Yep, just like the title of this blog suggests, this post is to let you know that the ITAL project is coming to an end this May 2019.
Looking back, it has been an amazing journey. What we did helped many students, instructors and people from the Texan-Italian community; that feels very good. One of ITAL's most important outcomes is the creation of a model and storytelling ecosystem that can be replicated for any language, anywhere. ITAL now is a blueprint for anyone interested in infusing community-building storytelling and interactive media creation into the classroom.
The entire ITAL site are examples upon examples of stories that can be told - and activities that can be done -to help language educators transcend the classroom setting and encourage their students to connect with the local community that uses the language/culture they're studying. We believe that taking a foreign language should prepare us to be a global citizen, travel abroad, just as it should help us connect with the many fascinating foreign diasporas that exist right here in America.
ITAL was created on a volunteer basis. After we started charging for memberships in Spring 2018, the money raised by ITAL has been reinvested into the project itself in the form of prizes for students, website maintenance and payments to the super talented artists whom we hired for the creation of sleek animations and designs that we found crucial to the ITAL experience. We deemed important that ITAL always offered high quality content that could shake students’ senses and we are proud to have always provided it.
Another element that made ITAL unique was the collaboration between Antonella Olson, a veteran instructor of Italian, and us, a professional boutique-sized media company. Thanks to our personal relationship, we were able to create ITAL. Had it not been for such a relationship, it would have been practically impossible for any small-sized company like ours to work alongside a professor for such a long period of time, in such a prolific fashion.
The sheer real cost of the effort would have rendered the creation of this project impossible. In other words, the biggest success of ITAL was to actually exist.
This is it, folks, the final countdown. We will be stopping all payments this April 2019; therefore your month of May will be free.
Thank you for watching and participating.