Innovation in Language Learning

Technological developments, the widespread general adoption of mobile device platforms (i.e. tablets, smart phones), coupled with increased pedagogical research on impact [Mobile Technology Learning Center, 2013] have led English schools to respond to regional and national digital initiatives to incorporate mobile devices in teaching and learning across the curriculum. The perceived wide scale adoption of mobile devices has resulted in a proliferation in the production and promotion of educational mobile applications (apps) to support language teaching [Godwin-Jones, 2011]. At present individual apps are evaluated against a subjective Likert scale with which different evaluators indicate how they regard a particular app.

The Evaluate App Tool (EAT) was designed and developed by the researchers to provide an alternative tool to evaluate apps. EAT is a tool which fosters an objective educational evaluation of an app. An evaluator would utilise EAT to indicate stages of a learner’s actual engagement with the app using a Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy framework. This framework maps knowledge dimension components against cognitive process dimension components. The development of this framework is derived from the work of Karthwohl (2002) and Munzenmair and Rubin (2013). Bloom’s seminal taxonomy (1956) is an established tool used in teacher training in England. For example pre-service modern foreign language teachers generate learning objectives for learners they teach, ensuring that pre-service teachers move beyond mere reformulation of knowledge to the more demanding cognitive challenges of application and evaluation. For the purposes of this research, students will use Bloom’s Taxonomy as brought into the digital age [Lightle, 2011; Churches, Crockett and Jukes, 2010] which includes creativity, thus enabling them to evaluate language apps using specific criteria. It is intended that information about language apps evaluated using EAT will be circulated.

The researchers acknowledge that the adoption of new technology in language teaching brings both new opportunities and new challenges in teaching and learning. Also, the researchers recognise that pre-service teachers may need to know how to do this well before seeing differences in teaching outcomes [Mobile Technology Learning Center, 2013] and we may not be able to assume they have instant facility with technology [Prensky 2012; 2001] and that some may need to acclimatise to the technology [Bennett 2012].

This tool was initially piloted with a focus group of pre-service secondary modern foreign languages teachers who were supplied with individual tablets for the duration of this study. Participants self-determined the educational language apps they evaluated with EAT. We present the first iteration of this tool, and show examples of its usage as a critical reflective tool for evaluating language apps. We will discuss issues that have arisen and describe our plans for the future.