Mesolore: A Model for Multicultural and Bi-lingual Education

“Mesolore”是布朗大学拉丁美洲研究中心目前正在开发的一个多媒体教育项目。 Mesolore使用了两种前哥伦布时期中美洲文化（Mixtec和Maya）的图画和象形文字书写系统，为人类交流的研究提供了新的视角。它将在DOS Windows和Apple OS机器上运行，并以西班牙语和英语出现。作为一种教学工具，Mesolore旨在向大学生介绍中美洲写作和文化的发展和目的。作为一种研究工具，Mesolore旨在通过为高级学者提供一个易于访问的小学和中学材料实验室来为中美洲奖学金做出贡献。Mesolore的教育目标集中在以下问题上：通过研究中美洲书写系统可以学到什么？关于人、历史和文化可以学到什么？ 这些书写系统能否向我们揭示有关健康、营养、社会组织、性别多样化和其他社会因素的信息？ 中美洲文字是如何被使用的？在什么样的社会和空间背景下被使用？ 突出使用“图片”的写作效果如何？ 我们是否应该继续仅仅从进化的角度将图画文字归类为之前的表意文字、音节文字和字母文字系统？ Mesolore Beta '98以光盘形式提供，光盘材料本身内容相当广泛，包括讲座、辩论和讨论、辅导、实验室、特邀演讲者和发表的文章。 这些数据在一个多媒体数据库中相互连接，该数据库已经发展到相对容易使用和高质量的程度。 该光盘包含4个实验室，类似于在现场检查米斯特克和玛雅文物。 中美洲项目材料已在两个大学校园的教室里试用。 他们现在预定在1999-2000学年在10个大学和20个高中班级进行β测试。 内容材料支持不同层次的学习-从入门，高中水平到高年级本科生研讨会，以及学术研究。

"Mesolore" is a multimedia educational project currently under development at the Center for Latin American Studies at Brown University. Mesolore uses the pictorial and hieroglyphic writing systems of two pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, Mixtec and Maya, to shed new light on the study of human communication. It will operate on both DOS Windows and Apple OS machines and appear in Spanish and English.As a teaching tool, Mesolore aims to introduce undergraduates to the development and purposes of Mesoamerican writing and culture. As a research tool, Mesolore aims to contribute to Mesoamerican scholarship by providing senior scholars with a readily accessible laboratory of primary and secondary materials.Mesolore's educational objectives center on the following questions: What can be learned about human communication by studying Mesoamerican writing systems? What can be learned about people, history, and culture? Can these writing systems reveal to us information on health, nutrition, social organization, gender diversification and other social factors? How--and in what social and spatial contexts--was Mesoamerican writing used? How effective is writing that makes prominent use of "'pictures"? Should we continue to categorize pictorial writing exclusively in evolutionary terms as preceding ideographic, syllabic and alphabetic systems? Mesolore Beta '98 is available on CD-ROM. The CD-ROM materials are themselves quite extensive, and include lectures, debates and discussions, tutorials, laboratories, guest speakers and published articles. These are interconnected in a multimedia database, which has been developed to the point where it is relatively easy to use and of high quality. The CD-ROM contains 4 laboratories that are analogues of being in the field examining Mixtec and Mayan artifacts. The Mesoamerican project materials have been tested in classrooms on two college campuses. They are now slated for beta-testing in 10 college and 20 high school classes during the 1999-2000 academic year. The content materials support different levels of learning - from introductory, high school level to upper division undergraduate seminars, and also scholarly research.