Company Blog

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.

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

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

We are very excited to announce that today the Le@rning Federation has released the final results from the recently completed Mobile Application for Learning Language (MALL) Research Project. The report concludes that the project "clearly demonstrates a positive response to the use of mobile phones for language learning".

The project involved deploying the Learnosity Voice platform in in 13 schools across three Australian states: South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria. The project targeted 250 (primarily Year 9 and 10) students learning the Indonesian language. A demonstration including a recording of a sample call, shown with subtitles is available here.

Gain in the mean scores across trial schools:
Pre and Post test scores

The results showed that the students, who took conversation tests at the beginning and end of the project, made significant improvements in their Indonesian language skills. An increase of 11% in the average score is shown between pre and post-tests. The improvements in test scores was particularly notable in weaker students.

The report also suggests that the greater the number of corrected conversations per student (thus increased feedback to the students), the greater the improvement. As a result, the quantitative analysis at the school level show particularly positive effects in certain schools.

Pre to Post Test Scores by School

Through questionnaires, the students expressed feeling more confident and having better listening and speaking skills. Individual student comments were exceedingly positive:

Teachers found that in using the MALL method they were “better able to identify individual difficulties with the language, vocabulary or understanding” and that approach was “easy to incorporate... into their teaching plans”. Teachers also described the project as providing “an authentic language experience” and more “on-task” time in the classroom:

The Le@rning Federation concluded the report with some recommendations:

• That this approach to learning languages and other subjects be explored for broader implementation.
• To enable students to use their own mobile phones.
• “Full implementation” of the program by extending the time length.
• Continued development of content.
• Help schools expand their technology, for example high-speed broadband capability.

We look forward to “broader implementation” of our product and give huge thanks to the MALL team in The Le@rning Federation for all of their diligent and valuable work.

Download the full report from The Le@rning Federation (pdf, 370kb)

UPDATE: The MALL report is now available on The Le@rning Federation website.

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

Last week at our event in the Irish Consul General's Residence in Sydney, our client The Le@rning Federation outlined the preliminary findings from the project we just completed with them. We're now delighted to be able to share an outline of these results.

The full findings will be available in April 2009.

Download Findings (pdf, 250kb)

On Thursday last Learnosity, in conjunction with Enterprise Ireland, and The Consul General of Ireland Mr. Patrick Scullion hosted a cocktail reception at The Consul General's private residence, The Penthouse of The Grace Hotel in Sydney.

The event was to celebrate Learnosity's success in the Australian market, and to launch the preliminary findings of the project we recently completed with The Le@rning Federation. Stuart Tait, General Manager of The Le@rning Federation, presented the preliminary findings of the project.

We were also lucky enough to have one of the teachers involved in the project, Tim Rodgers from Victor Harbour South Australia, along with Gayl O'Connor from The Le@rning Federation fly to Sydney for the event to share their experiences.

More about The Le@rning Federation project:

The Le@rning Federation's (TLF) Mobile Applications for Language Learning (MALL) project embraced the ubiquity of mobile phone usage by students, and piloted the delivery of Indonesian language learning by means of Learnosity's voice technology. This trial has been undertaken by The Le@rning Federation and teachers and students from thirteen schools in three states: South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria.

The event was a huge success, and was very well attended by senior educationalist across New South Wales, including representatives from the following organisations:

• NSW Board of Studies
• The Le@rning Federation
• Catholic Education Office
• Association of Independent Schools
• NSW Department of Education and Training
• Pearson Education Australia
• Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (AFMLTA)
• Open High School
• Modern Langauges Teacher's Association of New South Wales
• Asia Education Teacher's Association (AETA)
• Japanese Teachers Association of NSW
• NSW Association of French Teachers (NAFT)

We'd like to thank everyone for taking the time out to participate in the event. The preliminary results of The Le@rning Federation MALL project were enthusiastically received by all attending.

We'd also like to take this opportunity to thank The Consul General Mr. Scullion, along with Eimear and Maria in Enterprise Ireland for their help in hosting the event.

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.

Recently I blogged about Learnosity's project with The Le@rning Federation. I have just been sent an article from South Australian newspaper AdelaideNow about the project. It is included below.