HelloTalk - A language learning community on your mobile

I've always liked the idea of language exchanges and peer learning as the learning tends to be driven by and through an authentic desire to communicate.

HelloTalk is a wonderful example of this, but with lots of nice features to make the process mobile and more efficient. Most of these features are accessed by pressing down on your partner's text to get the pop up tool bar.

HelloTalk is a free app that you can download for either iOS or Android. Then once you have registered and created a profile you can find language partners to exchange languages with.

Finding a partner
Once you have registered on the app and created your profile showing which languages you speak and which you want to learn you can start looking for exchange partners. Clicking on 'Search' at the bottom of the screen will show you a list of the people on the site. You can browse this and see how recently they have been online and check out their profile or you can type in a specific name or email address to search for someone you know. You can also customise your search to specific age, level, nationality and you can even search for people from a specific city.

Once you have found someone you can send them a message or add them as a partner and they will get a partner request.

Features
Once you start chatting with someone, things start to get interesting. You can text chat or send voice messages by clicking on the microphone icon to record.

You can also send images or doodles using a drawing pad. These features open up the app to a deeper level of engagement as you can share more interesting content to talk about.

You can play games like pictionary or use the doodle pad like a whiteboard to draw images and explain vocabulary. The images are then sent to your partner through their chat interface.

If you don't understand what your chat partner is saying you can also press down on their text and get a translation.

If your partner makes a mistake in their text you can correct them. Just press down on their message text then write in the corrected version of their text beneath the mistake and your partner will be able to see their version and the corrected version. You can even add an explanation comment. All of the corrections are automatically saved into a separate area of the app and you can go back and revise and check them.

If you don't know how to express what you want to say in the language you are learning, you can also type in your mother tongue and get it translated before you post it.

If you join a chat exchange group with your partner, you can decide whether you want to chat by text or by voice and for how long or how many words. The time spans are all quite short so this is ideal for doing some short bursts of learning when you have a just a few moments to spare or some time to kill on the train, etc.

Finally, HelloTalk has a Notepad where you can send messages to yourself or copy and paste parts of your chats that you want to remember.

Security
One of the first concerns with any service that connects our students to people they don't know, is their privacy and security. HelloTalk seem to be taking this very seriously and make it very clear that any one using the app for flirting or sexting purposes will be blocked and banned.

There are a range of built in security settings. These include tools to block anyone making you feel uncomfortable as well as initial security and privacy settings that allow you to limit your visibility within the community and control who can approach you for language exchange.

Conclusion

• I've been using HelloTalk for a few days now, mainly with my wife, who is teaching me Spanish, and I really like it. I feel like the learning tools and the record of our conversation and the corrections help to make my learning more tangible and enable me to reflect on our interaction and to go back and check things and revise.
• I really like that I can 'try to' express things and then get some immediate feedback on my errors. This happens when we talk face-to-face, but I don't have the written record of our interaction.
• It's great that HelloTalk are taking privacy seriously too and that it's very easy to block people or restrict who can see you.
• Because there are quite a few features, there is a learning curve to the app and it takes a little while to understand how to use everything, so it may be best to start off by practising with a friend just sitting next to them so that you can see what's happening on each device.
• The app is perhaps also best suited to younger people, though under 18s are discouraged, who are more comfortable with the concept of chatting to people they don't know online, but if you are feeling brave, then I certainly think that with regular use this could lead to improvements in your language level.
• If you recommend it to students, then it would also be good to set them some tasks to do or topics to discuss, as often the most difficult thing when talking to someone you don't know is just thinking of something to talk about.
• HelloTalk would also be a great app to use with your class to do language exchanges with a class in another country. You could partner your students up, set them tasks and know that they will be safe and have some tools available to support their language exchange experience.

I'm really enjoying using HelloTalk now. I hope you find it useful too.

Related links

• Video communication apps and mobile learning
• Evaluating authentic mobile apps for learning
• Mix Images and Animation on Your Mobile 
• Peer editing in digital and mobile environments 
• iPhone for Speaking Homework 
• iPad Apps for English Language Teachers
• Create Books for the iPad
• Getting Learning out of the Classroom with Augmented Reality 
• How I use social media for my professional development
  

Best

Nik Peachey

A Great app for developing spelling

I've been a fan of SpellingCity.com for quite some time now and I was fascinated when I heard they had produced a free app. For those of you who don't know about SpellingCity, the website enables learners or teachers  to enter a word list and then automatically generate a range of interactive multimedia activities based around the words. The site automatically adds audio recordings of the words and example sentences to the activities it generates. There is a great range of activities that students can do within the site and they can generate certificates for their teacher or parent to prove they have done their homework.

