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Google Alert Week in Review #6

An interesting article that came through via my google alerts this week was a rundown of the 2107 FBStarts Apps of they Year. If you are unfamiliar, FBStart is Facebook's program for assisting promising new app developers in getting their ideas off the ground.  A number of the apps featured in the article tied right into the mobile learning theme of this week's unit.  The FBstart Global App of the Year is called, "SoloLearn," and is designed to help beginners learn how to code. I've already earmarked it as a potential gem for my district's coding initiative. The app is "gamified," in that its learning experiences are couched in a gaming environment. 


Even more in-tune with our current focus though was the Europe, Middle East and Africa app of the Year winner: Mondly.  Mondly is a language-learning app (or rather, a whole suite of apps) that bills itself as, "the first company to launch a virtual reality experience for learning languages featuring speech recognition and chat bot technology."  There is a Mondly app for a huge number of different languages, including American English, and the developers explain the keys to its success are the high-quality professional voices, sate-of-the-art speech recognition and focus on useful and productive language for "real situations."  I downloaded the Spanish version to explore a little bit and after 20 minutes or so of thoroughly enjoying myself, I finally came back to finish up this post!  If you are at all interested in employing mobile tech in your ESL classroom, I strongly urge you to explore Mondly if you haven’t yet.  It is WELL worth your time.  Full disclosure, there are some in-app purchases here, but they are not necessary to get started!

Comments

  1. Megan deGruchyJuly 15, 2017 at 12:17 PM

    SoloLearn is a great way to spark interest in coding and have students learn some basics of coding! I have never heard of Mondly before but I will have to download it and check it out! I am surprised with the number of students in my district that don't know much English and just continually get passed through the system. This app could potentially really help them out - thanks for sharing!

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  2. AmyJuly 15, 2017 at 9:34 PM

    I'm definitely going to check out Mondly. I have used Duolingo and recommend it to my students, but Mondly seems even better with the voice recognition and the chat-bot. My Newcomer students really enjoy having ways to practice English on their own outside of the classroom. Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm!

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  3. UnknownJuly 17, 2017 at 5:44 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. UnknownJuly 17, 2017 at 5:45 PM

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  5. UnknownJuly 17, 2017 at 5:45 PM

    Wow, really like the concept behind Mondly and the real world situational application to this language app. It goes well beyond memorizing or using it as a dictionary. There are so many emerging language tools being developed I feel it will get to a point where we will have real time personal translators in our pockets.

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