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Learnosity Wins LearnTrends Innovation Award

LearnTrends Awards 2009

Continuing on our winning streak, I was honoured last week to be awarded a LearnTrends Innovation Award during the LearnTrends online conference. Learnosity won for our pioneering work with spoken language learning using mobile phones.

I really liked the fact that this was an award focused on innovation. The prize was to make a presentation at the LearnTrends event last week.


The awards will recognize products, projects, and companies that represent significant innovation in Corporate/Workplace Learning and Performance.

For more on the awards, see Tony Karrer's eLearning Tech blog and Jay Cross's announcement of the awards on the LearnTrends website.

I look forward to meeting Jay and buying him a pint next week in Berlin at Online Educa, and to participating in LearnTrends 2010!

Posted At : November 26, 2009 7:20 PM | Posted By : Gavin Cooney
Related Categories: Mobile Applications for Language Learning, Learnosity Voice, General, Conferences, Awards
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Learnosity wins Handheld Learning Award

The Handheld Learning Awards for Innovation & Best Practice were held during the recent Handheld Learning 2009 conference. I was proud to accept a prestigious Innovation Award in the Secondary Education category, for Learnosity Voice.

Handheld Learning Awards

There was 200 nominees, with 36 finalists chosen from a panel of 8 Independent cross-sector judges. There was then over 4000 public votes to decide the winners. Many thanks to everyone who voted, and to the Learning Without Frontiers team who put on an excellent show and conference.

The awards were presented by well known TV presenter Jason Bradbury. The whole event was captured on video. If I had known it was being filmed, I might have said a few more words!

Gavin Cooney accepting Handheld Learning Award for Learnosity on Vimeo

Nomination Outline

With oral language fluency of the utmost importance to secondary language acquisition, Learnosity Voice focusses on verbal abilities, allowing students to use any phone to dial into a voice application, and answer a series of voice-based questions. It also enables students to communicate one-to-one in real time, allowing them to use the target language in role-plays based on real life scenarios.

Learnosity Voice allows students use their own mobiles to access the application. We chose to use mobile phones for the following reasons:
  • Phones are built for speaking and listening.
  • There is no learning curve, technical support, installation etc. It just works.
  • Almost every single student will already have a mobile phone.
Students then use a computer or iPod Touch to get teacher feedback on their answers and listen to sample answers.
This mobile language learning platform has been deployed projects in the UK, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, USA and Australia. Notably, it has been deployed in a large scale pilot project conducted by the Australian government, in the teaching and learning of the Indonesian language across three Australian states. Students involved in this project showed significant improvements in spoken language abilities. More

Posted At : October 21, 2009 10:36 PM | Posted By : Gavin Cooney
Related Categories: Video, The Open University, The Le@rning Federation, NCCA, Mobile Applications for Language Learning, Learnosity Voice, General, Conferences, Awards
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Handheld Learning 2009 Presentation

Rhodri Thomas and Gavin Cooney

At Handheld Learning 2009, I presented a session called Use of mobile phones for language learning. The presentation was on Monday 5th October in a seminar called "Best Practice in Action". For part of the presentation, Rhodri Thomas from The Open University was kind enough to join me.

A video of the presentation is below. It's also available on the HHL website and vimeo.com.

For more video from Handheld Learning 2009, go to Handheld Learning's channel on Blip.tv or subscribe via iTunes. The full conference proceedings are available with Video, Audio and Photographs. There is some great content there for anyone interested in Handheld and Mobile Learning.

The presentation itself is available below.

Posted At : October 21, 2009 8:34 PM | Posted By : Gavin Cooney
Related Categories: Video, The Open University, The Le@rning Federation, NCCA, Mobile Applications for Language Learning, Learnosity Voice, General, Conferences
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Learnosity nominated for Handheld Learning Awards

We were thrilled to learn that Learnosity Voice has been nominated for a Handheld Learning Award. We were nominated in the Secondary category for the Innovation award, defined as "An initiative, project or product that has had the most positive impact within category".

Handheld Learning Awards 2009

Please vote for us by text LEARNOSITY to +44 7786 205 637. One vote per phone. Voting closes at midnight UK time on Monday 28th September.

All the very best to the others nominated: Studywiz and Creative Learning Lab / Waag Society. I look forward to seeing you at the Awards Ceremony at the conference in October.

