Company Blog

Open University Students Learn French on the Move with Learnosity Voice

Posted At : April 27, 2010 12:32 PM 0 Comments

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.

The most interesting finding, I would say, was students commenting on the challenging and authentic aspect of tackling listening and speaking in this more 'realistic' way. That made me re-think how we teach listening and speaking.
Valérie Demouy
Lecturer in French
Department of Languages, The Open University

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

Read more about our work with The Open University.

The Open University

Learnosity wins Handheld Learning Award

Posted At : October 21, 2009 10:36 PM 0 Comments

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

Handheld Learning 2009 Presentation

Posted At : October 21, 2009 8:34 PM 0 Comments

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.

Learnosity / Open University iPhone App video demo

Posted At : September 16, 2009 12:42 PM 0 Comments

Below is a video demo of the iPhone Application we created for The Open University. I previously posted some screenshots of this application.

Learnosity has been working with The Open University in the UK for the past few months. We did a pilot using the Learnosity Voice platform to deliver spoken language learning in the Intermediate French L120 course.

This iPhone application has been developed to replace/ augment the Learnosity Voice student web-interface. The application allows students review their answers, receive teacher feedback, and listen to sample answers using an iPhone or an iPod Touch.

Download the app from the iTunes App store. Note: Learnosity/OU login is required.

Learnosity / Open University iPhone App demo on Vimeo.com.

For those of you interested, this video created with the iPhone Simulator from the iPhone SDK, iSimulate, Jing, Soundflower and Quicktime Pro.

Full Skype Integration

Posted At : September 4, 2009 1:25 AM 0 Comments

We're delighted to announce that Learnosity Voice has been fully integrated with Skype. This means that students anywhere can use skype to call the system from their computer, completely free of charge. Students call a Skype name as opposed to dialing a phone number. We have already implemented this in the UK, USA and Australia.

Skype

Feel free to test it out by calling learnosity_vdemo from your Skype.

Skype the system.

Voice Demo: The Open University Project (Intermediate French)

Posted At : September 3, 2009 11:18 PM 0 Comments

The following is a video of Valérie Demouy from The Open University demonstrating an activity in the Open University L120 Intermediate French mobile learning project which uses Learnosity Voice Response.

Valérie does activity 423, a French language grammar drill using 'en'.

Learnosity/ Open University Intermediate French Demo on Vimeo.com.

Learnosity Voice/ Open University iPhone Application

Posted At : August 24, 2009 8:15 PM 0 Comments

UPDATE: Video demo now available.

Learnosity has been working with The Open University in the UK for the past few months. We did a pilot using the Learnosity Voice platform to deliver spoken language learning in the Intermediate French L120 course. It's a very interesting project, and a blog post about this project will follow.

In addition to the French project, we also developed an iPhone application to replace/ augment the Learnosity Voice student web-interface. The application allows students review their answers, receive teacher feedback, and listen to sample answers using an iPhone or an iPod Touch.

Click the image below to see screenshots of the application. When a demo version is available in the Apple Application store, we will post the link.


See screenshots of the Learnosity iPhone application.

If you have any feedback on the iPhone application, please feel free to drop us a line.