Friday, June 13, 2014

Thing 18-Education

Thing 18 is Education, and has been one of the most difficult Things for me-in a good way!  There are so many apps out there that can be used for education, and education of so many topic areas, that it was hard to pick just a few to review (y'all want a blog post, not a book, to read!).

The first app I tried out was Duolingo.  I had heard about it before; my best friend's boyfriend is German, but was raised mostly in the US, so he doesn't speak much of the language despite still having lots of family in Germany.  So, he had found Duolingo and was working on learning German on the app!  He said it was great, and I added it to my list of things to check out, but never got around to it until this Thing came up.  I majored in Spanish and studied abroad in Spain twice as an undergraduate, but since then have been getting rustier and rustier for lack of practice.  Duolingo seemed like a perfect way to brush up, so I decided to try it!  Users have to first create an account, then choose which language you'd like to learn (Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese).
You get a walk-through describing the app, you set a goal for how much time you'd like to invest in using the app each day, and then you're off!  I liked that there was the option to test out of introductory material as well. 

The app is very user friendly once you are started.  There are a number of different skills included, which, from an education and language acquisition standpoint, is key!  For example, the app presents information in the target language and asks for an English language translation, and vice versa.  It will play an audio clip and ask you to transcribe it, or allow you to listen to a clip and ask you to repeat it (using the microphone-if you are in a location where you cannot speak, there is also an option to indicate that).  In that way, its much more thorough then many other language-learning apps and websites I've seen.  Best of all-its free!  I was amazed and puzzled at how such an app could be free, so I decided to head to the website (by the way, you can login and complete activities either on the app or on the website, in case your mobile device isn't handy or you don't have one).  Apparently, Duolingo is free because outside entities can submit information that needs translating and the Duolingo users then translate that information as they practice their lessons, then when the translation is complete the entity pays a fee for the service-who knew?  That strikes me as a very creative solution to funding, and its nice because the app, though free, doesn't even have ads!  Overall I was hugely impressed with this app and have finally found the motivation and (fun!) tool to help get me back on track linguistically! 

I've also used Fooducate in the past.  A friend recommended it to me.  If you don't know much about nutrition, it is a great app!  You search for a food to find nutritional information and a grade (A, B, C, or D) for that food.  It can now also be used as a food tracker.  Its a neat concept, but a little too basic for me-I know quite a bit about nutrition so it didn't really teach me much, and I eventually wound up deleting it for lack of use.

And, of course, as a child of the nineties, I HAD to try the Bill Nye the Science Guy app (Apple only).  As soon as it didn't have the signature "BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL! BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY!" intro I was a little disappointed  ;)  The app itself was ok; certainly aimed at a young audience but I spent my fair share of time learning about planets and launching rockets.  The nice thing is there are multiple different things you can do.  The downside is there isn't really any tutorial, though the appropriate audience for this app probably doesn't want tutorials-they just want to get in and explore!

Briefly, another app I really like is ASL Dictionary.  Its not free ($4.99 for Apple and Android), but it has over 5,200 words with videos, not just images of the sign, which makes learning/using a word correctly much easier!  Its also really good about providing signs for all the possible meanings of a word-take 'block' for example.  There are four different videos-block as in a block in a neighborhood, a toy block, a building block, or block as in an obstruction.  Its not a very fancy app, but when you need a sign, odds are this app will have it!

Stick around, I'm following this post with several others!

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