Will virtual reality help you learn a language more quickly? Or will it simply replace your memory?

VR is the ultimate medium for delivering what is known as “experiential learning.” This education theory is based on the idea that we learn and remember things much better when doing something ourselves than by merely watching someone else do it or being told about it.

VR is the ultimate medium for delivering experiential learning
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VR even has the capacity to prompt the development of false memories
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The immersive nature of VR means users remember content they interact with in virtual scenarios much more vividly than with any other medium. (According to experiments carried out by professor Ann Schlosser at the University of Washington, VR even has the capacity to prompt the development of false memories.)

The immersive nature of VR means users remember content they interact with in virtual scenarios much more vividly than with any other medium
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Since immersion is a key factor in helping students not only learn much faster but also retain what they learn for longer, these powers can be harnessed in teaching and training—and there is also research that indicates that VR is an ideal tool for learning a language.

By combining the immersive capabilities of VR with speech recognition and an AI-enabled voice chatbot, MondlyVR claims to dramatically shorten the time it takes someone to start talking in a new language. “The biggest things that keep people from actually speaking and using new languages are fear and lack of life-like practice,” says Mondly’s CEO, Alex Iliescu. “We’re filling the conversational gap of traditional language education.”

By combining the immersive capabilities of VR with speech recognition and an AI-enabled voice chatbot, MondlyVR claims to dramatically shorten the time it takes someone to start talking in a new language. “The biggest things that keep people from actually speaking and using new languages are fear and lack of life-like practice,” says Mondly’s CEO, Alex Iliescu. “We’re filling the conversational gap of traditional language education.”

Professor Jonathan Gratch, whose work at the University of Southern California investigated how immersive technologies can help us learn skills like public speaking, says VR can provide a safe environment in which we can get over the anxiety that new experiences inevitably bring. “We learn best by being immersed in the situation, but we are also overwhelmed by real situations,” he says. “So immersive environments can give us a ‘scaffold’ by providing simpler and more stylized elements of real situations as a starting point.”

Lewis Johnson, president and CEO of language learning platform Alelo, says that those realistic safe spaces are powerful, morale-building tools for tentative learners. In the most challenging early stages when they are most likely to give up, they can add a degree of safety. “What makes this so effective is that it gives people an added measure of confidence so that when they’re in the real-world situation, they know they can handle it, because they’ve already handled it in the simulation,” he explains.

His company, which has provided language- and culture-learning tools to the US Air Force, Marines, and Special Forces, has enabled its web-based consumer platform to support VR. he reluctance that most people feel when practicing a language at the early stages is something AI-enabled virtual environments are uniquely equipped to overcome.

But do we actually learn better?

Johnson sees vast potential in VR as a learning tool, but only if apps are well grounded on the actual science of learning. He believes a good way to determine whether an application is actually effective at teaching new skills—as opposed to merely providing an entertaining experience—is by applying the framework of Bloom’s taxonomy. This is a set of models that divides learning objectives into three domains—cognitive, affective, and sensory—and classifies educational objectives within those domains in levels of complexity and specificity.

“Most language-learning apps such as memory games focus on the bottom level in Bloom’s taxonomy, but real mastery of language requires engagement with higher levels: apply, evaluate, and create,” he says. “That’s what’s you need to really engage with people in a conversation in another language. Users of such games are learning, but they aren’t learning at the right level.”

This is the crucial question when you see apps like MondlyVR in action: It is definitely impressive that someone without any previous knowledge of Japanese can practice the language without fear of embarrassment in a virtual scenario such as a restaurant or taxi. But are you actually learning better? Even though a beginner student is capable of carrying on a perfectly functional conversation in VR, will they be able to recall the words without the aid of the headset later?

This problem isn’t unique to VR. The ease with which we can access information—i.e. our ability to google just about anything—has been found to lower our recall rates. One Columbia University study found that participants in a memory experiment didn’t make the effort to remember facts that they thought they could look up later. They remembered where they could find the information rather than the information itself.

