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English is a foreign language for 95% of the world's children. Yet almost all digital literacy tools for young children are written in English. Mobile learning is therefore out of reach for all but those very few children prepared to start learning a foreign language before they have mastered their own. Isabelle Duston, a self-professed "serial entrepreneur" decided to tackle the problem by creating educational applications that will bridge the digital language divide without losing cultural diversity in the learning process. Her iLearn4Free venture is developing apps in several languages for teaching little ones how to read in their native language.

15 Little-Known Ways Google Can Help Teachers And Students

Download the free eBook, The Little Book of Blogs, with reflections & activity ideas from teacher trainers in ELT

"Well like a lot of people I've bought an iPad over the summer and I've been having my first taste of shopping for apps to extend the capabilities of the iPad. I've also been having a look at how some of these can be used for language learning, so I thought I would share with you a little bit of information about the first few apps I've tried."

Well like a lot of people I've bought an iPad over the summer and I've been having my first taste of shopping for apps to extend the capabilities of the iPad. I've also been having a look at how some of these can be used for language learning, so I thought I would share with you a little bit of information about the first few apps I've tried.

The big picture and the important little details

Word can be a little unruly sometimes, making inexplicable changes, inserting text you didn't ask for, and hijacking your formatting. Here are some common stunts that Word tries to pull on unwary users, along with a cure for each one.

Unlike much of the teaching typing software available out there, Keybr.com does not force you to type random characters over and over again; that is simply boring and contributes very little to your learning. Instead, Keybr.com generates readable random words using the phonetic rules of your native language. These words look almost natural, and often they really are. Typing sensible text is much easier than random letters, and it helps you to remember frequent key combinations. For example, it's almost impossible for the letter 'W' to follow the 'Z' in English, and you will never type this combination in Keybr.com. Instead, you will type more common words, such as "the," "that," "with," and so on. Keybr.com lets you introduce as few keys as possible to the lesson, adding more keys later when you feel that you are competent and fast enough on the current level. So, if you start with the keys from the Caps Lock row, then add keys form the Tab row, and then from the Shift row, you will eventually end up typing real text with capital letters and punctuation.

In an effort to counteract this I would like to make my ebook Digital Video - A manual for language teachers freely available to anyone without the means to pay for it who is willing to help me with a little research project.

Ideas for integrating technology

You can record and use your own voice or have typed text turned into audio or import audio - after whcih you can embed it using a cute little player.

Sixty seconds to write a prompt based on one word. Afterwards you can view what others wrote using the same prompt.