The app is in many ways very similar to the site. There are some ready made word lists and you just click on one and then click on the type of game or activity you want to play. The app has six different activity types:



Spelling TestMe - In the activity students have to spell out the words from the word list. To do this they hear the word in isolation and then again in the context of a sentence. They then type the word into a field. At the end of the activity they find out how many of the words they spelled correctly.



If they got any of the words wrong they can go to the 'Teach ME' activity which spells the word for them using audio and text and gives them an example sentence containing the word.

The MatchIt activity tests the students understanding of the words by getting them to put the words into gapped sentences. Again the students don't get feedback until they have finished the activity, so this reduces the tendency to randomly try to guess.



Which Word is a multiple choice type activity and students have to choose the correct word to complete the gap in a missing sentence.




The Sentence Unscramble activity tests students understanding of syntax, by getting them to arrange the words from the sample sentences into the correct order. The students can get an audio hint on this activity if they are stuck.




My favourite of the activities though, and the one that is most popular with my students is the Hang Mouse activity. This is SpellingCity's own variation on the hangman game. Students try to guess the letters that spell out words and each time they guess, the mouse runs to tab some cheese. Each time they guess incorrectly, the cat starts to wake up, and if they get too many wrong letters the mouse gets trapped.



As you can probably tell, the app is aimed very much at the younger end of the learner market though the word lists do go up to grades 10 - 12.

To get the best from the app you really have to have a SpellingCity account as this enables you to import your own word lists and to manage and track your learners' scores. That said, you can create a basic account for free.

On the whole the Vocabulary SpellingCity isn't going to cause an educational revolution, but it is a good simple app which does what it sets out to do in a user friendly, engaging and intuitive way, so if your students' spelling and vocabulary needs some work then why not get them using it.

You can download the app from the iTunes store at: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id538407602
Sadly there's no Android version available at the moment.

If you have used the SpellingCity app or something similar I would love to hear your comments and suggestions.


This post was sponsored by RM Education Shop a great place to buy all your educational technology hardware.


Related links:

• iPhone for Speaking Homework 
• iPad Apps for English Language Teachers
• Create Books for the iPad
• Getting Learning out of the Classroom with Augmented Reality  
•  Augmented Reality and Web 3.0
• Creating texting dialogues for students

Best
Nik Peachey

Create an eBook from Online Articles

ReadLists is a great tool for creating eBooks from any content you find online and you don't even need to register!

Just go to: http://readlists.com/new/ and paste in the URLs of any articles or webpages you want to include in your eBook then click on 'Add'.

Once you have finished adding article to your book, give it a title and a description.

 Then all you have to do is send it to the device of your choice.

You can also share the eBook on Twitter or Facebook or get a URL or Embed code for it.

Here's the URL for the Top 10 Most Popular Blog Postings from my Learning Technology Blog. You should be able to open this on iPad or iPhone or on any other reader: http://readlists.com/b7254a42



This is a great way to create eBooks from your own online content or from any content you find online.

• You can create and share reading lists for courses.
• Create your own eBooks of yours or your students' stories.
• Create your own collection of your favourite articles.
• Collect a reading list of articles to read when you don't have an Internet connection.
• Webpages that you capture in this way can be much easier to read and of course you have all the eBook's mark up and note taking functions which will store all your annotations on the eBooks you create.

There are a few things to watch out for though.

• Remember copyright. If you are creating eBooks from content that belongs to someone else, get their permission, especially if you start distributing it.
• It's a shame that video and other embedded elements from the webpage aren't included in the eBook version.

I hope you find ReadLists useful.

Related links:

• eBooks for Kids that Read Themselves 
• Create Books for the IPad
• Free ebooks on elearning
• Free Web Publishing Community
• Fantastic Free E-Books for EFL and ELT

Best

Nik Peachey

iPhone for Speaking Homework

Getting students to do speaking homework has always been quite a challenge, but for those students with smartphones we can now get them using free apps to practice and develop their speaking abilities. This speaking tasks requires the download of a free app called the VTR2 Video Recording Teleprompter from http://vrt2.com/.