Since immersion is a key factor in helping students not only learn much faster but also retain what they learn for longer
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As our brains don’t have an infinite capacity to retain information, it is only natural that humans instinctively look for ways to avoid remembering too many things. Much as we’re now using the internet as a vessel for our collective external transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves.

Yet considering there are over 7,000 languages in the world (many of which, like Basque, are experiencing a resurgence in popularity) is this actually a problem? If we accept the inevitability that we will become increasingly symbiotic with our computer tools, maybe outsourcing some of our memory skills isn’t such a bad thing. If we think this way, bringing VR into our learning routines is just the next logical step in that journey of blending our physical and digital selves.

Article originally published in Quartz

Learning a language in VR is less embarrassing than IRL https://t.co/8WW1I2bxXM

— Quartz (@qz) December 19, 2017

If you would like to find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your own project or enterprise, Tech Trends offers Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Can Virtual Reality be a Game Changer for Learning? appeared first on Tech Trends.

When tech can translate everything, language becomes about seeking your identity in a globalized and digital world.

Technology has made it incredibly easy for people to connect and communicate with one another. Not only is it possible to look up the meaning of any word on your phone, but there are countless applications that can live translate presentations or even speech, bringing us ever closer to the Star Trek Universal Translator scenario where we will be able to understand what another person (or alien) is saying, whatever language they happen to speak.

Technology has made it easy for people to connect and communicate
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It seems language learning as we know it is fast becoming obsolete. In Britain, for example, the number of students taking modern foreign languages has plummeted because British children – already spoilt by the fact that English is so widely spoken around the world – have become increasingly reliant on tools such as Google Translate.

It seems language learning as we know it is fast becoming obsolete
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People are turning back to their local roots and identity as a way of navigating the flux and uncertainty they find themselves surrounded with
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Yet at the same time as British teens are turning their back on traditionally valued languages such as German, French and Spanish, Britain is experiencing a strong surge of interest in local idioms, with take-up of languages such as Irish and Scottish Gaelic up by 33% over the past five years. In Wales, where the survival of traditional communities had previously been threatened by young people moving way, there is now a growing demand for Welsh-medium education and over a quarter of pupils are taught in Welsh.

Britain is experiencing a strong surge of interest in local idioms
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Yet these seemingly contradictory phenomena are actually related. They’re simply different reactions to growing automation and globalization, which renders many of the skills we used to value obsolete and erases traditional borders. And this is leading people to turn back to their local roots and identity as a way of navigating the flux and uncertainty they find themselves surrounded with.

Globalization erases traditional borders
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A recent poll of 15 countries showed a common language is the most important factor in defining a nation’s identity. So the feeling expressed by Welsh First Minister’s Carwin Jones when he said that “Welsh is part of what defines us as a nation” is something that chimes across many cultures, particularly ones that were traditionally oppressed through being denied access to their language, as was the case with First Nations people in Canada.

A common language is considered essential in defining your identity
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“Knowing your language can be so important in developing cultural identity, and having cultural identity also develops resilience in a context that we’re dealing with so many problems such as youth suicide,”

agrees Maggie MacDonnell, who this year won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize awarded by the Varkey Foundation for her work with the Inuit community of Nunavik. Her region, neslted in the deep Canadian Arctic has the highest rate of Inuktitut speakers amongst all Inuit groups worldwide:

“All my students speak Inuktitut, and are taught exclusively in the language from primary to grade four. It’s so important that kids have a sense of belonging and pride in who they are and that’s what makes the preservation of language for our indigenous people so profound at this moment,” she explains

Being a citizen of the world is about constantly negotiating multiple identities,“ adds Pello Salaburu, director of the Basque Language Institute. “We call ourselves Euskaldunak, which roughly translates as ‘people who own the Basque language.’ To be Basque is to speak Basque, and living in a globalized society it is important to have different identities you can match with, otherwise you feel lost.”