Posted At : September 16, 2009 1:30 AM | Posted By : Gavin Cooney
Related Categories: Awards, Conferences, Learnosity Voice, Mobile Applications for Language Learning
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Speaking at Handheld Learning 2009

I will be speaking at the Handheld Learning 2009 on Monday October 5th 2009. My presentation is part of the "Best Practice in Action" strand from 11am to 5pm in the Upper Sugar Room. The seminars will be chaired by all-around-good-guy Andy Black from Becta.

The good news is that Monday is a public open day with free entry to Handheld Learning. It is free of charge and open to the general public, Teachers, school governors, parents, employers, accompanied minors and anybody who is interested in the positive impact that mobile, always-on computing is having on the quality of learning and teaching experience.

The following is an overview of the session from the conference website:

In 2007, in an attempt to promote the use of oral Irish language, the Irish Minister for Education and Science announced a significant change to the proportion of marks awarded for spoken Irish language in the State examinations. Further to this, Learnosity worked as technology partner in an exciting mobile learning project initiated by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). This project was very successful, and continued in the 2008/2009 academic year.

With oral language fluency of the utmost importance to secondary language acquisition, this project focused on verbal abilities, allowing students to use any phone to dial into a voice application, and answer a series of voice-based questions. It also enables students to communicate one-to-one in real time (using voice or text), allowing them to use the target language in role-plays based on real life scenarios.

This mobile language learning platform has since been deployed in a large scale pilot project conducted by the Australian government, in the teaching and learning of the Indonesian language across three Australian states. Students involved in this project showed significant improvements in spoken language abilities. The results of this project will be outlined in the presentation, as well as preliminary findings from various additional deployments in Ireland, Saudi Arabia, the US, and the Open University (UK).

Time permitting, I'll be giving a demo of the iPhone Application we built for the Open University.

If you're going to to be there, please drop me a line. I'll be on +353 857 111 222 (Call or SMS). You can also get me on Twitter (@gcooney) or email gavin [at] learnosity [dot] com.

Posted At : September 4, 2009 2:33 AM | Posted By : Gavin Cooney
Related Categories: Mobile Applications for Language Learning, Learnosity Voice, Conferences
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IATEFL Poland Conference

I'm delighted to have been invited by the The Department of Foreign Languages at Poznan University of Technology to speak at the 18th International IATEFL Poland Conference on September 11th 2009 in Poznan, Poland.

IATEFL Poland is an annual conference bringing together both English teachers and researchers in the field of language teaching methodology to freely communicate ideas, exchange views and share experiences. This year's conference is planned to be centrally concerned with examining the concepts of new technologies in foreign language teaching as well as of fresh challenges to teaching in the globalised world.

I'll be speaking on Friday at 13:15 in a session entitled "Use of mobile phones for spoken language learning". I'll be speaking about our projects in Ireland, UK and Australia.

If you're going to the conference, please get in touch and we can meet for a coffee. I'll be on +353 857 111 222 (Call or SMS) while I'm in Poland. You can also get me on Twitter (@gcooney) or email gavin [at] learnosity [dot] com.

Posted At : September 4, 2009 1:55 AM | Posted By : Gavin Cooney
Related Categories: Mobile Applications for Language Learning, Learnosity Voice, Conferences
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Presentation at AFMLTA 09 Conference

I've just finished my presentation at AFLMTA09 in Sydney, which has been very well attended with lots of interest and some very intelligent questions. Thanks everyone for coming along.

Here is a transcript of the CoverItLive comments from Steve Collis and Laura Lochore:

