Bulletin

Bulletin - Autumn 2011

  • New Equipment.  As part of the Centre’s ongoing commitment to upgrading the facilities, the following equipment has been purchased over the last few months:
    • 7 new Blu-ray players
    • 7 LED Televisions
    • 4 CD players which play MP3 CDs and USB flash drives and also offer a useful function to control the speed of playback.
  • Turnstiles.  New entrance and exit turnstiles have been installed in the Centre over the summer. The new turnstiles feature an anti-pass back mechanism.
  • DDA Compliant Facilities.  Disability Discrimination Act compliant, height adjustable desks have been purchased and installed in the centre.  These desks are equipped with PCs and are linked to their own dedicated printer.
  • New Materials.  An extensive selection of new materials including over 100 new classic and 20th Century novels in French, German and Spanish have been added to the stock over the summer. Please see centre staff for a more detailed list of new materials.
  • Customer Service Excellence. In February 2011, the Centre successfully passed the Customer Service Excellence annual review and achieved full compliance in all areas of service.
  • Auralog TELL ME MORE®.  The Centre has successfully completed the first stage of a trial of the e-learning package “Auralog TELL ME MORE®”. Undergraduate students in the School of Modern Languages, students on the  Teacher Training German language course and, selected individuals enrolled with the University’s Staff Development Unit have all been trialling the software. We hope to extend the pilot to include a class of EFL students at INTO Newcastle in the coming semester.
  • GOBL Project Funding. The Centre Manager was successful in a bid for funding for a collaborative life-long learning project: ‘Games Online for Basic Language Learning’ in association with Radbound University, Nijmegen the Netherlands, Leuven University Belgium and Televic-Education Belgium.
  • Linguacast Days.  The Centre will host a number of Linguacast Days this term as part of the language resource centre’s remit for community outreach and support for the study of languages in secondary schools. Supported with funding from Routes into Languages.