning video using open-source software can be a rewarding experience, allowing you to tailor your content to your specific needs and preferences. Whether you're a language teacher, student, or enthusiast, this class will equip you with the skills and knowledge you need to create effective and engaging language learning videos. Join us and take your language learning journey to the next level.

Objectives:

By the end of the workshop participants will:

• Learn the basics of recording audio and video. Including but not limited to: camera setup, angles, video sizing, file organization, importing and exporting, transitions and using music.

• Become familiar with open-source software to edit and create videos

• Create a 3-minute language learning video

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience:

Experience with audio and video recording are ideal but not required.

Required equipment and/or materials:

• Participants must have a tablet/iPad and/or

• Smart phone with high-quality video capturing capability

• Participants may also bring their own camera or audio recording devices

Description: This workshop will share how to develop board and virtual word games to encourage the use of a language in a fun setting. This workshop will benefit participants who have language reclamation and maintenance goals. The workshop will provide examples of accessible language games that support collaborative and individual Indigenous language learning.

Objectives:

• Adapt four unique word games for a language learning curriculum

• Modify game templates in four popular coding languages

• Learn how to publish games on the internet to be easily shared within communities

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: notebook and pen/pencil for note-taking, dictionary (if your language has one), laptops, mobile phones

Note: If you would like to code on their personal laptops, we will provide instructions on how to set up the coding environment prior to the workshop as well as offer assistance on the first day

Description: This workshop will provide a practical introduction to the transcription software ELAN (https://archive.mpi.nl/tla/elan). Participants will gain hands-on experience in creating time-aligned transcripts in ELAN, and will learn how to utilize ELAN to accomplish common tasks in the field of language revitalization and description.

This workshop is ideal for participants who want to contribute to recording and transcribing their own communities' languages, or for those otherwise interested in language revitalization.

Objectives:

• Fully transcribe an audio/video recording, and export it into a fully subtitled YouTube video

• Reflect on the usefulness of ELAN for language revitalization work

• Relate the work done in class to the work that can be done, or is currently being done, in their own community

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: laptop running Windows, MacOS, or Linux (preferably with a working microphone)

Description: This workshop will provide participants with hands-on training in basic linguistic transcription methods.  Participants will engage through hands-on exercises and lectures that will cover a variety of topics related to transcription including: how to represent the sounds of a language in written form,  transcribing intonation, transcribing conversations, and writing systems.

This workshop would be ideal for participants who are Tribal community members and researchers who want to transcribe audio from a current documentation project or from archival recordings.  

Objectives: 

• Understand of the goals of linguistic transcription and common conventions used

• Transcribe a segment of audio from language recordings

• Transcribe a conversation

• Reconcile discrepancies between multiple writing systems used for a single language

• Use transcription tools and methods for language documentation and revitalization 

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: Required: A laptop computer and headphones.  Optional: recordings from a current or archival language documentation project participant may want to work on.

Description: This workshop will provide participants with basic knowledge and experience on how to incorporate the documentation of landscape into their work, which can include the documentation of place names, but also information related to interacting and being in (named) places, emphasizing the importance of experience based language documentation and learning. In particular, we will provide a general overview of how to incorporate different methods of studying and documenting the landscape, territory and places of cultural and historic importance. 

This workshop would be ideal for participants who are interested in exploring the connection between the landscape(s) we visit and inhabit and the way we describe such places. The workshop is open to anyone. 

Objectives:

• Acquire an understanding of how to document landscape related knowledge as part of a larger language documentation project 

• Learn how to organize and facilitate landscape walks

• Develop basic skills in using existing digital and analogue maps and texts for landscape based inquiry

• Foster a better appreciation for the multifaceted approaches that can be taken while studying landscape and territory

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: This workshop is not a tech-based one, but rather requires the participation and respect of participants to share their own experiences when relevant and listen to others. Required materials include: a notebook or computer for note-taking, cellphone with OsmAnd Maps installed, and a laptop with GoogleEarth installed (recommended but not required)

Note: Weather permitting, this workshop may include some outdoor activities

Description: In this workshop, participants will receive a brief overview of important factors in second language acquisition (SLA) that influence language learning, a targeted introduction to language curriculum development, and theoretical guidelines and practical activities for producing pedagogical materials to support community-based language revitalization. Be prepared to analyze community language learning needs and develop at least 1-3 language learning activities for your community that support learner input, interaction, and output. 

This workshop would be ideal for participants who are currently engaged in language revitalization as teachers or language learners who are preparing to teach. Participants should have access to some language archival materials or examples of language that they would like to adapt into a learning activity. 

