ESL Video reviews and Getting Started Guide

Over the last few weeks I've posted up a few video reviews of ESL apps on my Google+ page. First up is an excellent flashcard app for Android called Flashcard Buddy Pro:

There is a full demo version available if you want to try it out for a limited time. I also reviewed Karaoke4English (both iOS/Android), an interesting app that combine reading/audio versions of text and vocabulary revision.

I also reviewed Practice English Grammar 1 for Android.

I also made some suggestions for getting started with mobile learning at the beginning of term:

Suggestions for getting started with Mobile Learning

• If your school/college/university has wireless, find out how to connect smartphones to it and go through it or print it out for students. This ensures that they are able to connect to the internet during the lesson. 

• recommend useful apps to students to install on their smartphones that will help them learn English. You can get suggestions from this facebook page . I have also created a Google presentation with some suggestions for ESL apps. There are also several blogs where you can find out about education apps: Apps in Education, Mobile Tech Learning, Education Apps Review  or Android 4 Schools . These sites are not specifically about ESL, but many of the apps are relevant for ESL students. 

• (suggested by Rob Lewis) To get students familiar using their phones in class, get them to note down homework/test dates etc on the calendar on their phones.

• devote a section of a lesson to students looking at their own/each other’s mobile phones, exploring what functions they have (e.g. internet, radio, voice recorder) and discussing how they could be used to improve their English. 

• encourage them to use dictionaries on their smartphones to quickly look up words. Here is a blog post I wrote about free dictionary apps for android (though many of them are also available for iphone) 

• set up a Posterous blog for them to contribute to as a class. Add their email addresses so they can contribute and then they can send pictures/text directly from their mobile phone. Get them to tell you about their weekends for discussion on Monday morning.

I hope you enjoy these summary updates. Please circle my Google+ page if you want these as they are published.

Apps for video review

I haven't blogged for a while because we're between terms at the moment and haven't had a chance to try anything new out with my class. However, the summer school begins in a couple of weeks time and so I plan to get back into experimenting with different aspects of mobile learning when that starts.

One thing I plan to do in the near future is providing video reviews of useful apps for ESL students on a variety of mobile platforms. I'm rather limited by the devices I actually own, so I will probably be able to do them for iphone/ipod touch, Android and maybe Symbian (I have an old Nokia that I could try some out on). I will be doing these mainly for my own students, so they will be presented in a way that is accessible and understandable for them.

I wanted to start this a few weeks ago, but I'm waiting for a piece of hardware that will enable me to take video screencasts of a mobile phone's screen. I've discovered that it's incredibly difficult to do this on most mobile phones - especially iphone and Android - and it can't be done using software on the phone itself. Instead, I'm going to use a special USB camera that can take close-up video of the screen and then record it to the computer.

Anyhow, I've got a few ideas for apps I'd like to review (the British Council's My Wordbook and a few others spring to mind), but if anyone would like to suggest any they think it would be useful for me to look at, I'd be happy to review them.