Below is a nice infographic showing how students use social media for learning and what aspects of online and mlearning they value. The statistic that jumped out at me was “At schools that ban mobiles, 63% of students use them anyway”. If this is the case, banning them doesn’t work. Instead of looking at an outright ban, wouldn’t it be better to teach students how to use their smart phones to learn?
Below is a simple infographic showing the progress to date of the LingoBee trials at Bellerbys Oxford. It was made using the website Piktochart. 
Check out the Wordle created from all the entries in the Bellerbys Oxford user group on LingoBee – nearly 800 entries! Tell us which is your favourite word.
Last week we presented Lingobee at the Maseltov workshop on Mobile Services for Immigrant People. Recognising that language skills and cultural understanding are key factors for migrants to settle in and find a job in their host country, the workshop organisers invited us to present Lingobee and discuss how the experience in SIMOLA can inform the Maseltov project.
While the Maseltov project has a strong language learning partner in Busuu, an online language learning community with over 7 million users, Lingobee’s simplicity and its focus on in-situ language learning struck a chord with workshop participants.
Busuu’s strength lies in partnering language learners with native speakers and providing tightly focused learning materials for its users relating to specific contexts and situations. While the system implements a traditional transfer model of learning based on instruction and practice, it is very popular with learners due to the direct interaction with native speakers, who correct exercises and are available for chats.
Lingobee, by contrast, is based on social-constructivist learning theory. Instead of completing ready-made exercises, Lingobee users actively collect and annotate language- and culture-related content they encounter in their daily lifes. Content is shared in user groups, ensuring relevance to other learners and honouring the fact that dialects and customs can vary greatly between regions in the same language space.
As there is little overlap between these two systems, an interesting approach would be to combine their features. Busuu could benefit from the integration of in-situ user-generated content, to scaffold the interaction between learners and native speakers and to inform the creation of relevant and authentic learning materials. In return, Lingobee could benefit from the involvement of native speakers to clarify meanings and correct mistakes, and from structured learning materials to broaden the learning from user-generated content.
An app combining these features and integrating with Busuu’s huge user base would make for a well-rounded language learning service. However, even without an integrated service, it certainly makes sense for learners to look at both models and spice up generic language learning with active content creation and authentic materials found in their daily lives.
The trial at Sussex is now moving into a second phase where we are about to open our doors to all USISC students with Android phones or tablets to join our user group on LingoBee. Teachers will also be invited to a session about LingoBee which will hopefully lead to a discussion of how LingoBee could become part of our students’ tool kits. With more students in the group, it will be interesting to see how the initial six LingoBee students adapt and react to phase two.
LingoBee was presented by Study Group at IATEFL Glasgow, one of the world’s largest ELT conferences, on the 21st March. The conference ran from the 19th to 23rd March, with delegates attending from around the world. M-learning was a popular theme, with the likes of Macmillan Education running a signature event on ‘Enhancing students’ language acquisition through mobile technologies’ including speakers Nicky Hockly and Agnes Kukulska-Hulme. This was an interesting talk which included many discussions relevant to the LingoBee trials.
Our session was introduced by Barbara Gardner and presented by the Rebecca Adlard and Emma Procter-Legg SIMOLA researchers.
After the presentation we had a number of conversations with audience members keen to talk about the trials. Click on the image below to view our presentation on the Prezi website, click ‘more’ to view it in full screen and use the arrows or click auto play to see the slides.
During our presentation we asked the audience the following question, “If you are in a classroom situation are phones welcome in your classroom?” we collected answers via a textwall and visualised the response through Wordle (the more frequently a response was given, the larger the word appears).
Are mobile phones welcome in your classroom?
We would like to hear your responses to this via our poll and through your comments.
The Lingobee website got a nifty new feature today – it can now plot words and definitions on a map. Best of all, the map is not static but uses the current filter settings from the main page to plot the latest entries. Just use the drop-down boxes to filter for language, usergroup or username, then click the map to see where the entries were added. Zoom and click your way through the map for hours of fun!
LingoBee was presented at the Study Group Teachers’ Conference 2012, held in Bellerbys College Brighton, on the 10th and 11th February. Over 300 Study Group staff attended the annual conference, which had a number of sessions devoted to M-learning in general and LingoBee specifically.
The two SIMOLA researchers, Emma Procter-Legg and Rebecca Adlard, ran sessions covering an introduction to M-learning and the LingoBee trials. LingoBee also featured in the App room, an all day drop in session demonstrating different language learning apps. The SIMOLA researchers and managers (Ross Wainwright and Tom Ottway) took it in turns to man the App room to demonstrate LingoBee. Lots of new entries were added through out the day, as different teachers dropped in to have a go. It was an inspiring day, talking to many teachers about the benefits of using LingoBee and M-learning. To see further photos from the day, check out the LingoBee Facebook page and if you haven’t done so already, why not follow our progress on Twitter too!
Tom demonstrating LingoBee
Ross demonstrating LingoBee
Emma demonstrating LingoBee
Below is a nicely illustrated infographic from StudyBlue showing how students use their Smartphones to study (using flashcards). I’m interested to see how this data compares with the data from the user groups currently trialling LingoBee.
![Mobile Studying & Online Flashcards on Smartphones [Infographic]](http://www.studyblue.com/projects/infographic-mobile-studying-online-flashcards-on-smartphones/images/mobilestudying_08_embed.png)
Via: STUDYBLUE.com
Researchers at Spain’s Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) have developed a hybrid learning environment for improved language learning. A first prototype has been tested in Madrid. The researchers hope that the application will motivate students to participate in the learning process due to the more interactive nature of the activities and because they are able to experience a variety of situations. Read the original article here.
