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Objective The overall goal of "Dans un quartier de Paris" is to provide the learners with an insider's view of a foreign cultural world, in this instance that of a quartier. The program provides multiple paths and multiple points of views, so that users can better understand the many elements that shape people's thinking and attitudes toward their living and working environment. Subject "Dans un quartier de Paris" (long named "Dans le quartier St. Gervais") is a multimedia interactive documentary, filmed in Paris, which offers users a chance to explore a uniquely French cultural space, the micro-world of a quartier, located in Le Marais area. Le Quartier Quicktime (5.4M) MPEG (2.0M) It is a visual database, which includes people, streets, buildings, objects and artifacts that can be explored in multiple ways by learners at many different levels, and for many different purposes. Context The program allows the user to: meet a variety of people living in the neighborhood (some who have lived there for forty years, some for only two years, for example); to visit a variety of places (places that all have meaning in the daily lives of the people living in the neighborhood); Old and new store fronts co-exist, but for how long? Quicktime (3.1M) MPEG (5.0M) to have access to the issues that have shaped the neighborhood, such as gentrification and the role of City Hall; and to hear of the changes that have taken place in the neighborhood over the last decade. A young "luthier" talks about the neighborhood. Quicktime (5.5M) MPEG (2.7M) Mme Izrael owns Le Monde des Epices and doesn't like what has happened. Quicktime (2.9M) MPEG (1.7M) M. Desmarty explains why the neighborhood was better before... QT 1.0M MPEG 0.5M QT 2.3M MPEG 1.1M QT 680K MPEG 287K Delivery "Dans un quartier de Paris" provides multiple paths and tools into the exploration of the neighborhood and in particular a series of maps and submaps designed to help the user physically locate places as well as a guidebook containing a variety of information. The map of Le Quartier with La Tartine highlighted. Inside La Tartine. Quicktime (4.2M) MPEG (1.5M) The Map allows the user to randomly explore the neighborhood. The Guide provides the user with more structured information. It contains four entries: 1) Gens, which lists all the people one can meet Mme Levy moved in recently and likes the neighborhood. Quicktime (4.0M) MPEG (1.9M) 2) Lieux, which lists all the places one can visit. 3) Paroles, which focuses on the words that people use when they talk about certain aspects of their neighborhood: what a "real commercant" is, what "lively" means, what "habiter" means, etc... The juxtaposition of several points of view around a same word allows the user to uncover the different meanings these words hold for different people. 4) Perspectives, which focuses on the references people make when they talk about their neighborhood (notions of time, of space, of self, of others, etc...), provides learners with clues to how people frame issues, and allows themto acess the underlying cultural framework within which people express and define themselves vis a vis their environment.		Dans un quartier de Paris Within a Paris neighborhood Gilberte Furstenberg, Project Director Michael Roper, Interactive Video Producer Janet H. Murray, Executive Producer Olga Brown, Software Designer Sue Felshin, Software Designer Stuart A. Malone, Software Designer Sponsors A major part of the funding has come from the Annenberg/CPB Foundation, the Florence Gould Foundation and the National Endowment from the Humanities. Supplementary grants were given by the Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching and the French Ministry of Culture Direct all inquires to Gilberte Furstenberg Availability The program is currently being beta tested in twelve Universities across the country. Its publication date is not known yet. Audience High school and College students of French. Users of many different levels. However,Dans un quartier de Paris is not just a language program but can be of interest to people of different fields and domains of interest. It is an intrinsically multidisciplinary project, where the traditional boundaries between disciplines such as language, history, literature, art disappear and where language becomes, more and more, not an end in itself, but a tool, an entry point, an access into a foreign multidimensional world. Dans un quartier de Paris is not a self-instructional program. But it lends itself to the design of a multiplicity of culturally-based tasks to be done by language learners of all levels, both in the language lab and the classroom. A Teacher's manual and a Student activities workbook will accompany the program when it comes out. Format CD-ROM for Macintosh. Other features The core of the program is currently on a CD-ROM, but it is still missing two crucial tools that will greaty expand its scope and power. 1) a museum which will give access to a large number of historical texts and images, designed to allow the user to view the quartier within its larger historical framework, its own life continuum and from within its own cultural markers and references, thus providing users with a broader and more in-depth view of a foreign cultural world. 2) a visual notebook that will make it possible for users to be transformed into reporters, researchers, photographers, videographers, guides or witnesses, and record their experience in a multimedia format, with words, images, and/or video segments. Such a tool will greatly expand the learner's role from that of a consurmer of images and texts to one who is actively and critically interacting with materials.

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