MTV is not America
Foreign language assistants from the USA loosen up school lessons
From our colleague Ines Schäfer

Würzburg – “Foreign Language Assistant? What exactly do you do?” – For many, this phrase is only a rough notion. If Joyce Weng, Olivia Haesloop, and Edward Dale
mention their work outside school, they often receive questioning looks. The
three Americans are spending a school year in Germany working with pupils from
5th through 12th grade in various types of schools to practice English
conversation and correct pronunciation.

They’ve found a successful cultural exchange and made a small contribution to
better mutual understanding. They experience how much such an exchange bring,
among other things, in their lessons. “For example”, says Joyce (26), “most of
the pupils believe they know the USA already. From MTV and from programs like
‘Date my Mom’. But that isn’t America! And therefore it’s good that they
discuss with Americans and can correct their impression.”

Roleplay
How the lessons from the native speakers are absorbed is completely varied.
From Edward’s experience, the younger pupils especially profit from the
activities. They’re enthusiastic when he does role-plays and simple language
exercises in small groups. With the older ones, sometimes the interest is
missing. “Most cooperate very well and have fun and learn a lot. Great
discussions arise, especially about political topics.” says the 25-year old.
While Edward had already taken a few language courses in Germany, Joyce and
Olivia are here for the first time and came completely without expectations.
Olivia (23), part Swiss, was quickly positively surprised. “The Germans are
less withdrawn and actually really cool after all.” she says with a slight
Swiss accent.

Through the possibility of shaping the lessons diversely and the relaxed
relationship with the teachers, the three feel all right at the schools. With
12 hours of work per week and many school vacations, they have the possibility
to extensively travel. Würzburg and surroundings, Germany, Europe – they want
to get to know everywhere while they’re already here.

In the meanwhile, Würzburg has become almost a second home. “When we’re in
Belin or somewhere else and have seen and experienced lots of new stuff, we
look forward to getting back home. Home in Würzburg.”

Their stay here is financed through the Fulbright Exchange program and PAD.
Only through the program do they know each other, while they actually come from
completely different corners of the USA. Edward is from Virginia, Olivia from
California, and Joyce from New Jersey.

In about three months, the program runs out. Then, they must leave Würzburg
behind them. And then there will be new foreign language assistants who can
explain to the pupils that MTV is not America.

Caption
Olivia, Joyce, and Edward (from left) on one of their many excursions. In the
background, Würzburg, where they are spending a scant year practicing English
conversation with pupils.

Since then, it’s been nothing but sipping cocktails on the porch in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Actually… it’s been a lot of reading, packing, traveling, disposing, and recycling. As of right now, my life fits into about 4 file boxes and a couple backpacks. Two of those backpacks will come with me to Germany and the rest my belongings will be stuffed into the attic awaiting my debut into the Real World.

• A snowfall simulation for my Animation Algorithms class
• A keyframing system
• A billiards simulator
• A particle system
• An articulated figure motion system using BVH files
• A snowball simulation that uses some of the ODE stuff from cgkit
• A ray tracer built using the cgtypes from cgkit.

Fast forward five months to October, and I’ve submitted my application, essays, etc., with the expectation that I’ll hear something around the end of January.

Fast forward another four months and I hear back that I’ve made the American cut. This means that I’ve got to start submitting application materials to the PAD. This means….. everything’s in German from here on in.

After running around like a madman, I get all the application materials in for the March 1 deadline.

Fast forward 30 days and I got the Fulbright! That brings us to today… the physical and hearing test are scheduled and I’m waiting to find out where in Germany I’m going.

For anyone keeping track, Jessica Lieberman and Catherine Winne were indispensable to me througout the whole process.

Model a snowflake

The algorithm presented in the original paper was pretty easy to follow, so this turned out to be not so bad. I need to do something with the material to make it look a bit more realistic, but as it stands now, it’s a reasonable first implementation of the algorithm.

Create spinning snowflake movie

This followed on pretty quickly after the snowflake was created. cgkit makes it pretty easy to animate something like this.

Pictures!

Well… one picture and one movie.

Height Field

Create a reasonable height field that can be used to represent a virgin snow-covered plane. Three height field generation methods have been created:

• A simple flatField(x,y,h) that returns a height field that is x by y in size and with a height of h. This is basically just a test method that reduces the visual complexity of the image while debugging other parts of the code.
• A Perlin noise height field generated using the noise function from cgkit. Also has x, y, and h parameters.
• A more complicated method that essentially enforces a max gradient between two adjacent cells.

Object In Snow

Place a simple ob ject in the snow to see the deformation work. A cube has been put into the snow so far. The contour algorithm took longer than expected and it is still a pretty imperfect implementation.

Pictures!

… can be viewed here.

Both proposals for projects (Snowballs & Snowfall) in both classes have been accepted, so expect to see some updates from those soon. I need to write two research papers as well, on topics currently unknown.