To eLearn, or not to eLearn?
According to Blended Learning consultant Richard Osborne, language trainers need to take a hard, objective look at their reasoning for considering eLearning as a meaningful tool for their training.
elearning
Review: Voxy
Most of you will already be familiar with Voxy, indeed it’s not the first time that they’ve been mentioned here on ELTjam. But as we have developed a new system for reviewing EdTech products, we thought it would be nice to run their language learning tool through and see what came out. Voxy launched in 2010 … Read more
Introducing Voxy: Learning from the real world
Meet the company that is making some serious waves in EdTech …
Six Cool Tropes in ELT EdTech
Note: it has been more than three years that I stopped blogging at my site Six Things. But I was sitting in a conference the other day and I promised to myself: if I hear that trope or see that image one more time I’m gonna have to blog about it. Well, guess what? It … Read more
Infographic: What is EdTech?
Here’s a snappy infographic based on ELTjam’s talk on what EdTech means for ELT at the IATEFL 2014
The Future of ELT
It was interesting to be at IATEFL this year, the annual land grab for attention larger than ever, and a conference dominated by discussions, presentations and a plenary about the future of ELT, which – it is suggested – will be completely mediated by technologies (more of this fallacy later). With Sugata Mitra selling his … Read more
E-Learning: What’s In A Letter?
The ease and speed of accessing the material shouldn’t be misinterpreted as reflecting the ease and speed of actually learning what there is to learn.
The EdTech Boogie
It is educational publishers, in partnership with the educators and the learners who are their customers, who are best placed to show the world how this great deluge of information can best be mediated because that is their business and always has been.
New Skins for Potato Pals: From Page to iPad
The eltjam team is always eager to hear from authors or content creators who have experienced the movement from print to digital platforms and the implication that this transition has for their work. One such story is that of Patrick Jackson, an established author for OUP. He shares his experience with us today.
Game-Based Learning 2.1: How & When
In last week’s opening post in his series about game-based learning, David Dodgson looked at some of the myths that surround both GBL and gaming in general. This week, he discusses some of the benefits and pitfalls of introducing gaming to the language learning classroom and also examines when and how a teacher might take such an approach.
Startup Stories: Vocabla’s CEO, Michal Dyrda
Following on from our post on LangApp’s Vocabla platform earlier this month, we thought we’d get a few words from the company’s CEO to learn more about how the company operates. Michal Dyrda is the CEO and founder of Vocabla. He is an entrepreneur with eight years experience in online business and management and focuses primarily … Read more
busuu.com: The State of Language Learning Pt. 2/2
In our previous post on busuu.com we took a preliminary walk through the platform in order to get better acquainted with the learner experience and how the platform presents learning opportunities to its members. In this post we want to to think about how busuu manages to leverage such effective appeal. How do you get to … Read more
busuu.com: The State of Language Learning Pt. 1/2
busuu.com is inconceivably big. It is in fact the largest social network for language learning in the world with over 30,000,000 users from 200 countries. That’s more than the population of Uzbekistan. It’s more than the populations of the Czech Republic, Sweden and Austria combined. It’s more than 800 times the size of Liechtenstein, the homeland … Read more
The Open Education Alliance: A Brave New World
During TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference in San Francisco on Monday Udacity‘s CEO, Sebastian Thrun, announced the launch of the Open Education Alliance (OEA). The alliance represents the efforts of Google, AT&T and a range of educational organizations (Khan Academy, cloudera, etc.) who are combining forces with a view of developing and providing learning tools to help … Read more
Vocabla: The Words On The Street
The folks over at Polish startup LangApp have come up with something rather special; a heady mix of vocabulary tutor, social network and shareable media library. It’s a potent brew. Vocabla is a powerful demonstration of how addictive language learning can be whilst also being both effective and entirely free. Its premise is a simple … Read more
More news for Knewton
More interesting news from adaptive learning technology provider Knewton today, as they announced their latest publisher partnership, this time with Cambridge University Press, and the opening of a new office in London. The partnership will see the Knewton API integrated with the Cambridge LMS platform, which currently serves over 250,000 students and teachers globally. The move … Read more
When Opportunity Knocks: The TurksLearnEnglish.com Story Pt. 2/2
We understood that our role was to provide good teaching and uplift motivation, within the bounds of a Turk’s experience, understanding and expectation.
When Opportunity Knocks: The TurksLearnEnglish.com Story Pt.1/2
Our idea was simple: the goal of almost any adult student over the age of 25 was to be able to speak English effectively. We decided to build a product to address that need and that need alone.
Rosetta Stone Buys Up Lexia Learning
It’s appears truer then ever that a rolling stone gathers no moss as Rosetta Stone follows its recent acquisition of Livemocha by taking on the services and systems of Lexia Learning. The $22.5 million deal represents Rosetta Stone’s leading edge strategy of moving towards being an education solutions provider in U.S. schools as opposed to exclusively … Read more
The Grading Game: birth of the “first person tutor”
The Grading Game is an addictive action word game centered around the pursuit and eradication of grammar and spelling errors. The game’s levels take the form of students’ papers, with a fresh set of errors generated for each play. Meanwhile, the papers themselves cover the most interesting and unusual topics, from the history of ramen to … Read more
