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).

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

We are delighted to announce that our clients NCCA and Ratoath College have accepted the 2009 European Award for Languages- The Language Label for the FÓN project. The FÓN project used Learnosity Voice to incorporate mobile phones into the teaching, learning and assessment of Irish for nearly 400 second year students in 6 schools. The European Award for Languages is presented in recognition of a project's ability to engage language learners in a manner that is both meaningful and productive, while at the same time promoting a positive attitude towards both the learning and use of the target language.

To celebrate the European Day of Languages, the award was presented in a celebration ceremony held on September 25^th, by Professor David Crystal, writer, editor, lecturer and broadcaster, at an awards ceremony in Farmleigh, Dublin.

Jury comments for FÓN

Find out more about the awards on the Léargas European Language Label, or download the 2009 Language Label booklet (pdf, 2.6mb). Read more on our award on the NCCA and websites.

The FÓN project is currently being evaluated with findings due in late 2009. Preliminary findings have indicated that the project has had a hugely positive impact on student learning due to the following reasons:

• Students were motiviated by the technologies involved.
• More opportunities were provided for students to practise their Irish and converse with others on the project.
• There was a shift in learning from teacher led to student directed and this empowered students.
• The ability to self assess allowed students to compare their levels of fluency with others.

About the European Language Label

The European Language Label, formerly known as the European Award for Languages, is an annual award recognising projects where participants have found creative and innovative ways to improve the quality of language teaching, motivate students, and make the best of available resources. The European Language Label is co-ordinated by the European Commission and managed in Ireland by Léargas.

The general criteria for winning an award, agreed at a European level, are as follows: Initiatives should be comprehensive, provide added value in their national context, motivate the students and teachers, be original and creative, have a European emphasis, and be transferable in that they might potentially be a source of inspiration for other language initiatives in different countries.

This year's Irish winners were selected on the basis of excellence, innovation, creativity and their ability to serve as a model for others. For Irish projects to be eligible for an award they must be:

• Innovative- involving a new method, approach, or resource.
• Effective- the work must be already completed or at least be able to show progress to date and provide evidence of self-evaluation and ongoing critical review.
• Replicable- there must be potential for growth and the possibility of providing a model for other projects and situations.

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

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

Last week (17th June 2009) at the NCCA conference in Croke Park, Irish Minister for Education and Science Batt O'Keeffe mentioned the FÓN Project which Learnosity developed for the NCCA, NCTE and Foras na Gaeilge.

For more information on this project, please see the NCCA website, the FÓN Project Blog or the Learnosity blog. You will also find a case study from the first NCCA Voice project on the Learnosity website.

The relevant part of the speech is below. For the full speech see the Fianna Fáil website.

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.