Irish Language Project- Phase 2

In October 2008 Learnosity successfully completed the deployment of its ground breaking language learning platform in the 2nd phase of a strategic project with Irish government agency NCCA.

This 2nd phase follows on from the highly successful phase 1 pilot completed in 2007 where Learnosity developed an innovative mobile learning system as a pilot project for the Irish government. This project was a huge success, and we are delighted to have been asked to deliver a second pilot project to a much larger number of schools in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.

This project is run by the NCCA, NCTE and Foras na Gaeilge. On the same day as the first pilot project was announced, the then Minister for Education and Science Mary Hanafin announced an increased emphasis on the spoken language in the Junior and Leaving Certificate examinations. This pilot takes a new and innovative look at the teaching and assessment of the Irish language- focusing on the verbal communication skills of the student.

The way to bring a language to life is to be able to converse in it every day. The Irish language is interwoven with our history and our cultural heritage - we need to nurture and preserve it and pass it on to the next generation.
Irish Minister for Education and Science, Mary Hanafin, 11th March 2007

The project has four main components:

1. Voice Response: Students use a regular mobile phone to dial into the system and verbally answer a series of questions. This is later listened to by the teacher in a web interface, who provides the student feedback.
2. Voice Chat: Students dial into the system and get connected to another student of a similar ability. They then participate in a conference call based role-play with the other student. Teachers then listen to the conversation and provide feedback to the two students. As you can see below, teachers can visually see who is speaking at any one time.
   
3. Text Chat: Students login to a web interface and are matched with another student. They then have a text-based conversation with the other student in a teacher-moderated way. Students later receive feedback from their teacher on the text-chat conversation.
4. SMS Vocab Builder: Each day, one Irish word or phrase was sent by SMS to the students' phones. The text messages, scheduled to arrive during Irish classes, were selected by teachers from a range of topics. Students were required to incorporate the word or phrase into Irish conversations during their school day.

We are proud to be involved in such an excellent project, and look forward to working further with the NCCA, NCTE and Foras na Gaeilge.