The Future of Education

This paper focuses on the ILOCALAPP project, acronym for Incidentally Learning Other Cultures And Languages through an APP (www.ilocalapp.eu). ILOCALAPP is a three-year Erasmus+ project coordinated by the University of Bologna and carried out by a transnational consortium with the aim of producing an app for the incidental learning of four cultures and languages: Finnish, Italian, Polish and Portuguese. Based on the principles of incidental learning, the app will offer mobility students the possibility to get acquainted with local language and culture in a smart, creative way. Learners will participate in the process of knowledge creation and will be facilitated in their comprehension of (inter) cultural codes.

Building upon two previous experiences carried out by the Consortium, E-LOCAL (Electronically Learning Other Cultures And Languages) and elocALL (E-LOCAL for all), the ILOCALAPP project will result in an advanced tool for language and culture acquisition. If the E-LOCAL courses, produced and valorized with the two previous projects, – and still in use in the consortium and beyond – allow for a plunge into the language and culture of destination, ILOCALAPP will provide mobility students with a new handy tool, to be used in complementarity with the E-LOCAL courses or as a stand-alone product.

E-LOCAL, elocALL and ILOCALAPP exploit part of the huge variety of possibilities to support the acquisition of language and cultural skills that new technologies undoubtedly offer. With this paper, we investigate the approaches adopted by the three projects and the evolution in terms of both results and perspectives.