Company Blog

Learnosity was the solutions partner for the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment's MALL and FÓN projects in Ireland. These projects gave us some great information on the real and quantifiable benefits Learnosity Voice delivers for both students and teachers.

Katrina Keogh, Education Officer at the NCCA, speaks in depth to John Hurley from TeachNet about the FÓN project. Katrina shares some fascinating insights and findings from the project. It’s a must hear for anyone interested in language learning and assessment.

The pod cast is available from the NCCA Podcasts website or from iTunes.

The Irish Minister for Trade and Commerce Mr Billy Kelleher TD announced on Friday that Learnosity has signed a €100k contract with the Association of Independent Schools in Queensland Australia.

The Minister who led a week long trade mission to Australia, met staff and customers of Learnosity.

Mark Lynch, CTO and co-founder of Learnosity said, "We are delighted to be working on this innovative project with Independent Schools Queensland. This project will demonstrate how language learning can be accelerated through the appropriate use of iPod’s and Learnosity’s innovative solutions.”

Gerry Murphy (Enterprise Ireland), Minister Billy Kelleher, Gavin Cooney (Learnosity)

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Conor Sheahan as a Non Executive Director of Learnosity. Conor's role will be to work with the founders in terms of the Strategic Growth and development of the Company.

A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Conor has 23 years business experience working as an Accountant, Investment Banker and Corporate Finance adviser and in the last 8 years a CFO and CEO based largely in North America.

In 2005, Conor took over as CEO of Performix Technologies (having joined as CFO in 2000) and led the successful sale of the company in 2006 to Nice Systems.

Conor has a unique mix of advisory and operational experience including CFO and CEO experience in both technology and non technology companies.

Learnosity partnered with The Open University on a project that looked at how mobile devices can be integrated into course study.

The research project explored and evaluated the contexts in which students find mobile devices most beneficial in learning. Furthermore, the project sought to inform future plans for integrating mobile speaking activities into the design of new courses.

A second, larger, project with the Open University is already underway.

Read more about our work with The Open University.

In the latest release of Learnosity Voice (now on version 3.3.0), there are a large number of improvements based on feedback from teachers using it. A huge thanks to all the teachers those who have provided feedback.

Here are the key changes:

Renamed “Exams” to “Activities”

Exams was often confusing as it had the connotation of an end of term/year examination. To make it more user friendly we have renamed it to Activity. You may still use activities for revision or assessment purposes.

Assigning multiple activities

One of the consistent requests we have received was to provide more control to teachers to assign work to students. By adding some changes to the dial in menu and in the teachers area this is now possible. To assign activities to a class simply:

• Select Students and Classes
• Select the class you want to work with
• Select the Activities tab
• Drag activities from the left hand side into a slot on the right hand side.
• Press “Update” to save your selections.

These will now be available to students when they dial in.

Changes to dial plan

When a student dials in, they are now presented with and option to select an assigned activity from 1 to 9. Students can see the list of activities assigned to them from their student site home page.

Student home page shows assigned activities

When a student logs in they will see the list of activities that they have been assigned by their teacher. Assigned activities may be for revision or for assessment depending on how the teacher wishes to use it.

Ability to remove sessions

Teachers now have the ability to remove sessions. They may want to remove them because they are incomplete or because the student did multiple attempts and they only want to keep the best one. At the bottom of the session marking page there is now a “Delete Session” button.

Lots of other fixes and improvements

There are numerous other little fixes and improvements.

We hope you enjoy the improvements and please keep letting us know how we can make it better.

The Team at Learnosity

As part of the 2009 European Year of Creativity and Innovation, the Higher Education Authority and Léargas have published a booklet. The European Language Label winning FÓN Project is featured.

The relevant part of the publication is below, and the whole booklet can be downloaded from the Léargas website (pdf, 5.6mb, 32 pages).

Léargas article on FÓN Project

Katrina Keogh and Judith Ní Mhurchú from the NCCA have written an article for the CIDREE yearbook about the mobile language learning projects using Learnosity technology.

The article outlines the background of the projects, along with the change in Irish language policies which changed the marks awarded for the oral component of the examination. It also outlines the excellent results of the two projects: MALL Project (2007) and FÓN Project (2008-2009).

The article is entitled: "Changing policy and an innovative response: Teaching, learning and assessing Irish using mobile phones".

CIDREE is the Consortium of Institutions for Development and Research in Education in Europe. The title of the yearbook is "Yearbook #9: MANY VOICES. Language Policy and Practice in Europe, Emerging challenges and innovative responses".

The yearbook can be downloaded in full from the CIDREE website. Alternatively, just download the relevant part of the yearbook (PDF, 456kb, 14 pages).

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.

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!

On Friday 12th November, I was thrilled to pick up a coveted Gold award at the e-Learning Age awards held in the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in London.

The awards, run by e-Learning Age Magazine, are seen as one of the most prestigious awards in the learning industry. They showcase the very best examples of work in the field, with winners representing everything from blue-chip multinationals to specialist start-up companies. There was almost 200 entries from 15 different countries, and so we were delighted to be shortlisted in two categories: Best Use of Mobile Learning and Most Innovative New Product or Tool in E-learning.

With so many entries, this is the most competitive year in the history of the awards. With standards so high, some categories have bronze, silver and gold awards for the first time. Learnosity was delighted to win a Gold award for Learnosity Voice in the Most Innovative New Product or Tool in E-learning category. Read more about it in the cover story of this month's edition of E-Learning Age Magazine.

Judges Comments

Last week the project we are doing with the Irish government was covered by the RTÉ News. RTÉ are the Irish national broadcaster. The segment includes a good overview of the project with contributions from Anne Looney (CEO of the NCCA), Learnosity, a representative of the teachers union (ASTI), along with students and teachers from one of the participating schools, Ratoath College.

RTÉ news story on Learnosity/ NCCA project broadcast 16th November 2009.

For more information on the project, please see the project website and the Irish language case study on the Learnosity website.

This TV coverage came about after Dr. Anne Looney from the NCCA mentioned the project on RTÉ Radio's Morning Ireland the previous week. A recording of that show is available to listen to below:

Anne Looney on RTÉ Morning Ireland November 2nd 2009 (MP3, 5 minutes, 3.4mb)

Read more about Dr. Looney in this glowing profile from the Irish Times, which describes her as "one of the most capable thinkers and managers in Irish education at any level". Having had the pleasure to work with Anne a number of years, I must say I agree.