Michelle Gallen

Slovoed - mobile language learning

Language learning in real-life situations is both important and effective.

But when I'm on holidays, I'm not into carrying bulky phrase books or dictionaries around all day. And I hate not having audio files for pronunciation. The solution? An audio and text dictionary on my mobile.

slovoed.com are a Russian software team who provide great mobile dictionaries in over 130 languages. I've been using Slovoed's French-English dictionary to:

1 pick a word and listen to an audio file for pronunciation guidance
2 read example phrases of the word being used in different contexts
3 create flash cards
4 review flash cards with a quiz
5 personalise the dictionary with your own vocab
6 explore hot links in every entry, so you can easily jump from word to word

That's just a list of the features I find useful - you can see a full list of OS-specific features here.

With slovoed mobile dictionaries, you can get a dictionary on your mobile from just $15 (price for the Simbian OS English-French dictionary - different language partners have different prices - the Spanish-Catalan dictionary is about $60).

I've been using various ipod packages for language learning, but haven't found anything that works. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has found an effective way of learning a language on the go?

PS...My favourite French phrase on my slovoed dictionary is under Drink/Boire:

"Elle l'a fait boire pour qu'il avoue."

Translation

"She got him drunk so that he'd confess."

A useful phrase for a very specific situation...

Interactive Incentives - Rewarding Work and Learning

Recently I got to chat to Tom Harte of imcreative.co.uk. Tom is an Interactive Incentive and Performance Management solutions provider.

A what?

Tom designs interactive games that enable employers to drive productivity in a creative and competitive way. These games enable workers to compete against each other at work.

Tom demo'd some of his solutions for me. By rewarding productivity with real-life rewards - anything from extra holidays to cash bonuses - his games increase motivation levels. Workers can view their performance on their PC, or on a big screen on the operational floor. They can even compete individually or as a team against co-workers across the globe. And it turns out that harnessing the basic human urge to win is very good news for productivity and profits.

From the instant Tom showed me his solutions, I knew they work. Because one summer I worked in a shirt factory. We did a 10 hour day with one half hour break for dinner. I was at the end of the factory line - ironing shirts before they were packaged for delivery. I had to iron a minimum of 80 shirts an hour to earn my basic wage.

Everyone had their minimum number of pockets to sew, sleeves to cut out, or collars to fit. And all we did all day long was mentally compute whether or not we'd done enough work to make a bonus. And if we had made our bonus, how much it was. And whether we'd earned more than the person sitting nearest you.

If only Tom's games had been around then! Providing workers with incentives makes them perform better. And providing learners with incentives makes them learn better.

It's long been known that a Hogwart's style 'house' system helps children in schools achieve more. In a house system, pupils belong to one of a number of houses, and these houses compete over the year to win points.

But we only have Performance League tables, pored over retrospectively by anxious parents and governors. These tables report on how pupils have performed - they don't actually help the pupils perform.

So is it about time that our Government perhaps invests in an Interactive Incentive solution for our schools? Perhaps a nationwide performance board that reflects who's doing what well, when and where?

Imagine a system where the houses in each school compete internally for points, then the highest performing house goes on to compete locally, then nationally. Couldn't this really motivate all types of learning performance - from sport and academia through to social action?

Incentives like education-related trips or scholarships could be awarded. Top houses could be profiled. And instead of an empty facebook-style chattering space, we could have an educational space that rewards, connects and motivates learners.

An tÚll Mhór - Learning Irish in New York

I'm in New York from tomorrow for 8 days. I'm there to talk to Irish language learners and teachers about what they use to learn Irish outside of Ireland. I've been working really hard to get the podcasts, flashcards and quizzes ready for launch on www.talkirish.com - I haven't got an official launch date just yet, but I'll email everyone who's already signed up and post here as soon as I do!

Seems like Irish is a hot topic now, and Des Bishop, the Irish-American comedian, has a great show called 'In the name of the Fada' which tackles the national problem with the national language. Catch up with the show online at RTE.

Des's website, www.desbishop.com, has a link to some interactive Irish learning materials. The materials certainly look good, but I haven't had a chance to test the content out yet, and I'm not sure at what level it's aimed at. If anyone else has tried it out, let me know!

