Abstract:

This paper describes a project aimed at creating a taxonomy of iPad apps and activities of use to language teaching practitioners. The taxonomy is aimed primarily at tertiary teachers of English as a foreign language, but it is hoped that it will also be of use to others.

The potential of mobile learning, or m-learning, has been highlighted by many scholars and practitioners (e.g., Díaz-Vera & Pennington, 2012; Quinn, 2000; Sharples, 2002). The advent of the tablet revolution, marked by the appearance of Apple's iPad in 2010, in many ways signalled the realization of that potential. It is simultaneously mundane and transformative that such a light, quick, and unobtrusive device should be so widely available and affordable. Lavin (2011) describes the advantages of tablets over laptops in terms of reliability, lack of temporal and spatial disruption, cost, usability, ambition, weight, and power, and suggests that these advantages could accelerate a shift from discrete blended learning, where e-learning takes place in specific times and places, to integrated blended learning, where technology is called into service as and when it is needed and then fades into the background.

Making full use of these advantages requires a very large menu of apps and activities that the practitioner new to using tablet devices in the classroom can choose from in her first tentative steps, prior to customizing, blending, and developing her own activities. In order to make sense of these activities and apps, and to have some basis for choosing one over another, it is necessary that they be classified in some way. This idea is a familiar one from the learning object (LO) literature (e.g. Duval, 2002), where the goal is to provide enough metadata for each "object"—defined as "any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used or referenced during technology supported learning" (IEEE, 2002)—that an instructor with a similar goal or in a similar context can identify which objects are likely to be of service.

The taxonomy encompasses dimensions such as skill areas targeted, whether or not availability of the Internet is required, whether the activity in question involves the simple use of one specific app or is generic in nature, the proficiency levels targeted, and so on. The presenters will show the first version of the taxonomy, which will be revised once feedabck has been gathered.

Keywords:

Tablets, iPad, learning objects.