Mobile Assisted Language Learning - History

History

1980s

• Twarog and Pereszlenyi Pinter used telephones to provide distant language learners with feedback and assistance.

1990s

• Instructors at Brigham Young University-Hawaii taught a distance education English course from Hawaii to Tonga via telephone and computer (Green, Collier, & Evans, 2001)

2000s

• Dickey (2001) utilized teleconferencing to teach an English conversation course to students in South Korea.
• Stanford University learning lab used integrated mobile phones in a Spanish learning program in 2001 (Brown, 2001).
• Thornton and Houser (2002; 2003; 2005) developed several innovative projects using mobile phones to teach English at a Japanese university. They also developed a course management system, Poodle, to facilitate deploying language learning material to mobile phones.
• City College Southampton developed a web based "media board" (similar to a web-board but supporting Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) as well as Short Message Service (SMS) and supplied learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) with mobile phones with inbuilt cameras and voice recording facilities (JISC, 2005).
• University of Wisconsin–Madison, developed several foreign language courses which have used wireless handheld computers for various classroom activities (Samuels, 2003).
• Duke University provided all incoming freshmen with free iPods equipped with voice recorders. Amongst the pilot courses utilizing the players were several language courses, which utilized both their listening and recording capabilities (Belanger, 2005).
• United Kingdom’s Open University used voice recorders and mini-camcorders to record interviews with other students and locals and to create audiovisual tours in distance-learning German and Spanish course (Kukulska-Hulme, 2005). The Open University also recently used mobile phones for language learning
• A project in Ireland used MALL for Irish Language learning and assessment
• The Le@rning Federation (TLF) used MALL for Indonesian Language learning across three states
• The first mobile phone language learning service, http://www.language2yourphone.com opens for business in English providing lessons in Italian, Spanish, German and French, providing 60 text message (SMS) lessons for €9.