speech recognition

Apple’s electric car and the death of language teaching as we know it

When I was four, going on five, a TV show called Knight Rider premiered in the UK. I loved it and remained a fan for most of my childhood (OK, I admit it; I’m still a fan). There was The Hoff, of course  –  all leather jackets, open shirt buttons and swagger  –  but the real star of the show was K.I.T.T  – Knight Industries Two Thousand  –  the ‘advanced, artificially intelligent, self-aware and nearly indestructible car’. Over thirty years later Apple and Google are in a head-to-head race to bring K.I.T.T’s spiritual successor  –  the driverless car  –  to market. And, as a little-known and hard-to-spot side effect, the ramifications for the teaching of languages, especially English, could be huge.

Slated translating keyboard app: reviewed

This app is both my dream and my nightmare. I love learning languages, and anything that enables me to understand and communicate in more of them is a fantastic tool. On the other hand, if tools like this get too good, my life’s work (as a creator of English language courses and resources) – and my future income – will be wiped out with a few swipes of a touchscreen.

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

Ahead in the Clouds: Cloud-Based Publishing and ELT

The typical creation, development, production and publication of an ELT title is an often gruelling process. The sheer amount of meetings, emails, phone calls, emails, meetings and Word docs is overwhelming to the point of maddening. But … that’s the way books are born, right? The key project team (publishers, editorial, production) correspond with each … Read more