Objectives:

• Gain a more in-depth understanding of second language acquisition, language curriculum development, and language materials development

• Identify opportunities to increase input and interaction to support second (additional) language acquisition for learners

• Understand language curriculum development and how to conduct a needs analysis

• Understand key processes in materials development

• Begin to design materials to support second language acquisition

• Adapt language documentation/archival materials into teaching materials

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: laptop, notebook, pen/pencils, sample language content to develop into teaching materials (documentation, audio/video recording, texts, stories, etc.)

Description: Phonetics is the study of speech sounds from a physical perspective (such as articulatory or acoustic), while phonology focuses on the patterning of speech sounds. This course introduces both phonetics and phonology. Students will acquire the fundamentals of phonetic and phonological description and analysis with a special focus on Indigenous languages. 

This course is for endangered language community members, students entering fields related to linguistics but whose area of study is not linguistics itself, or for those that are merely curious about the sound systems of Indigenous languages and want to know more.  It is hoped that students will begin to appreciate the role linguistics plays in their own work, either as a tool for teaching or for advancing their own language revitalization work.

Objectives:

• Accurately identify the physiology of the vocal tract and corresponding sounds by articulator/manner/voicing. 

• Transcribe English at a phonetic and a phonemic level. 

• Demonstrate an ability to identify and formalize phonological alternations from Language Puzzles various Indigenous languages. 

• Develop and expand knowledge of language (specifically, phonology) as a system essential to the human condition and the expression of human culture. 

• Develop an understanding the linguistic subfield of phonology.

• Embrace the diversity of the languages of Native America.

• Explain the phonological structures of Native American languages. 

• Solve various Indigenous Language Puzzles using linguistic skills.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: None 

Note: If want to work on own community language, please bring language resources such as dictionary, grammars, and language lessons.

Description: Join the First Peoples’ Cultural Council (FPCC) Revitalization Planning Coaches as they share a wholistic approach of strategically building a future for language vitality. Located in British Columbia (BC), Canada, the FPCC provides grant funding and leadership for the revitalization of BC’s First Nation languages, arts, and heritage. They are more than a grant funder; FPCC also offers training, coaching, resources, and assistance directly to B.C. First Nation communities. 

This workshop would be ideal for administrators, planners and project teams, people working to develop plans for Indigenous language revitalization. It is also suitable for language learners, teachers, workers, young adults, and advocates. 

Objectives: 

• By the end of this workshop, participants will have been introduced to a wholistic approach to language revitalization where decision-making has a strategic orientation; and leaders, staff, language champions, Elders and advisory groups serve as community mobilizers. 

• Participants will know how to create a visual assessment of the community’s language, that may lead to or inspire specific actions or collaboration that can be taken to strengthen the capacity of language revitalization. 

• Participants will have access to FPCC’s web-based tools and resources that were created to support and guide strategic language planning and cultural revitalization.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: Accessible to all, no prerequisites necessary. 

Required equipment and/or materials:  Everyone is welcome to attend! 

Description: The Grant Writing workshop will be organized as a series of interactive sessions focused on building collaborative project teams, planning and budgeting, writing and proofing, and understanding guidelines for submission and deadlines. 

Bring your specific goals, ideas for projects, and outlines of activities for discussion. Participants will begin to draft narrative and budget sections of proposals and receive personalized feedback on drafts. Students will take away from this course additional knowledge to advance existing grant writing skills into larger grant proposals; and processes, templates, and confidence to first time writers. 

This workshop would be ideal for participants who are first-time grant writers, participants seeking time to draft a grant during the institute, and writers looking for specific feedback on a specific proposal

Objectives:

• Understand the complexities of developing consensus across collaborative partners to approach grant projects

• Draft budgets and budget narratives

• Draft project narratives and introduction paragraphs

• Better understand the life cycle of grant-based requests

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: Project Planning suggested

Required equipment and/or materials: Laptop suggested

Description: This workshop will specialize in stop motion animation and its application to Indigenous language revitalization, reclamation, documentation and supplementation to other activities such as Group Mentor Apprentice or independent language study. 

This workshop is ideal for language workers interested in using creative applications of technology, especially stop-motion animation, for language revitalization and reclamation.

