Abstract:

On-site teaching continues to be the most widely used method of teaching in universities. In face-to-face teaching, the responsibility of the teaching function is taken on completely by the lecturer: he/she is the core and the institution continues to organize around this type of training all the means that allow the lecturer to carry out his/her work successfully (classrooms, timetables, programs, etc.). In ICTs aided teaching, the lecturer is much more than the exclusive source of knowledge. He/she becomes the main guide and advisor of all possible sources of knowledge that the student may find on the net. Allowing students who know to work with ICTs to assume most of the responsibility, teaching becomes more interactive even though that always implies a greater interaction. Interactivity not only demands that the lecturer is able to work with ICTs as much or more than the student, but it also demands that he/she spends more time than usual on organizing and carrying out his/her classes digitally. ICTs implicitly raise these new demands to the lecturer which are often neither conveniently rewarded in his/her payslip, nor in the advancement of his/her teaching career. However, the use of ICTs does not guarantee whatsoever a better quality in the teaching or learning process. Teaching has been, is and will always be, above all, about discussing. Discussing in order to teach and to learn. Within the heart of the Research Group TRANSLATION & PARATRANSLATION (T&P) the screen has never been an obstacle in this dialogue but quite the opposite, its physical presence in and out the classroom has allowed us to study in depth and to expand further the oral dialogue carried out in graduate and post-graduate teaching and, above all, the content of the oral dialogue carried out in the virtual discussion of the results obtained from the research. The T&P Research Group has always used the vast training and research possibilities of ICTs. During the academic year 2004/05 we were the first to set up an on-line International PhD Program within the University of Vigo, a PhD course that has the same name as our research group, TRANSLATION & PARATRANSLATION PHD (D_T&P), and that during this academic year 2008/09 has gained a “quality award” from the Ministry of Science and Innovation. We were also the first to use the services of Uvigo-TV in order to record the conferences and seminars that we have been organising and coordinating since academic year 2004/05, resulting in a series of on-line publications that increase with each academic year. It was only natural that we should also be pioneers when it came to creating an innovative and somewhat transgressing digital format with the possibility of publishing the results of the research carried out by the T&P Group, but also with the possibility of carrying out an essential complementary activity for the training of our graduate and postgraduate students. Very early on, I had the idea of creating an original space for the screen where, in the shortest time possible, we could give the best of ourselves as lecturers and researchers. This is how Zig-Zag was born, the first on-line scientific IPTV program devoted to translation.

Keywords:

technology in education, e-learning projects and experiences.