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Discussion and Summary.

It is hard to predict in advance what all of the problems are that might arise during the execution of this project. Certainly obtaining copyright permissions for materials produced in India is going to be problematical, since authors and government institutions there tend to fear the worst, and balk at sharing materials, even if no profit can be anticipated. Litigiousness is a familiar feature of the Indian scene. It may be that materials that originate in India will never be useable; the experience of the Heidelberg group, which did not anticipate copyright issues when they put certain dictionary materials on line, is instructive in this regard.

Another issue is that what will probably emerge from an overview of the work done is where the gaps are in our needs for materials. Our project to combine reading materials from various sources---a short story from Cutler (with his annotations and glossary), another one from Schiffman or Lindholm, others from other sources---will then show us what is needed in terms of new graded materials to make the transition from easy readings to more difficult readings. This is one of the hardest things to do, in my estimation, and is the chief fault of the Asher-Radhakrishnan materials. But in the end, we will see what needs to be done next, and be able to propose solutions.

Another thing that should emerge from this overview is what the limits of website materials are---what can students profitably get from their use, and what they continue to need in classroom contact time. This should have a positive benefit on our perceptions of student needs, and what the field of Tamil pedagogy needs to address. On the positive side, it should allow those of us who rarely meet (for primarily financial and geographical reasons) to confer via email about what to do next.gif For a LCTL like Tamil, the web may end up saving us from what otherwise looks like certain extinction, should NDEA Title 6 funding evaporate, and if the trend to downsize universities and eliminate low-enrollment classes continues. This is indeed the whole purpose of Penn's LRRC, to enable small groups to cooperate and rationalize their efforts.



next up previous
Next: Evaluation Up: Timeline Previous: Timeline



Harold Schiffman
Mon Apr 1 09:56:50 EST 1996