Objectives:

• Help in building a corpus of stop animation templates that will be shared between language departments and grass roots efforts

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: some experience in video editing software will be helpful but is not required

Required equipment and/or materials: A limited number of posable figures, mounting putty, and scenery backdrops will be provided by the instructors. If possible, please bring your own:

• • Laptop computer with any video editing software pre-downloaded to the computer (iMovie, Final Cut, or Adobe Premiere)

  • 2-4 posable action figures or doll characters 

  • Smart phone with high-quality video capturing capability

Description: This workshop offers a practical introduction to dictionary making  for Indigenous languages. We will discuss a range of topics, including dictionary types and users; ways of gathering, organizing, and presenting lexical materials; features of lexical entries and definitions; and community needs in relation to dictionary development work. Participants will also be introduced to software tools used in dictionary development and be encouraged to engage with them directly, either through hands-on exercises or through working with their own language materials.

This workshop is ideal for participants who have an interest in or are have been engaged in developing Indigenous language dictionaries. 

Objectives:

• Develop an understanding of basic principles and methods in dictionary design and the use of dictionaries in Indigenous language work

• Become familiar with software tools available for use in making dictionaries

• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches and tools, and identify which of these are suited for your own work

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: laptop (access to Windows 10 or later is needed for some dictionary software tools), language materials that you would like to work with (recommended but not required)

Description: This interactive workshop is about how families can use their indigenous heritage languages at home. The languages in question are endangered, and not the language of the broader society, creating special challenges for both language learning and language use. Within this context, we will discuss approaches to language revitalization for families. The workshop will be interactive throughout, with families sharing their knowledge and experiences, as well as using exercises, games, brain-storming and other interactive processes to illustrate and help the a families who are using or want to start using their own heritage language at home

Objectives:

• Develop your own family language plan

• Discuss family kinship terms for your ancestral language(s), including grammatical differences for singular/plural, terminology for lineage dependent kinship and deceased relations (if applicable)

• Appraise and design a family language learning program

• Incorporate Indigenous pedagogies into their family language learning program

• Discuss caregivers’ discourse strategies

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: none

Description: Participants will learn important concepts that form the foundation of dictionary-making, including issues of writing systems, part-of-speech categories, and the relationships between words and meaning. We'll then introduce Fieldworks Language Explorer (FLEx), an application that allows users to create a database of word and meaning information. Workshop sessions will include a mix of informational sessions and practical tasks to be performed with FLEx.

This workshop is ideal for participants who are somewhat comfortable working with computers (though you don't need to be an expert!) and who would like to begin documenting the words of their language or community, either on their own or with cooperation from other community members.

Objectives:

• Create a language project in FLEx, with at least a few sample entries

• Know how to continue entering word and meaning information into their database

• Be well-prepared to continue learning how to use FLEx and to become more comfortable with its interface

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: 

• Familiarity with using a computer and typing information into forms (recommended but not required). If you can navigate a web form, and if you're willing to learn some important concepts about language, you should be able to work with the basic functions of FLEx by the end of this workshop

• FLEx ties its language data to ISO language codes. If you already know the standard ISO code for your language, it will help speed up the FLEx set-up process. It is also possible to choose a custom ISO language code if you don't want to use one of the standard language codes. If you don't know which ISO code is best for your language, the workshop facilitators can help you once the workshop starts

• When setting up a new FLEx language project, one task will be to set up the writing system for your language--what alphabet or script you will use. If you have already made the decisions about how you want to write your language and how you will be typing it on a computer, this will also help speed up the FLEx set-up process

Required equipment and/or materials: 

• Participants will need to bring a computer that has the memory and processing ability to use FLEx; in most cases, computers that were produced within the last 5 years will be sufficient. You can find the official recommended minimum system requirements for FLEx at https://downloads.languagetechnology.org/fieldworks/9.0.4/ReadMes/SetupFW.pdf

• Participants will need to have language data that they can begin to enter into a FLEx database. This means that (1) participants need to have a way to type their language into a computer (ie, a provisional or official writing and spelling system), and (2) they need to have words and sample documents in their language that they can practice with. At a minimum, one text document with at least 50 words will allow users to have practice with the tools and processes that FLEx offers

Note: Participants from the same community are welcome to work together on one computer, with the same collection of sample language data. Although we recommend that participants bring a sample document in their language, it is also important that at least one participant from each language group is able to speak or understand the words that are used in that sample document

Description: This workshop will provide ideas and tools for building collaborative language reclamation programs. Participants will identify sustainable partners through hands-on activities for creating community-driven programs. This workshop is open to anyone interested in building a community-based language project.

