USING OF IPAD AND IPHONE FOR EDUCATION OF CZECH

LANGUAGE (ESPECIALLY EDUCATION OF ORTHOGRAPHY AND

SYNTAX)

Kamil Kopecky1, Lukas Hejsek2

1Czech Republic 2Czech Republic

AbstractIn the last years, the teaching of mother tongue has been supported bymodern technical equipment, especially notebooks and tablets. Withinexperimental lessons of Czech orthography, syntax and phonetics, we havestarted to educate students of the Pedagogical Faculty of PalackyUniversity in Olomouc with support of tablet mobile devices (using theoperating systems Android and iOS). They are used both to support thefrontal education and practice the selected school subjects and toimplement their own tasks (experimental measurement, verification of soundcharacteristics of voice, analyses of hearing etc.).For our purposes, wehave also created several custom applications that are used within eachlesson, as well as for home preparation. In our paper, we focus mainly onthe use of applications "Syntactic analyze - analysis of a simplesentences", "Practice spelling" and "Listed words" and the applicationsused for phonetic and phonological analysis (e.g. 10th Decibel, dB VolumeMeter, SPL Meter, Tone Gen Pro, Pro Tuner, etc.). The paper summarizes theresults of this form of blended learning.Keywords: iPAD, m-learning, orthography, Czech language, syntax.

1 INRODUCTION In recent years, the need to support the use of direct and indirectteaching by as many effective educational tools as possible that enablebetter and faster absorption of knowledge, which makes learning moreinteractive, has been growing. These tools include mobile devices (tablets,smartphones) that have been currently used experimentally in a number ofschools and educational institutions. Mobile devices are especiallyimportant, because they provide learners so called mobile content - learningcontent can be easily carried, they are user friendly and its operation is simple (fortheir intuitive operation a finger or stylus are sufficient), it is possible to usethem both in online and offline mode (without having to be constantly connected tothe Internet), contain a wide range of modern hardware elements usable forincreasing the efficiency of education, such as the accelerometer, GPS andGSM module, gyroscope, reader of papillary lines, lighting conditionsdetector, etc. Many authors (Cochrane, Narayan, Oldfield and others) [1]points out that, although mobile devices (iPad) have become very popular,but there are no studies that have shown that mobile devices really

significantly affect the actual learning process. Therefore it is better toperceive the introduction of the iPad in education rather as a catalyst foreducational change [2], rather than as a tool for increasing productivityof education. In our paper we focus on the Apple tablet, so called iPad,which has been available since 2010 in the market for mobile devices. Forthese tablets we have been developing our own applications that are focusedon the support of teaching of Czech linguistics basics, especially thepractice of Czech orthography and syntax.

1.1 Syntax and orthography Syntax is a language discipline focused on relations of words in asentence, formation of sentence structures and word order. Syntax alsodeals with principles and rules of phrases and sentences formation inparticular languages. Orthography represents a steady method of recordingsound form of literary language by system of graphic symbols. Generally,the orthography rules are given by the state or scientific institutions.In the Czech language we distinguish so called traditional syntax andvalence syntax. Traditional syntax is a syntactical description ofrelations and sentence elements; it divides sentences into monomial andbinomial, compound and complex sentences. Valence syntax is based on thevalence; it is the ability of words, especially verbs, to bind tightlysemantically different expressions. The base sentence structure are simpleconnections giving full grammatical sense as functionality, all of whichgrammatical sentence patterns can be produced. The main focus of valencesyntax falls on the process of the sentences formation. As for theorthography, in the Czech language we distinguish so called lexical,syntactic and morphological orthography. Lexical orthography includeswriting of prepositions and prefixes, writing of loanwords, quantity ofvowels, abbreviations and acronyms, uppercase and lowercase letters at thebeginning of words and phrases, etc. Morphological orthography includesdeals with declension of nouns, adjectives and pronouns and conjugation ofverbs. Syntactic orthography is aimed at relations of sentence elements,especially the agreement of the subject and the predicate, and punctuationin sentences. The basics of orthography pupils learn at earlier stages ofschool attendance and gradually expand their knowledge of otherinformation, etc. At the Department of Czech Language and Literature,Pedagogical Faculty, Palacky University in Olomouc, syntax has been taughtthrough theoretical lectures (one hour a week) and practical seminars (twohours a week). During two semesters students must acquire current knowledgein the field of valence syntax following the traditional syntax, while theyfurther develop the skill of complex sentence analysis from the perspectiveof traditional and valence syntax and ability to capture semantic aspect ofthe statement. Training of practical skills is the subject of seminars andhas been taught using the traditional form of education based on thetextual material. Orthography has been taught (or mostly revised, asstudents are supposed to have already acquired the knowledge) throughlectures (one hour a week) and seminars (two hours a week). During twosemesters students must acquire current knowledge in the field ofmorphology and deepen their knowledge in orthography. The paper responds inparticular to the fact that the areas of syntax and orthography offer

