Mobile Games on the rise

“Mobile games are a typical example of small, “casual games” that attract also players who do not typically self-identify as “gamers”, and yet are interested to have some kinds of games and play as parts of their everyday life.” Franz Mäyrä, keynote speech at the IADIS Mobile Learning 2013 conference. This keynote speech titled “From Mobile Games to Playful Communication: play in everyday life” at a mobile learning conference indicates the growing interest among researchers in mobile games for education.

What next for LingoBee? Could it be Mobile Language Learning games to motivate and stimulate learners?

See the GaLA blog (GaLA is the European Network of Excellence on Serious Games), http://www.galanoe.eu/index.php/breaking-news/blog

Lingobee and Mobile Language Learning at IADIS Mobile Learning 2013

In addition to Lingobee, other work related to Mobile Language Learning was presented at the IADIS Mobile Learning 2013 conference. These focused on the advantages that mobile technologies can offer in supporting “incidental” learning to engage learners in meaningful communication using the target language and “intentional” vocabulary learning; e.g. as a part of nursing education for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. A survey conducted among students learning English as a foreign language about their learning habits and their attitudes towards using mobile devices for language learning was also presented.

Of particular interest is the work conducted at Tokushima University, Japan, in supporting language learners using a Ubiquitous Language Log, either initiated by the user or automatically captured using ubiquitous technologies such as sensors and cameras. Functionalities include support for collaboration among learners, experiential learning as the logs can be based on a real life experience, reflection and recall. As one of the authors of this work said, there were similarities with the Lingobee app. I will certainly be following this work!

Here is a word cloud of the proceedings of the conference. Note the word “language” appears quite small towards the top of the cloud.

LingoBee at the International Conference Mobile Learning 2013

The IADIS Mobile Learning Conference 2013 was held last week in Lisbon, Portugal from 14th – 16th March. A full paper was presented on LingoBee, “LingoBee – Crowd-Sourced Mobile Language Learning in the Cloud” written by Sobah Abbas Petersen, Emma Procter-Legg and Annamaria Cacchione. Click on the image below to view the full Prezi presentation.

The paper was presented during the first session on Friday morning, by Sobah and Emma, it was well received and led to a number of interesting discussions with other participants.

LingoBee presented in Evora, Portugal

LingoBee was presented at the International Meeting on Languages, Applied linguistics and Translation in Evora, Portugal on the 7th December by Annamaria Cacchione and Emma Procter-Legg. The paper ‘LingoBee Mobile Language Learning App as a Tool to Support Lexical Growth’ was well received and a number of discussions followed about the potential of the the app for supporting lexical growth.

Click on the image below to view the Prezi presentation.

LingoBee @mLearn 2012 – Helsinki

During the busy month of October Lingobee was also presented in Helsinki at mLearn Conference on 15-18 October. With a small information desk by the conference room was a good opportunity to have some interesting “watercooler conversations” about mobile apps, language learning or platform issues and sharing the results and visions of our project.

As one of the basic pillar of the conference, language learning had its own workshop section on Monday, where we got acquainted with some advanced projects on the field like English in Action or iSpot. It was nice to see the complexity of these programs, and get information about the future possibilities of app development.

Small Lingobee gadgets, flyers and posters about the features were available for the audience during the conference, and from the event’s Twitter channel, online users could get some further information about the project.

More pictures from the conference:

LingoBee at CELDA 2012

LingoBee was presented at CELDA 2012, Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age, in Madrid on Saturday 20th October 2012.  The paper “LingoBee and Social Media: Mobile Language Learners as Social Networkers” authored by Emma Procter-Legg, Annamaria Cacchione and Sobah Abbas Petersen. This was a collaboration between 3 of the partner within the SIMOLA project, Study Group UK (Bellerbys College Oxford), the University of Molise Italy (Dept. of Social Science and Lingustic Centre) and the Norwegian University of Science & Technology.
The presentation was well received by  the audience who asked questions and commented on the usefulness of LingoBee for Erasmus students.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To see the full presentation, click on the image below.

Lingobee is hot!

