from Trip Kirkpatrick <[log in to unmask]>

Subject: Re: #9746 iPads and ESL
Date: December 14, 2011 10:16:58 AM EST

Rob:

I worked with our Dutch instructor here on a classroom activity based on the students learning directional vocabulary using iPads and Skype. The short version is that students were paired and each pair placed objects around the building. The pairs were then paired and, over Skype, one pair would direct another pair to the objects the directing pair had placed. Just a concrete example of the activity type you mention.

Other things I've considered as potential learning amplifications on the iPad:

*     There's an app called Film Study (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/film-study/id366105022?mt=8; read a review at http://miriamposner.com/blog/?p=731, though not in a language context) that enables close annotation of video. Despite the name, it doesn't have to work with Film. The app also allows use of copyright-free works, including many US animated works from the 20s. (The ones with Betty Boop and contemporary jazz are outstanding!)

*     More broadly, I think the iPad could be very useful for some sort of place-based learning. For a workshop here last spring, I did a presentation on this and archived my links at http://archive.cls.yale.edu/trip/cls/events/2011_iiw_pbl.html. I cannot guarantee that the link targets are all still alive, and I'll note in particular with sadness that Gowalla has been acquired by Facebook and will be dismantled post-haste.

Yet more broadly, I think one of the biggest (and currently most-ignored) benefits of mobile devices for language learning is to get students Out There. In particular with ESL, there's a tremendous opportunity to craft work that puts students in the driver's seat of their learning by getting them out of the classroom, talking to people, engaging in real interactions.

One thing just off the top of my head and on the spur of the moment: Have students conduct the same interactional activity in multiple different locations as a way of seeing the multiplicity of ways it can go down. A pair could go out with one student tasked with engaging in the interaction and the other with taking notes (including audio and/or video recording), with a changeover after a particular threshold of occurrences was reached. Much of this work is on native iPad applications, with notetaking enabled by something free like Evernote. Just one possibility, and not highly realized at that, but something to consider.

Best,
Trip

--
Trip Kirkpatrick
Academic Technology Specialist
Center for Language Study



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