Objectives:

• Describe community-driven program development

• Identify an organization to administer the language project

• Identify appropriate funding sources

• Outline a language project for your community

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: notebook or computer for writing activities

Description: In this workshop, we will examine various community radio models and discuss best practices for establishing and sustaining a community radio station. This workshop will be highly hands-on: over the course of our four sessions, students will plan and create their own short radio segments that address a pedagogical need. In the process, they will be introduced to interviewing techniques, broadcasting norms, programming strategies, business planning, and audio recording/editing tools.

Objectives: 

• Students will leave the course equipped with the foundational knowledge they need to launch an indigenous language radio station within their own communities. 

• Participants will produce a thirty-minute audio segment targeted towards learners of indigenous and endangered languages.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: None

Required equipment and/or materials: Laptop

Note: All are welcome

Description: As learners, sometimes it is hard for us to pinpoint exactly what it is that we are not hearing or saying properly; Praat helps us to see this in a very concrete way. This workshop is geared towards people who are interested in fine-tuning their own or others’ listening and speaking skills. Over the course of the workshop, participants will learn how to use Praat as a visual aid for hearing and transcribing speech (e.g. stories), as well as for fine-tuning pronunciation, by measuring certain features of speech (e.g. pauses and intonation patterns) and adjusting them to match those of elders and teachers. 

This workshop is ideal for participants who are teachers and learners interested in pronunciation, and people wanting a tool for transcription that allows for a closer analysis of pronunciation than ELAN does, for example.

Objectives:

• Use Praat as an aid for transcribing speech (e.g. stories) 

• Use Praat for fine-tuning pronunciation

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: For transcription work, participants are encouraged to bring a recording that they'd like to work with (e.g. a story). Note, the recording should *not* be in mp4a format (which many phones record in). You can easily convert a file from mp4a to wav though - we can cover this in class.

Other: This workshop will be fully interactive; participants will be guided through the steps of using Praat to support listening and speaking skills. Participants will be able to work on their own or in groups, depending on their interests and on their comfort level with technology.

Praat can be downloaded for free in advance of the workshop here: www.praat.org 

Description: With a view toward balancing and merging the needs and interests of language revitalization communities on one-hand and research linguists on the other, we will explore the following questions: Why collaborate? How can we design projects together? What guidance can we provide to each other? What are the needs of each participant and how can they all be met? Who is in charge of the project and what difference does it make? How can we recognize and respond to varying cultural expectations that can play a role in a project? Who “owns” the project results? Where can collaboration lead? We will address these questions and others through sharing example situations, and group discussion.

This workshop would be ideal for participants who are active community language activists and Indigenist academics who are focused on supporting language documentation and revitalization efforts.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: none

Description: This workshop will provide a practical introduction to the transcription software ELAN (https://archive.mpi.nl/tla/elan). Participants will gain hands-on experience in creating time-aligned transcripts in ELAN, and will learn how to utilize ELAN to accomplish common tasks in the field of language revitalization and description.

This workshop is ideal for participants who want to contribute to recording and transcribing their own communities' languages, or for those otherwise interested in language revitalization.

Objectives:

• Fully transcribe an audio/video recording, and export it into a fully subtitled YouTube video

• Reflect on the usefulness of ELAN for language revitalization work

• Relate the work done in class to the work that can be done, or is currently being done, in their own community

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: laptop running Windows, MacOS, or Linux (preferably with a working microphone)

Description: This workshop will help participants from Native Communities design a language survey. These communities will realistically reflect characteristics of Native communities at large. Groups will use their "hypothetical community" to identify challenges, barriers, supports, and partners as they construct a simple language survey.

Individuals or groups who want to create surveys within their communities to identify language needs. This includes identifying the makeup of certain Native communities. We will discuss and create survey questions. This workshop can also assist people who are wanting to survey and utilize the information for grants or other funding opportunities. 

Objectives:

• Identify the makeup of specific Native communities (i.e., strengths, weaknesses, obstacles, challenges, partnerships, etc.) . 

• Identify and utilize the makeup of a community to create a language survey. 

• Create language surveys that can be used for many purposes. 

• Understand that it takes a team or a group of dedicated people to create and give a survey.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: None

Required equipment and/or materials: Personal laptop is recommended.

Note: This class is intended to help not only language supporters but can assist in creating surveys for other areas of culture, as well as departments and organizations within a Native community.

Description: This workshop focuses on aspects of what you need to know in order to design curriculum and assessment that is culturally appropriate for community contexts.