Lingro.com - open source language learning

lingro.com is a cool new language-learning website I've been using this week.

lingro is different from other language-learning sites I've seen. First of all, it's free. Working with an open-source philosophy, lingro has created dictionaries for learners of English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Polish.

The dictionaries are open-source - if you don't find a word, you can add it. Or if you're using a derivative of a root word, you can link to the root word (not sure if what I link to affects what other people see, or if it's just my dictionary).

But lingro isn't just a collection of open-source dictionaries. The lingro team have cleverly linked together a series of tools. First you can look up a word in the dictionary. You'll get a definition(s), perhaps a phrase, and in some cases audio.

You can then add this word to your wordlist. From your wordlist you can then review words, or go to the games section to learn them. At the moment, the only game is a basic flashcard game, but the team are working on putting more together.

Apart from the dictionaries, you can also use their web viewer. The web viewer doesn't translate an entire page from one language to the next - it enables you to click individual words for a translation. I know I've used something like this in Firefox before - it's a great little tool for someone who's trying to improve their understanding, but is lacking key words. You can add the words you look up to your wordlist - giving you a list of vocab you need to work on.

Lastly, lingro has a file viewer, which enables you to open a file (.txt, .doc, or .pdf) in your web browser. You can then click each individual word in that doc for a translation, and add words to your word list for further learning.

For a test, I tried opening my 60 page word doc of 'Le Petit Prince' with images. Lingro's file viewer was able to cope with this long, image-heavy doc and quickly opened the file ready for use. Pretty cool.

Essentially, a lot of what lingro offers is not new. Language dictionaries aren't. Word lists aren't. Page viewers and integrated translators aren't. Flashcards certainly aren't. But what lingro does is it joins the dots...everything is integrated. It streamlines the process. It's pretty simple to use. And it's free.

The lingro.com team is made up of Artur Janc, Paul Kastner and Holmes Wilson who are all lingotechnophiles (I just made that word up!). They seem to be a pretty cool bunch, who are all for making it easy for people to learn and be creative using opensource technologies.

But guys...here's a question from someone who's trying to create online language learning resources, who loves opensource, who loves web 2.0, who believes learning shoudl be free and open to everyone...how are you funding your work??? I'd love to be creating free language learning materials for Irish, but can't get a model that enables me to create quality materials and interesting learning engines while not starving...and certainly no model that interests the funders!

Information vs Knowledge, Bookmarking vs Memorising

This post started off as a reply to Christian's comment on my Burning the Libraries - Bombing the Data Centres post. But it wanted more space.

When I was growing up, I learned what I knew from these main sources:

- people teaching me things they knew (like how to tie your shoelaces, where to get the sweetest blackberries in Autumn
- a limited number of books (purchased in bookstores, or borrowed from libraries)
- TV (both educational and entertainment)
- newspapers
- school

I read a book a day as a child. I read anything I could get my hands on, mostly because the supply was so limited. And I learned what I could where I could.

But now the Internet gives us 24/7/365 access to almost any information in a bewildering array of formats. And Christian has asked said that the challenge is not now in getting information to people, but rather in making sure information is "being continuously accessed and kept alive in the minds of individuals...to create the conditions which sustain a dimension of human capital which results in the data being continually accessed and "embedded" in living humans."

I don't think that this is a new problem...we've had this problem for centuries. We've always had information...but have we always embedded it, shared it and used it?

And I feel this issue now compounded by new problems. Our digital information formats haven't been around long - we're still learning how best to use them. We have to figure out how to get people to read and understand our digital information. And once they've read it, how do we get them to remember it?

The way I work now, when I read any information, I make a decision about whether or not I need to store the fact. If it's something I know I can access on the Internet via mobile or my laptop, I often make a decision not to remember the information. If it's something I've read in a book, I often make digital notes so I can quickly access the information later on my trusty laptop, rather than trying to find the book. But this information is just data. It stays on my PC. I can come back and find it, but it doesn't feel like part of the knowledge I carry in my head.

However, some information is so amazing, so sticky, so exciting or so interesting it just embeds itself in my head. I don't get a choice. And this then becomes part of my knowledge.

I agree with Christian - Libraries or the Internet can contain infinite amounts of information. But it's how we use that information, the connections and deductions we make, that create knowledge. I guess data/information are like building blocks. But knowledge is what enables us draw up the architect's plans.