How MOOCs help Obama's TechHire Initiative

By Ramón Talavera-Franco

ratafra

I would like to share a short video that I produced about Obama's TechHire Initiative. The video is a call to action to the Latino Limited Language English Proficient (LEP) community to take advantage of this Initiative. The TechHire initiative is designed to recruit and place applicants by creating more fast track tech training opportunities. I think that TechHire Initiative might empower the Latino LEP community by helping them get the skills required to be competitive in a global economy.

The video is self-explanatory. Please share it with all Latino organizations that might benefit from this Initiative.

How MOOCs led me to Harvard

Ramón Talavera Franco

@ratafra

In a way, MOOCs have led me to Harvard. A few days ago, I presented the first draft of a game designed for learning Spanish during the 2015 Heritage Language Research Institute sponsored by National Heritage Language Resource Center (NHLRC) and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), at Harvard University. This Institute “brings together researchers from language sciences and education to focus on fostering new research in heritage language and to promote the heritage language agenda in academia and society at large” (NHLRC, n.d.).

I’m interested in Spanish heritage learners' linguistic variations, syntax, socio-cultural language norms, and pedagogy theories that explore best teaching practices for this particular linguistic group. Therefore, I often attend conferences and symposiums regarding this topic. Harvard hosted the 2015 Heritage Language Research Institute and I decided to go and dive into new learning.