Virtual Interactive Walk Through Venice 1 Running Head: VIRTUAL INTERACTIVE WALK THROUGH VENICE Educational Technology for Learning Italian: A Virtual Interactive Walk Through Venice

Students can now learn foreign languages by taking advantage of the high and increasing potential of educational technology. Therefore, the interaction with a multimedia environment by means of an audiovisual path through the city of Venice gives them the possibility to virtually immerse in a sample of reality, motivating them to focus on the language as a functional means of communication. The activity is based on the neurolinguistic bimodality theory, which separates brain functions according to the hemisphere in which they are processed. The structure of the activity reflects the brain's natural language acquisition process: motivation, globality, analysis, synthesis, reflection, verification (Begotti, 2006). Although the benefits that technologies have on language acquisition are well known, little has been done to actualize them efficiently. We describe our activity both theoretically and practically, putting a focus on the interactive video and its advantages, and describing how students can properly avail themselves of technological tools. Our video will be uploaded on Youtube and embedded in a website containing a whole didactic unit, that will be shaped around the virtual walk. Alternatively, it can also be treated as a single exercise and converted into software or an application for mobile devices. The activity expects students to watch and interact with a series of videos. Pedestrians provide them with directions using both Italian oral language and gestures, that, if understood properly, will lead them from Piazzale Roma, Venice's bus station, to St. Mark's square, the city center. They must choose the correct option (street) in order to proceed and meet the next person. Our project shows the effective use of technologies in the teaching of foreign languages for adults, and promotes interesting developments for today's andragogical teaching methods. The paper includes both limitations and further developments of this technological tool. Virtual Interactive Walk Through Venice 3