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"Looking for the best iPhone apps and Best iPad apps to help you learn a new language? No matter what language you want to learn, there are hundreds of options available in the App Store. Whether you're getting ready to travel the world or just feel it's important to know another language, it's never too late to learn. Luckily, the days of having to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for online or tape courses are long gone. However, that doesn't mean all language learning apps are created equal. These are the language learning apps for iPhone and iPad that we think are the absolute best"

"Skills like vocabulary and foreign language speaking are right in the sweet spot of what unattended and automated-often considered the very worst kind-can do. But it needn't be that way. Handing a student a tablet as they practice basic skills with an app-especially one with adaptive design-is a perfectly legitimate use of edtech as far as we're concerned, and language learning is very much a part of that. So with that in mind are ten of the best language learning apps for 2015, updated to include those with social dynamics, like HelloTalk, recent entries like Rosetta Stone, and stalwart Duolingo. We've also made an effort to include multiple languages, including Mandarin, French, Spanish, and English."

"I enjoy discussing iPad and other edtech resources with my colleague and friend Sylvia Duckworth almost every week through Twitter. Sylvia is a leader in the French teaching community in Canada, and has created an enormous amount of resources for language teachers to use. I asked her if she wanted to collaborate on this post, and she quickly agreed to do so. Below is a list of iPad apps that we both use in our language classrooms. The ones marked with an * are the essential, must-have ones. We have divided the list into two categories: Content consumption apps and content creation apps."

"It's no secret. We're not all brought up to be dual-lingual in England. Learning a language is not as integral to us as it may be in many other countries. Of course, English is an additional language for some and many schools do incredible work to help EAL pupils. However, grasping another language is simply not a necessity for many children. With that over riding fact ringing in their ears, some pupils do not place importance on indulging this area of the curriculum. This is coupled with the fact that most teachers have limited linguistic skills. The lack of enthusiasm from the children, mixed with a teacher's own knowledge gaps can make MFL become MF-hell to teach."

Asymptopia Crossword Builder is a JavaScript education application that runs in any modern internet browser but does not require an internet connection. The simple controls allow teachers or parents to create unlimited math crosswords, or supply their own word:hint pairs. Support has recently been added for French, Spanish, pt-Brasillian, Kiswahili, and special characters (accents, tildes etc), in general. Some suggested uses include: cities, countries, lattitudes and longitudes to teach geography and spherical trig, simultaneously; Periodic table word:hint pairs; Language[i]:Language[j] word:hint pairs, for foreign language learning exercise; Terminology practice with virtually any other subject.

"Finland's classrooms are very different from America's -- far more permissive, with less of an emphasis on academics. There are no standardized tests until high school, and children get 15 minutes of recess in between lessons -- more than an hour of recess a day. "Play is important," one Finnish teacher told the Smithsonian magazine. "We value play." Yet Finnish kids always get good grades on comparisons of student achievement between countries. Their average scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, a test that's given to 15-year-olds in 65 countries, are among the highest in the developed world. As a result, critics of education reform in the United States often cite the Finnish example. It's a stark contrast to America's reliance on using test scores in public school teacher evaluations, or the strict, "no-excuses" model of discipline in charter schools that many have touted as improving academic results. Now, Finnish schools are embracing an even more radical approach to teaching. One major initiative is to encourage teaching by topic instead of by subject. According to The Independent, instead of teaching geography and foreign language classes separately, teachers will ask kids to name countries on a map in a foreign language. Instead of separate lessons on history and economics, they'll talk about the European Union."

"Parlez-vous Java? Sprechen Sie Python? At least four states -- including Washington, home of Microsoft Corp. -- have either passed or considered measures that would delight high school students who have trouble rolling their r's. Rather than taking Spanish to satisfy their foreign language requirement, they could take a computer language.  Chris Reykdal, a Washington state legislator, said many  students are more passionate about learning code than conjugating verbs. "I just don't like one size fits all,'' he said. "

"Regardless of whether you think every infant needs an iPad, I think we can all agree that technology has changed education for the better. Today's learners now enjoy easier, more efficient access to information; opportunities for extended and mobile learning; the ability to give and receive immediate feedback; and greater motivation to learn and engage. We now have programs and platforms that can transform learners into globally active citizens, opening up countless avenues for communication and impact. Thousands of educational apps have been designed to enhance interest and participation. Course management systems and learning analytics have streamlined the education process and allowed for quality online delivery. But if we had to pick the top ten, most influential ways technology has transformed education, what would the list look like? The following things have been identified by educational researchers and teachers alike as the most powerful uses of technology for learning. Take a look. 1. Critical Thinking In Meaningful Learning With Technology, David H. Jonassen and his co-authors argue that students do not learn from teachers or from technologies. Rather, students learn from thinking-thinking about what they are doing or what they did, thinking about what they believe, thinking about what others have done and believe, thinking about the thinking processes they use-just thinking and reasoning. Thinking mediates learning. Learning results from thinking. So what kinds of thinking are fostered when learning with technologies? Analogical If you distill cognitive psychology into a single principle, it would be to use analogies to convey and understand new ideas. That is, understanding a new idea is best accomplished by comparing and contrasting it to an idea that is already understood. In an analogy, the properties or attributes of one idea (the analogue) are mapped or transferred to another (the source or target). Single analogies are also known as sy

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"Even if you think the buzz around "learning how to code" is overkill, you have to admit it's here to stay. Just like it's easier to learn a foreign language if you start in grade school, getting an early grasp on mark-up and programming languages such as HTML, CSS and Java ensures you'll have an idea of what makes our digital lives and devices tick, even if you don't plan on becoming a software developer."