12:24   Steve Collis: @lynch_mark is presenting on Learnosity
12:24   Steve Collis: Company founded in 2007 - responsible for computer skills test so technology had to work in every situation. Simple, reliable
12:25   Steve Collis: Do work for the Learning Federation, BoS and many more. Have an office in Sydney and one in Dublin
12:25   Steve Collis: Their phone technology is just a tool, like pen and paper, they're not about telling teachers how to use it.
12:26   Steve Collis: Has so far been used with many different languages in many contexts.
12:26   [Comment From Laura] Yes steve
12:31   Steve Collis: Needed technology for assessing speaking. Had to be reliable. Computer audio is not reliable - headsets, sound cards etc not always reliable.
12:32   Steve Collis: Phone is the perfect tool - reliable, always works. Students say "Don't feel silly talking into a phone". Is culturally normal to talk into a phone!
12:33   Steve Collis: It feels normal.
12:33   Steve Collis: Mark is now ringing the phone service from his mobile & is entering his ID
12:34   Laura: Real life real time demo of learnosity is great! Technology working when it's needed
12:35   Steve Collis: He is asked questions over the phone, can speak and record himself, and can hear his answer back, and rerecord it until he's happy.
12:36   Laura: Audio cue q&a thru phone with review opp and rerecord option
12:37   Laura: Teacher and student login via net
12:38   Laura: Marking online; PDF output option
12:39   Laura: Students can get own feedback and sample answers by net
12:41   Laura: Is or will be option 4 teacher 2 record own questions
12:46   Laura: Was trialled at school in Ireland that was running from corporate box at a race course!
12:46   Steve Collis: Data - NCCA Irish Language Project (2007) - 67% significant progress, 95% enjoyed it, 93% recommended it
Learning Federation project -13 schools - 10% difference in mean scores before and after.
12:47   Steve Collis: http://foghlaim.edublogs.org/
12:48   Steve Collis: Report for Learning Federation project available here - http://www.learnosity.com/blog/index.cfm/2009/7/2/tlf-final-report
12:48   Steve Collis: Teachers comments "It's like having one on one time". "Nice hearing kids speaking that don't normally speak".
12:50   Laura: Language use improved greatly. Kids making jokes in TL
12:55   Laura: Challenges for widescale deploy: engagement of teachers telco govt
12:57   Laura: ((trying 2 remember name of proj in NY where Nikia (I think) donated hardware))
12:57   Laura: *nokia
1:01   Laura: http://bit.ly/ncca-mall

If you had a question and didn't get time to catch me after my talk please don't hesitate to email me on: mark@learnosity.com

Cheers, Mark

Posted At : July 12, 2009 5:43 AM | Posted By : Mark Lynch
Related Categories: The Le@rning Federation, NSW Board of Studies, NCCA, Mobile Applications for Language Learning, Learnosity Voice, Conferences
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Learnosity at AMFLTA Conference

The AFMLTA conference is coming up from the 9th to 12th of July in Sydney.

There are two talks at the conference which will be highlighting the Learnosity technology:

  • Friday at 11am (after the opening keynote) Russell Darnley will be speaking about the Le@rning Federation project which leveraged Learnosity Voice for language learning (View the report)
  • Sunday at 12:15pm Mark Lynch will be presenting and highlighting some of the other projects that Learnosity Voice has been used in including with Open University UK, AISV and the NCCA in Ireland.

I'm looking forward to meeting lots of great language teachers at the conference. I'll also twitter the best bits from @lynch_mark.

Mark

Posted At : July 3, 2009 4:23 AM | Posted By : Mark Lynch
Related Categories: The Le@rning Federation, Mobile Applications for Language Learning, Learnosity Voice, General, Conferences
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Remote presentation at EdRev09

Thanks to Ian Quartermaine I'll have the privilege of presenting at the Education Revolution in Action conference in Queensland.

I'll be presenting from Sydney between 11.30 and 12.30 on the Tuesday 23rd 09 and hopefully all the requisite technology will serve us well.

There is a conference back channel on twitter at #edrev09 for those interested.

Mark Lynch

Posted At : June 22, 2009 1:32 PM | Posted By : Mark Lynch
Related Categories: Mobile Applications for Language Learning, Learnosity Voice, Conferences
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EdTech 2009

Today I have been speaking at EdTech 2009, run by the Irish Learning Technology Association. This year the event is being held at the campus of one of Learnosity's clients National College of Ireland. This is my third time speaking at the event, having spoken in 2007 in DIT and 2008 in Dundalk IT.

A video of my 2007 Edtech presentation is available on our website, and is still largely relevant. In 2007 I was speaking about the first Learnosity Voice implementation. Today I spoke about our Indonesian language learning project with the Le@rning Federation in Australia.

I always enjoy the EdTech event, and am delighted to see what the Irish e-Learning community have been up to. Today it was great to be able to catch up with collegues at NCI and The Open University (a project for whom we launched just last Friday), as well as our friends over at Channel Content

Posted At : May 21, 2009 3:23 PM | Posted By : Gavin Cooney
Related Categories: Conferences
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