EuroCALL 2019 symposium

MALL tools Tried and Tested

Scheduled for Aug 28th, 2019 16:45-18:15

As in previous years, the EuroCALL MALL sig will be hosting a symposium at the 2019 annual conference held in Louvain-la-Neuve. The MALL symposium this year will consist of 8 speakers introducing 7 different MALL tools that our members from 5 different countries will be introducing at this year’s event. The idea of this symposium is to introduce practical tools for use in the EFL classroom and to help promote the MALL cause.

To view the accepted abstract for the symposium see bottom of page

Tools and Speakers

The following is a list of the tools that were introduced at the MALL sig symposium in Louvain-la-Neuve. Click on the name of each tool to take you to the website for that tool.

Tool

Showbie – Valenina Morgana (Universitat Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy)

Moxtra – Tim Knight (Shirayuri University, Tokyo, Japan)

Clips – Jaime Selwood (Hiroshima University, Japan)

MyMobileWorld – Bob Gettings (Hokusai Gakuen University, Sapporo, Japan)

Duolingo – Mari Yamauchi (Chiba University of Commerce, Chiba, Japan)

Actionbound -- Julie Van De Vyver & Carole Delforge (University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium)

SpeakingPhoto – Bruce Lander (Matsuyama University, Japan)

Accepted Abstract for the MALL sig symposium, 2019

Title: MALL Tools Tried and Tested

Wherever we look these days, our students seem to be immersed in technology. Computers, music players, smartphones or tablets, youngsters of today seem to always be multi-tasking with one or more of these. Whether we like this or not, this is something that will only escalate with time. There is no doubt that this trend is having a huge impact on education (Martin et al, 2011). The influence that technology is having on the younger generation of today cannot be underestimated. According to Dale (2014) “young people are the web generation and they are hungry for more”. Technology is shaping the way they learn and interact with the world.

If the complexity of such multi-tasking is something that is quite normal to our students, then why not cater to their needs and give them what they want in their language classes. We, in the Mobile Aided Language Learning SIG all agree that the ever-evolving mobile device that our students possess has amazing potential in their language learning endeavours. There are thousands of mobile apps and webtools to choose from these days, but which are good and which work well? This MALL sig symposium aims to answer this simple question by introducing a selection of 7 mobile apps, or webtools that have been tried, tested and approved by our expert instructors in 4 different countries. Each tool will be introduced, with key features highlighted before a brief demonstration of how each worked and succeeded in their teaching context.

The first of these tools is a voice recording application for mobile devices that allows users to add audio files to a photos called SpeakingPhoto. The second, Moxtra is a more advanced collaboration tool that lets teachers create a workspace with their class. This workspace enables students to “collaborate on digital whiteboards, upload and annotate pictures and documents, record their voices over shared content, and complete homework assignments in individual threads with their teachers” (moxtra.com).

Showbiewas used in an EFL writing class in Italy to compare teacher formative assessment in a digital format as opposed to regular pen and paper. ActionBoundwas used in a class outing to a local museum in Belgium by promoting users to communicate together in the target language while geocaching and answering questions set by the teacher about exhibits. Duolingowas used in Japan to garner enthusiasm and raise motivation in low level learners by increasing exposure to written and spoken English through awarding users badges and progress indicators. While another instructor used a supplementary tool produced by Pearson’scalled MyMobileWorld to help complement the four-skills communication course textbook Firsthand in a flipped class approach. Finally, ThingLink,a webtool and app that allows users to turn any image into an interactive graphic will also be introduced. Please come to this group symposium to find out more.

If you are interested in empirical research conducted with these apps, we invite you to attend paper presentations by a selection of our presenters at a later stage in the conference.