The dissemination activities have increased towards the end of the SIMOLA project. These include presentations of Lingobee and the results of some of the user studies at conferences and seminars. Lingobee is generally liked by the audiences and several people would like to try it in different ways. At the beginning of the project, who would have thought that Lingobee could have so many innovative uses? Here are some:

–          A repository for concepts in digital story telling.

–          To describe concepts for children with learning disabilities.

–          Norwegian students exposed to unfamiliar English terminology at university.

–          A technology to support capturing content during a field activity where the learners are outside the class and mobile.

Interestingly enough, some of these ideas are not in supporting language learning. All these wonderful ideas and stimuli that have been shared by the varied audiences of Lingobee are very inspiring and they clearly identify the potential of Lingobee. It is a pity that the SIMOLA project ends soon. If only we had another year to go!

Lingobee at the NordiTEL Symposium

Lingobee and the results of some of the user studies were presented at the NordiTEL Symposium, in Oulu, Finland, earlier this week. Several researchers in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and Mobile Learning from Finland, Sweden and Norway presented their work at the symposium. There is a lot of activity in this field of research in the Nordic countries and it was very good to be among them and share our work.

The focus of our presentation was about bridging informal and formal education and how we could motivate Lingobee users to make Lingobee a natural part of their language learning process. This topic was motivated by the results of the user studies in Norway and the level of user participation.

Several other researchers felt that it was a challenge to get school teachers to adopt technology in their classrooms. The discussions in general were around these themes which can be seen from the “shouts” in the “learning café” panel discussion session.

There was a lot of interest in the work that we have done in SIMOLA and some researchers were interested in trying out Lingobee in different ways such as a repository for concepts and ideas in mobile digital story telling. The abstract was authored by Sobah Abbas Petersen and Ole-Torfinn Fagerli, both from NTNU, Norway. The presentation was done by Sobah.

While presenting work about language learning in different countries, it is natural to acquire a bit of the local lingo, although Finland was not the easiest for that. “kiitos” is thankyou in Finnish. Do you know how to say thankyou very much in Finnish? I was told it’s “Mos-Kiitos”. Check it out!

Creativity among LingoBee users

Examples from the Lingobee repository were presented at the Mobile Learning and Creativity workshop at the European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL2012). One of the aims of the workshop is how can we design Mobile Learning to foster creativity? It is interesting to find a lot of creativity among the entries in the Lingobee repository from the different user groups – the use of graphics, photos and the collaborative descriptions of a word or phrase by several learners.

The presentation was well received by the workshop participants. In particular, the audience found the domain of language learning very relevant and a natural area for Mobile Learning. One workshop participant commented “isn’t learning everything about language learning?”

The audience also liked the concept of our “LingoBee moments”, the spontaneity or acting on the spur of the moment that is facilitated by Lingobee and Mobile Learning. A few presenters talked about “serendipity” in learning which is strongly linked to the learning supported by Lingobee. This obvious advantage of Mobile Learning is no doubt one that fosters creativity. In addition, the collaborative co-construction of knowledge, often spurred by an everyday activity, leads to creative descriptions of words and expressions as well as creative use of language. The preparation of this presentation raised the following questions that are relevant for further research in this area: 1) What is creativity in language learning? ii) Does “social, connected activity” lead to creativity in language learning? ii) How does mobile language learning foster or hinder creativity?

The presentation was done using the Pecha Kucha format which required some creativity! The paper title “Creativity and Mobile Language Learning” was authored by Sobah A. Petersen, Emma Procter-Legg, Annamaria Cacchione, Mikhail Forminykh and Monica Divitini, as a joint activity between SIMOLA and CoCreat (another LLP project). The paper was presented by Sobah.

UNESCO Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning

UNESCO recently published a series of 12 papers called the UNESCO Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning .The papers are split into two sets of six, the first of which covers policy and discuss initiatives and the second explore mobile learning as a medium for supporting teachers and improving practice. They include examples of mobile learning from around the globe and contain a wealth of information, a great resource for anyone considering implementing a mobile learning policy or strategy within their institution.