 Good day everybody, my name is Aga Palanas and I'd like to welcome you to the webinar on best practices in mobile assisted language learning. At the end of this webinar you should be able to identify best practices for mobile assisted language learning, for its design, delivery, outcomes and learning experience. I'd like to start with a snapshot of benefits that are unique to mobile assisted language learning. Compared to other computer assisted language learning methods and tools, mobile learning offers the capability of taking learning outside of the classroom, of taking it into the real world environment, thus augmenting in-class learning with real world practice. Thanks to communication tools, multimedia supports and the portability of mobile devices, students can practice in relevant environments and they can practice all four language skills with the support of multimedia that is convenient and accessible. And access to language resources, to supports and scaffolds when necessary as well, to tutors and mentors, speakers of the language and other learners is another very essential capability of mobile learning, of mobile assisted language learning. Bicycle learning resources being delivered through the mobile devices to students is one of the most important components of spaced learning where students are learning over time in smaller chunks. This is extremely helpful for language learners who can actually access, for example, short five, ten minute podcasts at a convenient time and they'll return to them whenever they are ready. And then what I consider one of the most vital aspects of mobile assisted language learning is the situated language practice. When students are able to practice the language, the authentic language, embedded in rear language situations, but be careful to balance the combination of in-class practice with the real world practice as well as the individual learning with collaborative learning and learning activities. Another key benefit of mobile assisted language learning would include the possibility to build an interactivity, creativity, fun and engagement into the mobile learning tasks and activities, enhancing students' motivation by context-inspired authentic content and challenges. The possibility is to rehearse and practice in less-threading environment where students, for example, get to record their speech samples as many times as they need before they send it to their experts for evaluation. The benefit of being able to create learning activities that are student-centered, access to tools that let students capture data and record the learning process as well as record, exchange, listen to speech samples as well as written language samples, helping with student language comprehension, meaning making and expression. The variety of language assessment tools and games that are available for mobile devices as well as all kinds of group language activities and scaffolds for such that can be communicated through mobile devices that students have in their pockets. Some of the most popular mobile assisted language learning tools will include email, web browser, audio and video player, voice recorders, camera for photo and video recording and editing, note-taking tools, SMS and texting capabilities as well as GPS and other location or capabilities of our mobile devices. And how would students use those mobile tools? Well, for example, audio and video player can be used for language podcasts, for listening to audiobooks, for watching YouTube videos for the sake of practice. Voice recorders can actually help students rehearse and record multiple examples of their own speech and other people's speech, record student radio, for example, as part of a class activity, create mini stories, a little bit longer stories, either individually or as a group, and record speech samples for feedback and exchange them. Similar with camera, students can create communicative capture, communicative situations and then analyze them and work with them. They can also create their own mini stories for evaluation and be really, really creative with role-playing and, for example, stand-up comedy episodes. And here are some examples of mobile apps that I encourage you to visit after the webinar. These would include tools that are quite often used in mobile assisted language learning practice. And these are tools for feedback, collection, polling, student response systems, vocabulary acquisition and learning support, speaking and listening, and pronunciation supports, as well as those tools that help with the integrated language practice. Now that I've given you a brief overview of mobile assisted language learning practices, I'd like to share with you a few findings from my research studies that focused in the area. The study I'm referring to here resulted in a set of mobile assisted language learning guidelines and recommendations how to implement them. A new theoretical perspective also emerged from the study findings. I refer to it as ecological constructivism. Ecological constructivism was derived from social constructivism, social cultural theory of learning, ecological linguistics, and contextual and situated learning approaches. This theoretical framework emphasizes active learning around real life problems with language learning tasks and activities incorporating interaction that's often embedded in real world language situations. Viewed through the ecological constructivism lens, mobile assisted language learning practice is based on communication and interactivity of learners in social context. The activity that's embedded in real life situations, language situations, and the learning that's mediated by the mobile tool that the learners are using, as well as mediated by the interactivity with the context and the affordances that are available in the environment in which students are completing the language tasks and activities. Such affordances would be, for example, signals, sounds, behaviors, pointers to various types of information that's accessible to learners in the environment and helps learners with labeling, with understanding, meaning negotiation, comprehension, and other activities involved in language practice. Following these theoretical principles, a set of mobile assisted language learning tasks was created, including collaborative multimedia dictionary, a bank of idioms, students radio, where students recorded interviews with professionals and experts in various areas, a scavenger hunt that focused on vocabulary building, and some other mobile assisted language learning tasks that could be completed only with the help of mobile devices where students could collaborate on both in-class and out-of-class activities. These eight language tasks were all interconnected and related to each other, and they focus on authentic communication challenges in the real world situations. They were both individual and collaborative, and there was expert guidance incorporated in the whole set of tasks. The interaction included interaction with peers, experts, as well as native speakers of the English language. A big portion of the task focused on creation and co-creation of language artifacts, and then those would be peer and expert evaluated as well as self-evaluated in some cases, using mobile technologies and futures like liking, ranking, and rating of the various speech samples. Although the focus of all the tasks was listening skills, all four language skills were incorporated using the multimedia capabilities of mobile tools. One of the main outcomes of my research on mobile assisted language learning would be guidelines for design and development of more tasks and activities. According to these guidelines, I recommend the inclusion of the following elements in your mobile assisted language learning design and activities. Individual and collaborative tasks, learner-generated linguistic artifacts, game-like, real-life communicative tasks, as well as expert facilitation and guidance whenever needed and possible. Rich feedback mechanism that would include both delayed and immediate feedback, as well as focus on authentic language practice. You would also want to incorporate self-paced individual language activities, integrate all four language skills practice, and give access to linguistic resources that are task related. So relevant vocabulary, dictionaries, pronunciation of the words, and very clear task directions as well as explanations and examples and modeling of language utterances. And finally, support of outer-class learning within class, face-to-face, if possible, or at a distance, practice and instruction. So a blend of both individual, collaborative, in-class, and outer-class, if possible, a blend of all these language situations, language instruction, and language practice. You can visit my dissertation and other publications for more detailed discussion of mobile assisted language learning best practices, including the essential elements of mobile assisted language learning practice, as well as design and recommendations on how to incorporate all the various components unmentioned into your design of mobile learning. Let me summarize the best practices for mobile assisted language learning with these few keywords. When designing for mobile learning, make sure that students can replay and re-listen the language content. They can record their own artifacts, they can rehearse as many times as they need to, and repeat as many times as it takes for them to feel comfortable and to learn. They can redo their practice using the mobile devices so that they can remember, so that they can reflect both on their learning content and their learning methodology and strategies. Plan your mobile learning activities in such a way that students have opportunities to utilize the unique features of mobile technologies, as well as the mobility of the students across the various contexts and locations. Also make sure that students have opportunities to communicate using the language that they're studying, that they get involved in collaborative activities, that they often connect either face-to-face or at a distance using mobile devices, that they co-create linguistic artifacts and construct knowledge together, that they acquire the language skills through interaction with others. It's also very important that that learning experience is contextualized in real life language practice whenever possible. I hope you enjoyed this webinar on mobile assisted language learning, that we all picked up a few ideas that are going to incorporate in your practice.