Posts tagged smartphone
Mobile learning presentation webinar
Dec 14th
I’m greatly looking forward to my mobile learning presentation this weekend for the IATEFL Learning Technology SIG, see details on their web page. I will report on a survey of language learning apps carried out with Paul Sweeney, and the features that we liked and those we didn’t and describe how I have applied this learning in two mobile app projects that I am working on.
The first is an arcade style iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad vocabulary learning game called Word Carrot that I have been working on the past few months with three colleagues in our new company, LearnAhead Ltd. The app will appear on the Apple App store in early January 2012.
What next for mobile language learning?
Jul 20th
It’s a year since I started Constellata and I have been using this anniversary to reflect further on the growing area of mobile learning.
This is a fast changing area and there are no definitive answers, and my views are likely to change during my company’s second year of trading.
ELT needs to get a grip on smartphones
Mar 9th
Posted by Caroline in Article
4 comments
This is the article that appeared in the Guardian Weekly on 8 March 2011:
There has been an explosion in the use of smartphones. Around 270m handsets were sold in 2010, while CNN Fortune has forecast that sales could exceed 500m in 2011. With the price of entry-level handsets expected to fall to $100 or below, growth is likely to accelerate and smartphones will become more accessible to consumers in developing countries.
Smartphone owners use them on the move to access information and entertainment such as music, audio books, reading, and for viewing photos and video clips. One-third of Facebook traffic is now via these devices used simultaneously for instant messaging, email and Twitter.
The mobile phone application, or app, brings all the above to life in one self-contained mini-program. The growth in apps for communication, gaming and simple utility (finding the quickest route on public transport) is phenomenal. Apps seem to be everywhere, often created for quite short-term uses: event apps, conference planners, even the small hotel in Berlin I stayed in recently had its own free app for guests.
Apps are often seen as synonymous with the iPhone, which has been the leader in this area, but many commentators expect the Android operating system, which works on smartphones from other manufacturers, to overtake Apple.
Apps have enormous potential for language learning because they allow for multisensory learning on the move: for learners to use nuggets of time in a queue or on public transport. And because smartphones can store so much data or retrieve it via the internet, apps can serve as rich media dictionaries and reference tools.
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