Not everyone has the time or the money to attend language courses or study abroad. Therefore, free programs and online learning applications such as Duolingo  have become very popular lately. One of the latest revolutionary ideas on the world of online language learning is Lingua.ly, an app which allows you to learn languages while surfing the Internet, on any website, for free and with just a few clicks. Sound tempting? It is. Lingua.ly is a plug-in for Chrome where you’ll be able to read any article you want while selecting words to add to your personalized dictionary to learn its meaning. Lingua.ly is currently available in English, Russian, French, Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic.

Lingua.ly can be used to learn a new language from scratch. When you install the extension, you can go to any website in the language you are learning and double click on the word to learn it. Lingua.ly automatically saves the words you choose to your personal learning area. You can hear the correct pronunciation by clicking on each word or browse by clicking on the speaker icon. Unlike other online courses, the “lessons” on Lingua.ly are created just for you while you browse the contents online, and you choose what you really want to read. As you add words, the system will know your level for the language you want to learn and will suggest items to read, tests to take, practice exercises, etc. And you will be always able to see your progress.

The cons of Lingua.ly: once installed, the plug-in can become a little annoying due to the pop-up with the meaning and pronunciation of words whenever you double-click on something, but this is bearable.

Learn new works with Lingua.ly even while you are on Facebook

Do you like the idea? Then check it for yourself. Just download the plug-in, choose your native language and the one you want to learn, login with your Google, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn account, and you’re all set. A Lingua.ly icon will appear to the right of the navigation bar: clicking on it, you’ll find the main menu of the app and you choose one of the 4 options:

1 Find something to read in English
2 Explore new words suggested by Lingua.ly
3 Study your own word list
4 Practice the words you have saved

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Apps can make your life much easier when you’re learning a new language or visiting a foreign country. Today we’re going to review Word Lens, an app meant to let you “see the world in your language: instantly translate printed words using your built-in video camera, in real time!”. What it does is exactly that: you point your camera at something written in one language, and it shows you the translation in a different language right on the screen, by replacing the captured text in real time. The app doesn’t require an Internet connection to work, however you will have to download language packs separately.

The description makes Word Lens sound quite interesting and fun to use, but the actual experience might not be as smooth and efficient as you would hope. I tried an English-Italian translation on a few writings, including an instruction booklet. This is the result:

Many words are poorly translated: for instance, “Before you get started” sounds more like “Before you arriving, it began”; for some reason “connecting” is translated as “communicating”; “light” as in “not heavy” is translated as “light” as “radiant energy visible to the human eye” (they are two different words in Italian: “leggero” e “luce”).

The translation seems to be extremely literal and word-by-word, so you’ll have to struggle in order to make sense of what’s written onscreen. The way this app works is also quite clumsy: you have to point at words and stand very still, and the text recognition isn’t always immediate.

The app is not completely useless, however: I believe it could be helpful if you’re traveling in places using languages that are completely obscure to you (maybe because they have different alphabets or writing systems) to make sense of signs, product tags and other easy bits of information — if you’re on a trip in the Amazon forest and you can actually translate a sign in Portuguese that says “something something rattlesnake something death something danger”, you don’t really need to understand the entire sentence to realize you should probably be careful, after all. This app might also save you from unwanted allergic reactions if you’re buying groceries in Russia and you really have no idea how to type Cyrillic letters into your smartphone keyboard.

Here’s a list of the supported languages: English-Russian / English-Portuguese / English-Italian / English-French / English-Spanish / English-German. 

Unfortunately, no Japanese or Chinese — for that, you’ll have to download a different app. However, in May 2014, Word Lens was acquired by Google (whose Translate app works fairly well with a large number of languages), so there might be new languages added soon, as well as improvements in the way Word Lens handles longer, more complex texts.

Word Lens might definitely be worth a try: you can download it from the App Store or from Google Play — both the app and the language packs are free.

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The Keck Center will be hosting its first Language Exchange night. Come practice your language skills while helping others learn your languages. Anyone who speaks or is learning Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, or any other language is welcome.

Food will be provided as well as some conversation prompts to help focus on specific grammatical needs.

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This week I attended one of two sessions of the fifth Digital Witness Symposium sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor in conjunction with Hamilton College and Syracuse University. This year, the symposium brought two fascinating speakers, both experts in new media, who spoke about the way that digital media (especially film) is being used to highlight social issues around the world. Each of the speakers brought up some though-provoking points about how the internet has created the opportunity for interaction beyond the typical film structure. And I think the projects they showcased offer some great opportunities for integrating film into a course in a way that engages students in higher-order thinking.

The first speaker, professor of film and new media at Ithaca College Patricia Zimmerman, focused her message on the way that documentary makers are changing the way they interact with their audience. Rather than produce a linear film that has a singular message mediated by a single director, these new documentaries use methods of crowdsourcing to get more directly to the people affected by  a certain social condition. This type of filmmaking is less about telling a story, and more about engaging people in deeper discussion. There is less a sense of direct confrontation and more of a feeling of open dialogue. The four aspects that characterize this new style, Zimmermann said, are that 1) they deal with very specific people and places, on a small scale (as opposed to documentaries that would take on larger, global issues). 2) they are about designing encounters and promoting discussion about an issue (as opposed to promoting a specific plan or political agenda), 3) they rely heavily on collaboration, and 4) they are inviting of people of all viewpoints.

The second speaker, Sarah Wolozin, runs the Open Doc Lab at MIT and is herself an accomplished film and new media artist. In her talk, she showcased some of the more ambitious documentary projects similar to those described by Zimmermann. She showed how filmmakers are exploring new ways of interacting with films, mixing new techniques with web-based platforms that allow users to explore a film outside of the traditional linear path that would normally be set by a director. These new forms allow for individualized viewing experiences, but also encourage users to continue thinking about and discussing the issues beyond the film by connecting online. I found all of these new approaches to filmmaking fascinating, but also a rich resource for classroom use. Many of the projects came from different countries, and could easily be used to help students learn more about a different culture and engage them in higher-order thinking as they become active users exploring information in a new way and finding ways to contribute. Below are a few projects that caught my eye and that could be useful in various language classrooms.

18 Days in Egypt

18 Days in Egypt is a web site that accompanies a film of the same name in an attempt to gather and tell the stories of experiences during the 2011 uprisings. The site has a variety of user-created streams with photos, videos, audio, and text. Students could explore the site endlessly, learning both about culture and using their Arabic language skills. The site has many resources, both in Arabic and English.

Quipu Project

The Quipu Project is an effort to make the stories of victims of forced sterilization in Peru heard. The project involves mobile storytelling, but bringing mobile technology to remote villages.

From their web site:

Inspired by the Quipu, an Inca communication system made of knotted threads, the project is creating a collective string of oral histories. Contributors can record and listen to themselves and others, through an interactive phone line and local radio stations, while connecting to a wider audience through the web.

Engage Media

Engage Media is one of the most ambitious and perhaps richest of these types of projects. Engage Media is an alternative to YouTube dedicated, allowing uploads related to social justice in the Asian Pacific. Users can browse by country, which is extensive and includes several languages, including Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Arabic, and many, many more. Videos can be easily shared using links, and even downloaded for later use or for showing in areas without internet connections. This video, for example, showd the umbrella protests in Hong Kong.

Patricia Zimmermann has curated a list of these types of projects in several languages, and they can be viewed on her blog. Any of these project offers a great resource for students, and they could be asked to explore and present to the class something they learned from the project. Each also has the potential for collaboration for more advanced students.

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