Background
Welcome to Oomroom, the interactive online tool for Ukrainian language teaching and learning! This tool is part of a suite of computer-mediated Ukrainian language education resources of the Ukrainian Knowledge Internet Portal Consortium Association (UKIP-CA), a collaboration of six Canadian educational institutions from across the country involved in Ukrainian language and culture education. UKIP-CA is an initiative of the Ukrainian Language Education Centre (ULEC), which serves as an anchor and hub for advocacy, partnership, research, policy, resource development, and professional learning related to the study of Ukrainian. ULEC is a unit of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. [See the ULEC tab on the home page of this website for more information.]
Oomroom was developed in response to the needs of 21st century students, teachers, and families involved in learning Ukrainian in Canadian publicly-funded schools and programs It features web applications, digitized learning objects, interactive e-books, and other multi-media learning materials, as well as pedagogical guidelines, instructional design information, and important links. It also provides opportunities to communicate, collaborate, and construct new knowledge in the virtual space about Ukrainian language learning with fellow students and instructors. Each of the high-quality offerings on Oomroom is rooted in research-based pedagogy, with a special focus on the requirements of the Ukrainian Bilingual Program. The content has also been designed to serve the needs of a growing array of K-12 Ukrainian language learning programs throughout Canada and the diaspora.
Advancing pedagogy for Ukrainian language learning
The Oomroom development team is made up of experienced teachers, specialists and researchers of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), who recognize that international language programs, like Ukrainian, prepare students for expanding global opportunities. In addition to linguistic flexibility, language education also encourages astuteness regarding international issues, heightened cultural sensitivity, creativity and intellectual growth – all highly desirable attributes for careers in business, industry, international trade, finance, technology, government, the arts, education, and many other professions in an increasingly digital world economy.
Oomroom aims to help learners to acquire Ukrainian, so that they can use the language confidently and competently in a variety of contexts for communication and further learning. Oomroom helps learners to explore, understand, appreciate and value Ukrainian culture in Canada and the world for personal growth and enrichment, and for participating in and contributing to an interdependent, multilingual and multicultural global society. /…2/
Using Oomroom
The site consists of three main sections: for teachers, for students, and for parents. The Teachers’ Section has a separate login for accessing private groups in the social networks of Facebook and Twitter – dedicated online spaces for discussing the methodology of language teaching, pedagogical collaboration, and professional learning. All sections are made up of resources and opportunities to assist learners to listen, speak, read, write, view and represent in Ukrainian for the purposes of:
- exploring thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences
- comprehending and responding personally and critically to literary and media texts
- managing ideas and information
- enhancing the clarity and artistry of communication; and
- celebrating and building community
According to the research (Liskin-Gasparro, 1982), it takes approximately 720 hours of practice to reach an intermediate level of fluency in Ukrainian. Therefore, we invite you to visit and explore Oomroom often! We hope that you find resources here to help you with your own learning journey. Щасливої дороги до нових знань!