The app acts as a teleprompter which scrolls a text across the screen of your devices and records you speaking as you read the text.

The app can be used on iPhone or an iPad with a camera. It's very simple to use. When you launch the app you see 3 buttons at the bottom of the interface. These are:
1. The video gallery icon which links to a collection of all the movies you make with it.
2. The 'Record' button, which starts the text scrolling and records you speaking.
3. The settings icon which enables you to control the speed and size of the text scrolling and change the text.

To get started, find a text that you want your students to read. I chose a poem as this is more suitable for reading out loud.

Go to the settings and scroll down to text. There you can replace the existing text with the one you or your students want to read.

Then then tap on 'Done'.

 Now go back to the launch screen and click on 'Record'. Read the text as it scrolls down the screen and then when it is finished click the 'Record' button again to stop it.

You can then click on discard to try again or 'Save' if you want to view your recording.

You need to give the recording a name and to save it.

You can then go to the gallery and watch and listen. From the gallery the videos can either be deleted or shared.

Tapping on the 'Share' button enables users to either send the recording as an email attachment or upload it to YouTube.

The video recordings export to email as .mov and are quite big files, so emailing them can be slow.

 

So, if you have a YouTube account for your class and they are confident enough, it might be good to get students uploading and sharing them there or on a blog.

How to use VTR2 with students

• You can get them recording short poems or monologues from films. This is particularly effective if they have a model that they can compare their recording to so that they can try to improve.
• You could get the students to record jokes to share so that they practice good timing and delivery.
• You can get them to record speeches or quotes from famous people.
• Try to get students listening to each other and praising the ones they like best.
• Give students feedback on ow and where they can make improvements and get them to record again.
• You can also get students to think about how they look when they are speaking, so that they think about some of the visual aspects of communication like eye contact, facial expression etc.
• Try to keep an archive of your students recorded work so that both you and they can go back and look at earlier work to see improvements.

Most feedback on speaking activities is given by the teacher after the activity and it can be hard for students to remember or be aware of what they did wrong or right at the time, but using a tool like this students can really see and hear what's happening when they are speaking and you can really give them tangible feedback on their performance.

I hope you enjoy this  http://vrt2.com/ and that your students find it a really useful way of improving their speaking skills.

Related links:

• Getting Learning out of the Classroom with Augmented Reality 
• Augmented Reality and Web 3.0
• Creating texting dialogues for students 
• Audioboo to Posterous 
• 3 Tools for exploring wifi during presentations 
• Questioning the role of technology in education 
• iPad apps for English language teachers
• Some Pros and Cons of iPads for ELT 

Best

Nik Peachey

Creating Texting Dialogues for Students

As mobile phone use becomes ubiquitous around the world and texting becomes a new genre of communication, it seems increasingly important that we as language teachers engage with these devices and help students to deal with the impact they are having on the English language.

Some time ago I wrote about a texting language translater called Transl8it which enabled users to trans late short texts from standard English to something approaching sms texting language.  Since then I've used the site quite a lot to:

• Translate text for using in chat rooms such as TodaysMeet
• Translate poems and short dialogues into texting language for students to read
• Translate news headlines.
• I've also tried getting students to record example sentences of vocabulary into texting language, just to add an extra element to creating vocabulary records.

Recently, I have also found a handy tool called ifaketext and this enables you to create a picture of a smartphone screen with your dialogue on. Here's an example:

This is a great way to create materials to use with students, especially if we combine it with the Transl8it. Then I can make dialogues that look like this:

All we need to do to create the dialogues is go to: ifaketext.com and type in a dialogue. Be sure to put a name at the top and format the dialogue with the name of each speaker followed by a colon (:) then the dialogue. Then just click on 'Create Your Screenshot'.

Once the screen shot is created you get a number of options for adding it to materials. You can either get a code to embed it or a direct link to the image and you can save it from there and add it to you documents.

Here are a few ways you could use this with students:

• Convert dialogues from their coursebook into texting language.
• Create mysterious interactions and get them to predict the context.
• Create dialogues and get students to guess the relationship between the people.
• Create the beginnings of dialogues and get the students to continue them.
• Create dialogues with missing lines / words and get the students to complete them.
• Create dialogues with the responses in the wrong order and get students to arrange them correctly.

This is one small way that we can start to adapt materials and incorporate this kind of language into a our classroom. I hope you and your students enjoy using ifaketext and transl8it and you create some interesting and motivating materials for them.

