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Independent Schools of Queensland recently unveiled a video featuring their ESL programme that uses the Learnosity Voice iPod app.

In the programme students use a combination of an iPod Touch device and a Learnosity online workspace. Teachers set speaking and listening tasks from a computer using this online space. These tasks are automatically sent to the students devices. The students complete their tasks, listen to them and, with a push of a button, synch them back up to the teacher’s online space.

The teacher can see and hear the students completed work on line with any feedback automatically synched back down to the student. The result is a constant, seamless, automated flow of communication between teacher and student that can happen at anytime, anywhere.

The video tells us how this partnership with Learnosity has been beneficial for both teachers and students.

Here is the video, just click to play.

iPod Touch ESL Project from Independent Schools Queensland on Vimeo.

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.

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.

The Learnosity Voice documentation is now available on the Learnosity Documentation website. Feel free to browse through demonstration and how-to videos on Voice Response and Voice Chat. This includes some video demos of the system in action. Also available are Voice Response user manuals which you read online, or print off for reference.

Demonstration / How-to Videos

Voice Response

• Search Sessions
• Mark Sessions
• Create New Questions
• Create Exams

Voice Chat

• Mark Sessions
• Create New Questions
• Inviting other classes

General

• Interface Customisation

Example Voice Response Conversations

• The Open University Project (Intermediate French)
• The Le@rning Federation Project (Indonesian Language)

User Manuals

Voice Response

• Finding and Marking Sessions
• Creating and updating Exams
• Creating New Questions
• Sample Answers

Keep an eye on the documentation website for more videos in the coming days and weeks.

In this video, I will explain how the Learnosity Voice interface is easily customisable. This includes the language of the web and voice interfaces, and how all features can be turned on and off as required.

For example, when a student or teacher logs into the Irish government installation of Learnosity Voice, the entire interface is in the Irish language. The interface can be changed to English is required by the user.

Every single text item in the student, teacher and administration interfaces come from a language file that we call a resource bundle. To create a new language here, we simply edit this file in a spreadsheet.

Resource bundles are also useful for changing terminology in English language interface. For example:

• For the Learning Federation in Australia, we used the word “conversation”.
• For the Open University we use the word “session”.
• In New South Wales we use the word test.

The video also shows how in various installations, certain items are enabled and disabled as required, so that students and teachers never have to see an item that is irrelevant to them.

Also, fully customisable is the voice interface. We simply record each prompt in the language and accent we require.

The video includes excerpts from calls from some of Learnosity’s installations. For example, The Le@rning Federation voice interface was recorded in English with an Australian accent. The Irish project is an example of the same interface in the Irish language. Another English language example is the Open University in the UK.

More Learnosity Demo/ How-to Videos.

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'.

Recently we blogged about an exciting mobile learning project we deployed with The Le@rning Federation, a collaborative initiative of all Australian and New Zealand governments.

The project deployed the Learnosity Voice system, in a number of high-schools across three states in Australia. The students use mobile phones to dial into the system and answer a number of questions in the Indonesian language.

Below is a recording of one of the calls, shown with subtitles.

Here, courtesy of Leonard Low is a video of me doing a quick demo of Learnosity's voice-based oral assessment at mLearn 2007 in Melbourne.