Mobile Language Learning

I just read an article that lead me on a path to download some new apps. The author's goal was to find out how language learners use and perceive mobile phones for education. He carried out a small-scale case study with learners of English in Hong Kong. What he discovered was that language learning was occurring through referential tools (translators, dictionaries) as well as social networking tools.
This was specifically for English, so I could see how incidental learning was easier since a vast majority of the applications they wanted to use were in English or easier to use English language to communicate. In terms of incidental learning for other languages, I don't believe there's enough out there to make this happen.

I was interested to see the kinds of applications they were using and how it may be useful for the types of things we would like to develop. I downloaded the MyWordBook application and really liked how you could add vocabulary words, definition, sentence example, image, and audio recording. Then you could use the words you enter and create practice games. Pretty intuitive and simple.

Article: http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/693/are-smartphones-useful-for-vocabulary-learning-an-appraisal (have to create an account to view the whole thing or I have a pdf if anyone wants it)

Comments

Liko said…

Aloha e Christy, I am interested in the PDF. Mahalo!

July 10, 2011 at 10:39 AM

Schools of the Future: Acquiring and Representing Knowledge

This year's Schools of the Future conference was an information-rich event. When we think of the future, more than a few of us probably also think of technology. That association certainly carries over in the interpretation of the conference title Schools of the Future . Indeed, many topics besides educational technology were covered; however, the technological advances were a strong highlight at the conference in my view. As mentioned in one of Cassie's previous posts , there are online classes everywhere. The first few links on my list reference ways to learn on your own (i.e., ways to acquire knowledge). The second set of links refer to ways of representing knowledge. **Note: All icons link to the affiliated website. Academic Earth has hundreds of free online lectures from prominent university professors, including Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, The University of Houston, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Michigan State, Princeton, Rice, UCLA, UCSF, and the list

Geotagging

A "wouldn't it be nice" idea that's been around a while is the ability to tag a map with images that are linked to more information about the site. Kelly C suggested it as a way for students to share knowledge about a cultural/historic site or the geographic area they live in with classmates. (right, no addresses!) There are now cameras and even storage media that embed latitude and longitude into images as they are shot. But you don't need fancy new toys to do this. I tried Flickr's geotagging map and it's fun and supereasy. Want to try it? Log in to Flickr http://www.flickr.com Sign in as " techedine " password " wist101 " yea, corny. Click the " You " tab then the " Your Photostream > Map " or Organize > Your Map links. Click the Satellite link in the upper right. Cool view! (you may need Google Satellite downloaded). Images along the bottom of the screen with colored dots have already been droppe

Zoho Creator

I thought I’d share this web application I came across in my quest to find a relatively simple app to help us manage our mentoring data in the DL Orientation. Our specific needs were that it be a free online database, password protected, had the capability of rapid form development without too much programming knowledge and was easy for the end user to use. The application that met these requirements was Zoho Creator ( http://www.zohocreator.com/ ) a part of a suite of online applications including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, wikis, organizers and more. What’s great about Zoho Creator is that they have an online repository of applications already developed that you can download to your account and use for free. Initially, I tried some of these applications, but it was overkill for our needs. Zoho Creator can do a lot if you know programming and they have a pay model where it allows you more flexibility and features. I think Zoho Creator would be a useful tool for both

Kamehameha Schools Distance Learning (KSDL) Owau

Search This Blog