Being a global citizen means constantly negotiating multiple identities
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Only a few decades ago, children caught speaking Basque in northern Spain would have been punished at school. But as of 2017, 54% of the region’s population are Basque speakers (pdf in Spanish), and in 2016 52% of university students opted for being taught in Basque instead of Spanish.

Looking inward to turn outward

Instead of creating insular and inward-looking communities, learning the hyper-local languages of their regions actually allows young people to develop greater flexibility and resilience. This in turn helps to better equip them to deal with the effects of globalization; in the 21st century, the ability to not feel threatened by diversity is becoming a rare and useful skill in itself.

“There shouldn’t be a conflict between the local and the global, but I find that children who are not taught other languages struggle to grasp the concept that diversity isn’t a threat,” says Mari Tere Ojanguren, the principal of Lauaxeta ikastola, which is considered one of the best schools in Spain. “A person that only comes in contact with one language cannot truly understand other cultures. By the age of four our children are immersed in three different languages. So they can be in Abu Dhabi or New York, and they can understand that others around them are different, and be at ease.”

In a world where disruption has become the norm, those connections are becoming more important than ever
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 “The measure of usefulness of a language becomes not how many people speak it, but how few.” Ojanguren believes that because her school’s curriculum is taught entirely in Euskera (the native name of the language of the Basque people), it gives her pupils a significant competitive advantage for the future. “I don’t believe the success of the language is measured so much by how much time you spend using it, but in being able to communicate in that language as a community. It’s like belonging to a club, and young people use it to connect to fellow Basques whether they happen to be in Milan, Paris, Berlin, or Boise.” (Fun fact: The Mayor of Idaho’s capital is himself a Basque speaker, and the city has the largest concentration of Basques outside Europe, at 15,000).

Language has always provided groups of people with a common sense of identity and has served to connect diasporas when those groups became geographically dispersed
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This is something that MacDonnell also sees with her students, who still predominantly choose to converse in Inuktitut, even as they acquire English and French language skills. “As they move away to study, it remains a way for them to connect to Inuit communities in the South [of Canada]. It forms an immediate bond between people who’ve never met,” she says.

In this context, the measure of usefulness of a language becomes not how many people speak it, but how few
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In this context, the measure of usefulness of a language does indeed become not how many people speak it, but how few. Language has always provided groups of people with a common sense of identity and has served to connect diasporas when those groups became geographically dispersed. In a world where disruption has become the norm, those connections are becoming more important than ever.

Article originally published on Quartz

The surprising reason why you should learn a local dialect instead of a global languagehttps://t.co/QjYI54Afud

— Quartz (@qz) September 26, 2017

To find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your enterprise, Tech Trends offers bespoke Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Translating Technology and Finding Your Identity appeared first on Tech Trends.

It is widely accepted that we all learn better if we’re enjoying ourselves. That is particularly true of language learning; it takes true persistence to reach a decent level of fluency, so anything that helps to – say, spice things up – has to be a welcome addition to a teacher’s toolkit.

This is one way to spice up language learning
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That’s what adult webcam platform CamSoda is hoping to enable with their new “language lessons” feature (originally dubbed Hot4Teacher) which launched today.

“Everyone has had a crush on their teacher at some point or another, whether it be Veronica Vaughn, Jess Day, the hot teacher in Van Halen’s ‘Hot for Teacher’ music video or one you had growing up,” says CamSoda VP Darren Press. CamSoda is capitalizing on those fantasies with what they claim is the world’s first-ever adult language-learning service, which combines multilingual cam models and translation technology to “make learning a new language fun and sensual.”

We want to make learning a new language fun and sensual
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Now, in addition to camming with their favourite cam model in a private chat room, fans can engage in casual conversation with them, learning an assortment of languages including Spanish, French, Russian and English. Particularly apt students might find that the models are open to rewarding good linguistic performance by removing items or clothing or even going a bit further if they decide to do so.