We will consider: what teachers and learners need to know about how curriculum is developed; knowledge about curriculum and assessment and how these affect teaching; the value of our own systems for curriculum and assessment for language revitalization; the challenges of curriculum and assessment for language revitalization; and how to adapt curriculum and assessment for language revitalization.

The workshop is geared towards those who are thinking about how to develop materials for community contexts. 

Objectives:

• Think about the value of Curriculum Design & Assessment for language revitalization

• Create an accessible way to talk about Curriculum Design & Assessment of Indigenous languages

• Identify challenges of Curriculum Design & Assessment for Indigenous languages and proposing creative and relevant pedagogies

• Consider what needs to be in a toolkit of resources for Curriculum Design & Assessment in the participant's chosen language

• Consider how Curriculum Design & Assessment can be rooted in cultural and traditional knowledge.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: None

Required equipment and/or materials: Participants may choose to bring their own laptops but are not required to do so. 

Description: This course aims to teach basic information about US copyright law, clear up some common misconceptions about what is protected by copyright law, and discuss the contradictory, and often fraught, relationship between copyright and traditional Indigenous knowledge. Discussion will introduce related concepts, including ethics, privacy, informed consent, and permissions. A portion of the workshop will focus on the application of open licenses to the material output of language work, with a focus on when to apply a license or not, and which licenses could best serve various purposes. 

Objectives:

• Have a better understanding of copyright law, when and how it applies, its relevance to tangible materials that get used and created during language work (e.g., archival work, teaching, revitalization, reclamation, documentation), and the implications of protecting traditional Indigenous knowledge in the face of the economic intent of copyright law

• Determine when it is appropriate to apply an open license to their materials and pick an appropriate license to apply

• Understand when and how they can legally reuse archival materials in their language work

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: none, but do come with some specific language project in mind

Description: Conversation, spontaneous speech, and other types of natural language hold precious information for language learners and teachers. But natural speech, especially with multiple speakers, can be challenging to create and to work with. This workshop will focus on how to create, transcribe, translate, and care for recordings of spontaneous language. 

This workshop would be ideal for participants who have been wanting to create recordings of spontaneous speech, such as conversation, but have questions about how to do it. 

Objectives:

• Make high quality recordings with two or more speakers

• Process and manage these recordings

• Use AI transcription tools to streamline processing (while protecting data sovereignty)

• Work with speakers to create time-aligned translations and transcriptions of conversation (even if you are not comfortable writing the language)

• Handle occasional sensitive speech or gossip in spontaneous recordings

• Manage recordings and keep information about them in order to keep them accessible for current and future learners

We will also discuss examples of how spontaneous recordings can be 'mobilized' for language teaching and learning. 

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: Ideally, participants will have some experience with a recorder and be comfortable using computers. Participants who have experience with transcription software, and working with speakers, will probably get the most out of the workshop. 

Required equipment and/or materials: Audio recorders. Microphones. Laptops (non-Chrome). We will use ELAN transcription software during class, but it is free and we will provide links to download the software. 

Description: This workshop will provide a hands-on example of how to train an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system for language documentation, as well as provide training on how participants can adapt this to their own languages. Transcription is a major bottleneck in language documentation and in the creation of materials for language revitalization. ASR has been shown to dramatically accelerate this type of work, increasing the amount of materials that could be used in language classes and didactic books.

This workshop would be ideal for community members and students involved in language documentation, who need tools to make their work faster and easier.

Objectives:

• Have trained a deep-learning speech recognition model

• Understand speech recognition model basic components

• Have trained a first speech-recognition model in their own language. 

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: Familiarity with (or a desire to learn) computer programming is necessary to complete this class.

Required equipment and/or materials: Participants would need two things: (1) a laptop computer, and (2) audio recordings in their language, accompanied by a digitized transcription. During the class we will align these so that the computer can learn the sounds and structure of the language from them. 

Description: We will discuss, demonstrate, and analyze the method involved in the beginning stages of Group Mentor Apprentice work. We’ll focus on how a daily structure assists both the Apprentice speakers and Mentor speakers to increase the effectiveness of GMA sessions by providing a consistent framework upon which to build language acquisition. As the group does the same types of unstructured and structured immersion sets over and over both Apprentice speakers and Mentor speakers will grow more skilled in and comfortable with the mechanics of different kind of activities. This skill and comfort with structure will make it easier to expand and change the content of MA sessions later on to continue to facilitate "comprehensible input plus one" for accelerated language acquisition.

This workshop would be ideal for Tribal peoples and language programs with minimal internal resources for language teacher training, and a need to develop Apprentice speakers within the community in order to effectively implement an immersion program.

