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 @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!

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.

A few LingoBee entries in English, Italian and Norwegian

Click on the link below to see a few LingoBee Screenshots on PhotoPeach. They are of interesting entries in English, Italian and Norwegian.
http://photopeach.com/album/10tv151?ref=fb

Bellerbys Oxford – Update

The second trial of LingoBee has now come to an end at Bellerbys College Oxford, as the students hand back their smartphones, finish their final A level exams and head home for the holidays. Both trial groups entered their new found words and phrases into the Bellerbys Oxford user group. At the final count there were 823 entries made by the 12 students involved and their teacher. Below is a Wordle created from all 823 entries in the user group and their respective definitions – which amounts to 8,472 words!

BELLERBYS OXFORD USER GROUP – INFOGRAPHIC

Below is a simple infographic showing the progress to date of the LingoBee trials at Bellerbys Oxford. It was made using the website Piktochart.

Bellerbys Oxford usergroup

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.

Maseltov Workshop, Barcelona

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.