“We wanted to offer our fans an incentive to learn a completely new language and what better way than courtesy of their favorite cam model in a private chat with some casual, and maybe sensual, conversation?” he asks

CamSoda’s new service allows cam models to communicate in their native tongue with users through video and voice as well as text, which can then be translated into English in real-time via its language translation technology — similar to what Google Translate uses. So, for example, if a cam model chats a user and says, “Hola, me llamo Claudia,” the user can click on CamSoda’s “Translate” button and find out that means, “Hello my name is Claudia.”

“Unlike current translation offerings, which can be quite monotonous, Language Lessons will motivate users to keep coming back for more. There is no set curriculum or regimented structure. We encourage our users to explore at their own pace.”

Users can browse CamSoda’s offerings by language or by model, and request sessions with specific teachers by messaging them. The model can then reply with their available days and times. At the time of the scheduled lesson, the user goes to the model’s page and goes into a fixed length private chat for the lesson. The rates vary depending on the model and session duration.

“I’ve been bilingual my entire life and am excited to share my native tongue with my fans, says Spanish model Alice Gomez. “Rather than learn Spanish from some generic app, my fans can have a casual conversation with me, which is especially conducive to learning a new language.”

It remains to be seen, however, if students will manage to remember a lot about the actual content of their lessons, or perhaps whether they end up with a rather limited – and perhaps rather unsuitable for work – sort of vocabulary.

CamSoda often pushes the boundaries of what we can expect from an adult platform, and are keen to be seen as leading innovators in the webcam space. Language Lessons is the latest in a string of interesting initiatives that includes a virtual reality camming experience, the “iTunes of Blowjobs,” dubbed “BlowCast,” and “Holo-Cam,” its streaming technology that enables users to watch live, 3D interactive holographic cam shows. Most recently, the company announced “OhRoma,” a virtual reality experience that incorporates smell.

There's no reason why sex - or learning - needs to be a boring affair
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And while a lot of these might come across as a bit gimmicky, it’s also refreshing to see a company that doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s really no need why sex – or learning, for that matter – should be a boring affair, and maybe a hot teacher can be just the right mechanism to deliver that.

The post Learning a New Language Just Got a Whole Lot Sexier appeared first on Tech Trends.

The UK has a serious language deficit issue that’s estimated to cost its economy a staggering £48 billion every year. It also faces considerable challenges around integration, which must be tackled if we’re to ever overcome the toxic rhetoric around Brexit and ongoing global refugee crisis.

The language deficit problem costs the UK economy £48 billion a year
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And that’s exactly what a recently launched social enterprise called Chatterbox proposes to do with a beautifully elegant solution. It uses technology to bring together the unique existing skills of those refugees with demand in the host nation by employing them to teach their own language and culture in their adopted country.

“Chatterbox teachers are doctors, lawyers, engineers and academics – highly skilled professionals with a lot to offer,” says Chatterbox founder Mursal Hedayat, who herself came to the UK as a refugee from Afghanistan. “It’s fantastic for them to engage in stimulating work whilst learning more about the way of life here,” she explains.

There are over 117,000 people with refugee status living in the UK, yet despite having above average levels of education and training, they are much more likely to be unemployed and in poverty. The way that government policy allocates them to a particular area often sees people housed in places where there are relatively few employment opportunities, which is something the online learning element of the Chatterbox platform helps to address, by allowing them to engage with students regardless of their location. This is supported by Chatterbox’s teacher training programme provides a platform for them to network, build their confidence, and improve their overall employability by gaining relevant UK work experience.

“I don’t want to be a burden on the government, I want to be an asset, ” says Kainaaz, a Chatterbox tutor and exiled film producer and director.

Even though the project is still in pilot phase, it has already been commissioned by SOAS University of London to deliver 400 hours of conversation practice to its students. The institution – which specializes in the study of the languages and culture of Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East – will allow students taking a language as part of any of their degree courses to book one-hour sessions with native speakers of the language they are learning to practice and improve speaking and listening skills.

