CATESOL24

Hunter, Patillo, Robinson, and Taylor (2016) introduced the framework of Black placemaking referring to how 'urban Black Americans create sites of endurance, belonging, and resistance through social interaction' (p. 32), which Tichavakunda (2020) and Halkiyo and Hailu (2023) extrapolated to educational settings, and Murphy (2022) applied to global Blackness across the Americas through the concept of aquilombamento or 'the act of creating or meeting in a maroon community' (p. 236) for the life-giving purposes of relief, resistance, self-determination, and joy. This keynote presentation proposes as a site of Black placemaking the AfroMetaverse online platform where Black adolescents in Brazil and Colombia meet, chat, and collaborate with African American middle and high school students playing educational English, Portuguese, and Spanish language games incorporating augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences with the study of the history and cultures of Afrodescendants throughout the Americas. AfroMetaverse, which is modeled after the CONIX Research Center's Augmented Reality Edge Networking Architecture (ARENA) networking platform that combines AR and VR for multimodal interaction between local and remote users, positions Black students at the forefront of the latest technological advances in computer assisted language learning (CALL) while prioritizing a critical race pedagogy for world language teaching (CRPWLT, Anya, 2021). The presentation describes how the AfroMetaverse project demonstrates CRPWLT and responds to Austin and Anya's (2024) call for Black Linguistic Reparations to address the history of harm against Afrodescendants in language study by centering the experiences and success of Black students to inform curriculum, instruction, policy, and teacher training for racial justice in TESOL and multilingual education. The presentation also details the AfroMetaverse project timeline, collaborations with international partners in racial justice and global education, and prospects for empirical research to assess the impact of engaging in this site of Black placemaking.

Generative AI is one of the most powerful technologies of communication that the world has yet seen, but one that is especially challenging to harness, especially in second language learning contexts. This presentation will discuss approaches to incorporate generative AI in second language classrooms that can successfully foster writing skills, language development, and critical AI literacy for academic and career success.