MondlyAR - Learn languages in augmented reality

@abadesi, I believe AR can radically change the way we learn and MondlyAR is the first step to improving the way we learn languages. You should give MondlyAR a go. Would like to hear about your experience.

@tudori1 @abadesi But what better way to explain than show you a video I made learning French at home.

@tudori1 @abadesi Mondly being smart.

@iliescualex What does Augmented Reality add to this? It seems to me like it adds nothing meaningful at all to the learning process, just an additional step that will grow tiresome for users. Let me know if I'm missing something.

@william_falloon Hi William, great question! What we are seeing with AR is that it's able to create a better feeling of immersion that stimulates better interaction with the learning materials. Nothing compares with the illusion of seeing a 10 ft elephant, moving and trumpeting in your room. A photo or an illustrated image in an app cannot cannot convey that emotion. Or admiring a life-size grand piano with all its details and from any angle, blending perfectly in your environment, with spatial sound that changes its intensity while you move to explore this work of art. While this exploration happens, Mondly, the virtual teacher is aware of you and your environment at any moment. She knows if you’re facing her, if you’re at the right or left of the piano and she can use this information in a dialogue: “If you move to the left you’ll see the strings”. She can move closer to you, looks at you, follows you, gesticulates just like a real teacher would do to reinforce language and make the experience more memorable. She can change from a teacher to a conversational partner just like in a SF movie. Want to practice ordering food at a restaurant? No problem - Mondly will change her outfit to accommodate the situation: “Que desea señor?” She can understand what you are saying and help correct your pronunciation and can even answer some of your random questions. I hope you see how combining the spatial capabilities of AR with the interactivity of chatbots and speech recognition can create a more personal and immersive learning experience, which is recognised by all studies to be the ideal ingredients for fast and effective learning.

@katriketoja, indeed it does. MondlyAR works on 100 million Android devices that are ARCore enabled. Any of these phones will do: Pixel 1, 2, Samsung Galaxy S7, S8, Note 8, LG’s V30, ASUS Zenfone AR and OnePlus 5. Here's the Android download link: https://play.google.com/store/ap...

@katriketoja @sebastian_maraloiu thank you for link

My pleasure, @valongulden!

@rrhoover Hello Ryan, thanks for the thoughtful questions. VR and AR are less accessible than simple mobile apps in the same way that planes are less accessible than cars. While it requires newer hardware, AR is able to create a feeling of immersion that traditional mobile apps are not capable of. Nothing compares with the illusion of seeing a 10 ft elephant, moving and trumpeting in your room. A photo cannot cannot convey that emotion. Or admiring a life-size grand piano with all its details and from any angle, blending perfectly in your environment, with spatial sound that changes its intensity while you move to explore this work of art. While this exploration happens, Mondly, the virtual teacher is aware of you and your environment at any moment. She knows if you’re facing her, if you’re at the right or left of the piano and she can use this information in a dialogue: “If you move to the left you’ll see the strings”. She can move closer to you, looks at you, follows you, gesticulates just like a real teacher would do to reinforce language and make the experience more memorable. She can change from a teacher to a conversational partner just like in a SF movie. Want to practice ordering food at a restaurant? No problem - Mondly will change her outfit to accommodate the situation: “Que desea señor?” She can understand what you are saying and help correct your pronunciation and can even answer some of your random questions. I hope you see how combining the spatial capabilities of AR with the interactivity of chatbots and speech recognition can create a more personal and immersive learning experience, which is recognised by all studies to be the ideal ingredients for fast and effective learning.

@graeme_fulton Hello Graeme, we thought this would be a great idea too. So we have object recognition working in our labs and we'll release it soon with an update.

@graeme_fulton @iliescualex This will be a true game changer. If it can basically recognize things around me and teach me that, my god would that be super useful and a fantastic use of AR

@graeme_fulton @iliescualex @swiftpolar Imagine applying this tech to teach more subjects in schools like chemistry or biology. Or imagine having games where you use speech recognition to make them feel more real than ever

I believe that too, @nleary

Danke, @i_am_ryankelley!

Thanks, @raulpopa! I would say MondlyAR falls into the category of self-learning even though the method involves using an augmented conversational partner. There are quite a few studies highlighting the advantages of using virtual and augmented reality in learning. Here are a few mentions: https://www.researchgate.net/pub... https://web.stanford.edu/~bailen... https://www.businesswire.com/new...

@immanuelkapa Hello Emanuelle, thx for the questions! Image and object recognition is something we've been playing with for quite a while. Although we didn't launch it in v1, it is working quite well in our labs and it's planned to be released very soon. Regarding our roadmap, we're planning to launch MondlyAR on iOS using ARKit, Apple's augmented reality SDK, at the end of this month. We're also adding more languages with the goal to support 30 languages by this summer. Cheers!

Hello, William :). For procrastinators - like me - this app is just perfect. I believe that this is just about knowing your target. This kind of "gimmick" might determine those of us who are lazy to finally learn some words in that language we've been wanting to learn for a long time.

You are right. Mondly works just fine without the AR component. We have over 30 million users and a 4.7-star rating in both Google Play and the App Store out of over 700,000 reviews. When Apple and Google announced that they are going all in on AR, I was thrilled. Augmented reality is the technology we have been waiting for since Mondly's initial launch in 2014. Here's why: I feel like the school system failed me when it comes to learning a language. After 10 years of French, I took a trip to Africa and I could barely have a conversation. I was thrilled when Alex, the CEO of Mondly, shared with me his vision: to build a language app that gets people talking as soon as possible rather than focusing on boring grammar exercises. With MondlyAR we are staying true to our vision and taking it one step further. I believe that AR has the power to change the way people learn anything from chemistry, to history, and languages.