possibilities of their transfer into specialized theoretically andpractically oriented training applications, which represent an innovativeelement in the education and support of illustration, interactivity andactive participation of students in acquiring knowledge and developingcomplex skills of sentence analysis, declension and conjugation of words,various spelling rules and so on. The nature of the syntax and orthography,the core of which lies in the mastery of a complex system of Czech phrasesand sentences in a graphical record, implies the possibility of teachingthat is based on clarity, interaction and communication learningenvironment. The indisputable advantage of tablets and educationalapplications is their easy portability. Educational applications focus onindividual topics in the area of syntax and orthography are available tostudents via the Apple AppStore and allow further self-study and individualtraining of syntactic analysis of sentences using their own techniques. Inseminars, students learn about the touch-screen visual interface tabletsand try to work with mobile applications, thereby expanding their teachingskills that can evaluate in their future educational activities inelementary, secondary or special schools. As stated by Petr Bannert [3],Director of Education at the Ministry of Education, working with advancedtechnologies in the form of iPads is more than desirable and is one of thefirst steps in their implementation at lower school grades.IPad and the applications run on iOS operating system and can beeffectively used also in the education of pupils/students with specialeducational needs and pupils/students with specific learning disabilities,both at the level of primary, special and secondary education, andparticularly in the area of higher education, to which are students withvarious types of constraints also integrated. During the development ofeducational applications and their implementation in teaching in seminarswe plan to work with special control instruments (sound, touch, etc.) andcreate such applications and learning environment that overcome thebarriers of health or educational limitations.

1.1.1 Applications aimed at training Czech syntax and orthographyAmong the interesting applications aimed at supporting teaching andespecially at practicing Czech syntax we include the application Sentenceanalysis - Analysis of simple sentences, which is available for download inthe AppStore environment. The application provides Czech pupils, secondaryschool and university students with basic explanations and also practicinganalysis of simple sentences, which are fundamental themes of Czech syntax.The explanatory part of the application focuses on the basic relationsbetween sentence elements (prediction, determination), and providesinformation about each sentence elements (techniques of theiridentification, valence, etc.). Other parts of the application are alreadyfocused on the actual practice of sentence analyses. In addition to simplesentence analyses divided into three basic categories according to thedifficulty, the application also allows the filling of prepared sentencepatterns (see Fig. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1 and 2: Sentence analyses Sentence patterns represent models of basic sentence structures of

Czech sentences with the capture of the various sentence elements. Users ofthe application then have to place given words correctly in each sentencepositions both formally and semantically. The result of the analysis isthen a pattern of particular Czech sentences. Another interestingapplication focused on practicing the basics of Czech spelling is anapplication Practice spelling (HD version for iPad and iPhone version). Itis focused on practising of five basic spelling areas - listed words (seeFig. 3), capitalization, spelling of prefixes and prepositions (S/Z),spelling words of foreign origin and phonetic spelling of groups (mě, mně,u, ú, ů) that are specific for the Czech language and cause many problemsto pupils. The application contains a database of more than 250 tasks fromwhich model exercises are arranged for users. Within the exercise the usersthen select the correct answer, for which they are graded. The applicationalso monitors the percentage of success and the time that is necessary toproperly complete the task.

Fig. 3: “Listed words” applicationIn the AppStore environment a user can find many other applications thatare based on similar techniques that allow testing and practice andparticularly to automate basic spelling phenomena. These applications canbe used both in elementary schools, secondary schools and universities;also general public can use them.

2 CONCLUSIONIn the present, the research about using iPads within ordinary schoolclasses in the Czech Republic is still at the beginning. This is caused bythe fact that iPads entered the Czech market in 2010; on top of that, Czechschools cannot afford them due to their relatively high price. However,there exist initiatives in the school environment (Ipad at school, Ipad inthe classroom, I-Sen, I-Teach, Pro IPad and others) that have promoted theuse of iPads systematically and have already experimentally validated theuse of the iPad in the primary school. Also, the Ministry of Education,Youth and Sports released funds for schools and educational facilities topurchase mobile devices, which, of course, include tablets – i.e. iPad. Ofcourse, school test experimentally the use of other types of tablets thatuse the Android operating system and are more affordable for schools. It isevident that the tablets will become very fast a tool that will be used onall types of schools and which gradually begins to replace common paperbooks. At this point, however, we cannot predict if their usage will beeffective and whether they will really become an effective educationaltool.

REFERENCES [1] Cochrane, T., Narayan, V., OldField, J. (2013) iPadagogy:

appropriating the iPad within pedagogical contexts. In: Int. J. MobileLearning and Organisation, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2013.

[2] Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2010) ‘Mobile learning as a catalyst for change’, Open Learning: TheJournalof Open and Distance Learning, Vol. 25, pp.181–185.

[3] Bannert, P. (2013) Vyuka s tablety deti bavi. Casem by mohly byt v kazde skole, zvazuje stat. Available at: http://zpravy.idnes.cz/vyuka-s-tablety-0iq /domaci.aspx?c=A131016_211430_domaci_jj.