In spite of above-average education and training refugees are more likely to be unemployed
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Lutz Martens, Dean of Faculty of Languages and Cultures at SOAS and a specialist on rare African dialects, explains that the opportunity for students to build their confidence and fluency through immersive learning with a native speaker is invaluable:

“We teach more than 30 languages, and for half of these, we are the only UK University teaching them,” he explains. “Here at SOAS we believe that languages are the key to understanding people, regions, societies and cultures – and indeed ourselves. It offers them a unique way to better understand the cultural, social and historical background in which the language is spoken. The project builds on the cultural and academic expertise of refugees in the UK and highlights the enriching contribution they make to our communities.”

Chatterbox are now looking to build similar partnerships with other Higher Education institutions in the UK ahead of their public launch which will take place later in 2017. At that point individual students will also be able to use the platform to book lessons in a variety of languages including various dialects of Arabic and Persian as well as Swahili, Korean and Spanish.

Chatterbox technology can help bridge the gap between refugee skills and demand
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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Integrating Refugees Through Language Learning appeared first on Tech Trends.

Native English speakers don’t really think about the fact that most people in the world need to learn their language in addition to their own.

“English is a language that unlocks all kinds of opportunities that can transform an individual’s future. But while there are around 1.5 billion people learning English around the world, currently only 5% of this learning is done online,” explains ABA English CEO Javier Figarola. And it’s this market – worth an estimated $32 billion – that his Barcelona-based English academy is looking to disrupt.

ABA recently became the first Spanish EdTech startup to break the $10 million international investment threshold when it closed a $12 million funding round earlier this year (in addition to $3.4 million obtained in 2014). They will now use these new funds to fuel their growth into key areas such as Turkey and China.

ABA is the first Spanish EdTech startup to break the $10 million international investment threshold
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Dropout rates for online learning usually fluctuate around 95%
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Where dropout rates for online learning usually fluctuate around a staggering 95%, ABA managed to build and maintain a user base of over 10 million students in 170 countries since being founded just 3 years ago. It was also named Best Educational App last year at the prestigious Reimagine Education in 2015 and were the first digital school to be accredited to offer the Cambridge English Language Assessment exams.

It’s about combining technology and teaching into something greater than the sum of its parts
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The interesting thing about ABA’s proposition is that it uses existing technology and best practice methodology. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but combining familiar elements into something greater than the sum of its parts, and transferring tried-and-tested techniques to the digital space. They use film-quality videos designed to maximise engagement by replicating the ‘natural method’. This means that instead of text-based memorisation and learning by rote, students experience real-world scenarios and absorb language in much the same way as a child does, by observing the world.

ABA uses film-quality videos to maximise engagement by replicating the natural method
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Instead of learning by rote, students absorb language through real-world scenarios
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In spite of recent economic challenges, Spain continues to be an important player in the European tech scene, and the charming Catalan city is arguably its start-up capital, attracting over €38 million of funding in Q1 2016 alone while big success stories such as Wallapop and LetGo have each raised over $100 million and are now actively working in the U.S. market.

“Education, and society as a whole, are very different today to how it was years ago. Language learning in particular has traditionally been taught in a very dry way, using the same textbooks and forcing students to sit and learn languages by heart, a way that is rather unnatural when you take a step back and think about it. It’s hard enough to learn like that when you’re young, but even more so when you’re older,” says Figarola.

ABA currently works on a freemium model where users can learn with limited content for free before subscribing to the full course, yet Figarola is also keen to optimise the product for businesses:

ABA currently works on a freemium model
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“A good level of English is absolutely crucial in today’s globalised business environment. There is a trend now towards making education widely accessible and to learning through creative and open methods, focusing more on skill acquisition that can be applied immediately and less on long-term degrees. It will be shaped by an ever-increasing interaction between education and technology.”

A good level of English is crucial in today’s globalised environment.
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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post The Spanish App Teaching English to 10 Million Students appeared first on Tech Trends.