Silvina Orsatti

  • IISE Affiliated Alumna. Ed.D. Alumna, Visiting Instructor of Spanish, University of Pittsburgh Greensburg Campus

Dr. Silvina Orsatti teaches Spanish language and culture, and foreign language pedagogy at the University of Pittsburgh in Greensburg. She earned a Master’s of Science degree in Educational Technology from Boise State University and a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Spanish Language and Literature from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She also holds a degree in Engineering from the Universidad Nacional de San Juan in Argentina. In 2017, she earned her Doctorate in Education with an emphasis in Language, Literacy and Culture from the University of Pittsburgh. Her dissertation was ‘Gamifying the Spanish curriculum to promote motivation and willing communication in the college-level classroom’. 

Silvina’s past experience includes teaching various levels of Spanish at The Kiski School and English as a Foreign Language at public and private schools in Argentina. In the corporate world, she worked for Middlebury Interactive Languages and Pearson Education as a world languages curriculum specialist. She combines her interest in technology and foreign language education as an independent technology integration consultant and develops presentations that assist fellow educators in incorporating technology into their world language classrooms. She has recently focused on digital storytelling and game-based learning, presenting at local, state, regional, and national foreign language and technology conferences. 

Silvina received the PSMLA Educator of the Year Award in 2014. In 2016, she was selected as the ACTFL Teaching and Learning of Culture SIG Research Grant winner with her proposal ‘Gamification of the Spanish Curriculum’. She was also awarded the 2011-2012 NECTFL Sans Inc./Mead Leadership Fellows Award and won the ‘We Collaborate for Good’ prize for her project ‘Closing the Technology Gap in World Language Teaching’ in 2011. In addition to the PSMLA, she is a member of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NECTFL), where she served on the Executive Board of Directors (2013-2017), and the Pennsylvania Association for Educational Communications and Technology (PAECT).