Objectives:

• Watch, participate in, and analyze the internal workings of a daily Group Mentor-Apprentice Session

• Talk about the affective filter, comprehensible input plus one, and effective adult immersion strategies

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: paper, pencil, tablet, or laptop for note taking

Description: This workshop is focused on creating quality audio recordings of spoken language. Participants will learn to develop a habit of looking for people and situations to record; negotiating with them, creating the highest quality recording possible, and organizing and archiving recordings. 

This workshop is geared toward participants who have no/little prior knowledge of audio recording.

Objectives:

• Record audio with an understanding of basic audio technology

• Identify potential people (and situations) to record

• Make high quality audio recordings

• Organize and archive recordings

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: laptop, headphones, USB drive

Description: This workshop presents usage-based grammars that are pedagogically sound and useful to learners of different linguistic backgrounds. We review six basic pedagogical principles that can support the creation of language materials for teaching and learning, and we apply them to design a methodology that can transform descriptive grammars into books that can be used by teachers and learners. Examples from the pedagogical grammar project for native Brazilian languages will be presented.  

Workshop objectives:

• Design language materials that can be used by students with different linguistic backgrounds

• Transform descriptive grammars into usage-based pedagogical grammars

• Better understand the roles that pedagogical materials can play in language instruction settings

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: none

Required equipment and/or materials: none (laptops are recommended but not required)

Description: This workshop is designed to consider the revitalization of Indigenous traditions. Community Indigenous languages are vital to this form of cultural action. Participants will gain an in-depth understanding of the role of language in cultural advocacy.  

This workshop is ideal for participants who are community/language advocates and scholars whose work supports language or cultural advocacy.  

Objectives:

• attend to and apply language in an advocacy context.  

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: No prior experience is required.

Note: Participants will be strongly encouraged to contribute meaningful dialogue and experience relating to advocacy projects.

Description: This workshop will explore issues and methods specific to language revitalization efforts that rely in-part or entirely on archival language materials. 

This workshop is ideal for participants who are interested in working with their languages archival materials.

Objectives:

• Locate and obtain archival materials of their languages from the major archival repositories in the U.S.

• Ascertain the value of archival materials to their language revitalization efforts

• Design archival language database projects

• Communicate the unique needs and challenges of archives-based revitalization to their communities and external partners.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: None

Required equipment and/or materials: Computer, notebooks, copies of archival materials of their language if you have them.

K'etsoo Paskvan will share the origin stories of the Denaakk'e people in Alaska.  Kk'edon ts'ednee, which means 'in legendary times, it was said are a series of origin stories are that can tell about how the earth was formed, stories about how a bird got its color, the attributes from the ancient past that shows a prophecy to the future, relationships to each other. Participants will learn some bird songs and will dance to a crane song.  

The locus of Metaphor is not in language but in the way we conceptualize one mental domain in terms of another. Through the use of Concrete Poetry, participants will learn to conceptualize metaphors, or poetic language. Participants will visually demonstrate what their use of language means to them in this 90-minute generative writing workshop.

Dictionaries are important repositories of cultural and linguistic knowledge and invaluable tools in language reconstruction and revitalization projects, especially those hoping to use a language in modern settings, such as schools. This workshop will look at some of the issues involved in constructing a dictionary for a language that has never had one before by people who have never done such a thing before — virgin dictionaries by virgin lexicographers. Some of these issues are linguistic, while others are organizational, financial, or political. We will look how these issues are being resolved in one project for a language that until recently was not written down. As we do this, participants will identify similar issues that would arise in their own language communities and how they would address them. 

Information sessions on the funding programs and opportunities offered by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Endangered Language Fund. 

K'etsoo Paskvan will share how Yukon-Koyukuk School District, a rural school district in Alaska developed it's Denaakk'e and Benhti curriculum from the creation of content, topics to include, resource development such as language games, online audio/video resources, and free pdf handouts that can be used for any language.  Each topic has four interactive lessons. YKSD developed workbooks for the two languages and one language Denaakk'e has three dialects. Teachers participated in professional development in a summer institute in the mornings.  Students joined in to learn from these teachers in the afternoon.

To translate is to migrate and observe carefully. In this 90-minute hybrid of class and workshop, guests will connect with works of art in conversation with text in a literary sense. This workshop engages with and collate context, memories and cultural knowledge in order to generate appropriate “translation.” In this extensive cognitive approach, Translation as Ekphrasis brings focus back to meaning and the words and context in which they are being used.