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.

Regular posting on Google Plus

I've decided to temporarily shift over to Google Plus to continue my blog posts on mobile learning. I've got plenty I want to write and say about the topic, but I would prefer to write shorter posts and more regularly as this would fit in with my working life.

When it comes to blogging, I prefer to write more in-depth posts but this is not always possible given my work commitments. So, I have created a brand page on Google Plus for this blog which you can find here. I've already added a couple of short posts there (reviews of ESL idiom apps) and I'll try to update it on a much more regular basis than I've been able to do here.

I chose Google Plus because it does allow longer posts than Twitter and I'd also like to take advantage of things like the Hangouts feature later on to hold informal webinars/discussions on the topic of mobile learning.

I do have my own Google Plus page, but that's for many other links/thoughts not connected to mobile learning so I wanted to create a dedicated page where I could just focus on that topic. This is very much an experiment, but I'm fascinated to see how well it works.

I haven't completely abandoned this blog. When I have something more substantial to say and I have the time to sit down and write it, I'll post it here. And I'll also try to compile a summary of my Google Plus posts here every few weeks.

So please, come on over to this page, put me in a circle and I'll give regular updates on the use of mobile learning in ESL.