Related links:

• 3 Tools for Exploiting the Wifi During Presentations 
• Questioning the Role of Technology in Education
• iPad Apps for English Language Teachers
• AudioBoo to Posterous: Audio Podcasting from the Classroom
• Survey Results: Mobile learning for ELT

Best

Nik Peachey

How to Make Your Own Pronunciation Flashcards

The Flashcard Maker from CEO has been around a while, but it is one of those really good free tools that keeps getting better. It enable you to create and print your own flashcards which include text, phonemic script and images that you can type in and add. You can then use these for a range of activities in the classroom.

To create flashcards, the first thing you do is go to: http://www.cambridgeenglishonline.com/Flashcard_maker/ and choose the size of the flashcards you want to create. you can choose from either one A4 size card to 8 cards per A4 sheet.
Next, you can either draw your own image or select one from the image library.
To add an image you just click on the name of the image you want from the image library and click 'Apply' and it appears on the flashcard.

Next you can add your text and lastly, use the small phonemic typewriter to add the symbols.

Then all you have to do is click on print and you have your flashcard with phonemic script.

This is a great tool to use with EFL and ESL students.

• You can create simple flashcards with images and phonemic script of the nouns.
• You can get the students to create the flash cards themselves, as the phonemic typewriter also has sound so they can hear the phonemes as they type them.
• You can create some cards with just images, some with just word and some with just script and create a great matching activity.
• You can create flashcards with pronunciation mistakes and see if the students can spot them. You can create flashcards with one image and two different phonemic spellings and see if students can say the correct one.

If you really like this and think it's useful, there is even a version for iPad / iPhone which has lots of activities built in along with the ability for students to record and compare their own audio of their pronunciation. The app version isn't free though I'm afraid, but it is quite cheap at £1.79 in the UK. You can some screen shots here.

Hope you enjoy this and make some useful flashcards.

Here you can find more online pronunciation activities for EFL students

Related links:

• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Pronunciation goes 2.0
• AudioBoo to Posterous: Audio Podcasting from the Classroom
• iPad Apps for English Language Teachers
• Make Quick Pronunciation Activities
• Adding Phonetic Symbols to a Webpage
• Dictation goes Web 2.0

Best

Nik Peachey

AudioBoo to Posterous: Audio Podcasting from the Classroom

For a while now I've been using Posterous in class and in training sessions to help show teachers and students just how easy it can be to create a blog.
(Basically, all they have to do is send an email to post@posterous.com with the title of the posting in the subject line and the text they want in the email along with and media as attachments and within minutes they'll get a link back to their published posting.)

No, though with the combination of Posterous and AudioBoo, the process of publishing audio directly to the web within minutes has just got easier too.
AudioBoo is a great free platform for publishing audio online. You can either go to their website and start recording straight away, or you can download a free app either to your Apple device or Android smart phone.
The site really does enable almost single click publishing once you have registered and set up your profile, but better than this it can be synced with a Twitter account, Facebook profile or blogging account so that any materials you record go directly to your network.

Publish directly from the classroom
I've found this really useful, particularly as I have the app installed on my iPad. This means that I can wander round class recording my students and then click a button and have their recordings published directly to my blog with seconds.
Then I can go to the blog later and build review tasks around the materials or students can go to the blog pages and comment on each others' recordings.

• Here you can see and hear what the result is when you publish direct to Posterous: My first AudioBoo to Posterous recording from iPad

With students
Having this ability to instantly record and publish students' speaking can be very powerful, particularly when using a task based approach, as students are often reluctant to review and repeat speaking tasks that they have already done once. However, knowing that their speaking will be recorded and published gives them the extra motivation to repeat tasks, focus on what they have learned and concentrate on achieving a level of accuracy.

Setting all this up is very simple. Once you have your Posterous blog account, register on the AudioBoo website, create your profile then go to settings and click on 'Post to other sites'. There you can decide which services you want to synchronise your AudioBoo account with. Then you just start recording and publishing.

AudioBoo and Posterous together can help you to build a powerful and versatile publishing platform for your students work and they are both free, so why not give them a try.

I hope you find them useful. Here you can find speaking activities to use EFL / ESL with students.

Related links:

• Skype Part 1 Recording Audio
• My Talking Faces
• Dictation goes Web 2.0
• Soundscapes from Soundtransit

Best

Nik Peachey