FW: French Digital Kitchen

[Anne Preston]

This might be of interest to those on the EdLing list, we welcome your feedback!


Reports on the French Digital Kitchen project are now available at:  http://digitalinstitute.ncl.ac.uk/ilablearn/kitchen


Developed by Human-computer interaction technologists and applied linguistic researchers at Newcastle University, the project sought to contribute to the development of the next generation of digital technology applied to language learning. The project was funded by the EPSRC Digital Economy Programme on “Research in the Wild: Getting research out there” and started in June 2010.

We constructed a purpose -built kitchen for French language learning that speaks to pairs of learners in French and gives them step-by-step instructions on how to prepare French cuisine and teaches aspects of French language and culture.

This ‘ambient’ learning environment guides learners similarly to a car satellite navigation system and uses bespoke sensor technology embedded in or attached to all the kitchen equipment (a peeler, a mixing bowl, a whisk) and ingredients (a bag of flour, a tub of butter). The kitchen is designed to detect what users are doing using a technology similar to the Nintendo Wii™, making it possible to provide timely feedback to users such as a reminder or more details about a certain cooking action in French.

The project combined digital technology with a task-based learning approach. Existing computer-assisted language learning approaches encourage language use through simulated tasks, the French digital Kitchen is designed to promote learning and authentic language use which directly relates to real-life activities and culture.  We ran a total of 36 cooking session trials involving pairs of learners of a range of abilities in French. The sessions were audio and video recorded and analysed using a Conversation Analysis (CA) approach. This data has enabled us to make improvements to the technological and pedagogical design of sessions to promote learning.



Using information from the pre-task, the cooking task and post-task, we have also analysed the data for evidence of learning. We found that individual learners manipulated the language and created and reused new words and phrases across the cooking task. When we matched this data from the post-task, we found that most learners were able to successfully recall the vocabulary and phrases they met as new knowledge.



The research team have also recently been awarded funding from the European Union for a 3 year project to produce a network of 7 functioning portable kitchens. Made up of an interactive screen and a set of utensils, these portable versions  will be able to teach 7 languages and cuisines from Catalonia, England, Spain, Italy, Finland, Germany and France. We plan to work with language practitioners and their pupils in the UK to develop the kitchen for these different languages.



Your reviews and comments on the project are welcome. You can find a range of audio-visual information on the kitchen (podcast, dissemination film, slideshow and cooking sessions) and links to programmes and articles featuring the kitchen on our website: http://digitalinstitute.ncl.ac.uk/ilablearn/kitchen



Contact: Prof Paul Seedhouse paul.seedhouse at ncl.ac.uk<mailto:paul.seedhouse at ncl.ac.uk> and Dr Anne Preston anne.preston at ncl.ac.uk<mailto:anne.preston at ncl.ac.uk>








_______________________________________________
Edling mailing list
Edling at lists.sis.utsa.edu
https://lists.sis.utsa.edu/mailman/listinfo/edling
List Manager: Francis M. Hult