Robot assisted language learning

摘要

National University of EducationAlong with the rapid development of information and communication technologies, educators are trying to keep up with the dramatic changes in our electronic environment.These days mobile technology, with popular devices such as iPhones, Android phones, and iPads, is steering our learning environment towards increasingly focusing on mobile learning or m-Learning.Currently, most interfaces employ keyboards, mouse or touch technology, but some emerging input-interfaces use voice-or marker-based gesture recognition.In the future, one of the cutting-edge technologies likely to be used is robotics.Robots are already being used in some classrooms and are receiving an increasing level of attention.Robots today are developed for special purposes, quite similar to personal computers in their early days.However, in the future, when mass production lowers prices, robots will bring about big changes in our society.In this column, the author focuses on educational service robots.Educational service robots for language learning and robot-assisted language learning (RALL) will be introduced, and the hardware and software platforms for RALL will be explored, as well as implications for future research. ROBOTS: ANTHROPOMORPHISM OF THE MEDIAWe have seen the evolution of various media, from the one-way mass media TV, to computers with enhanced interactivity and personalized services.With the proliferation of computers, computer-aided instruction (CAI) has been in the limelight in various instructional design theories since the 1970s.The advent of the World Wide Web and Internet has changed CAI into web-based instruction, and with the extensive use of mobile devices and tablet PCs, various language-learning applications based on m-Learning are emerging in the market (Godwin-Jones, 2011).Since the mid-2000s, anthropomorphized robots in various forms have been developed, with faces, arms, and mobile devices or tablet interfaces attached to their chests, as shown in Figure 1.These robots are a type of anthropomorphized media, merging mobile information technology (IT) and robotics.Figure 1.IROBIQ, from http://www.irobibiz.com/.