iRomin

The English language is a very important tool in our lives today. In several countries, it is the gateway to a better future. Schools, Private Tutors, Coaching classes, etc are all catering to the huge demand from people to get proficient in the language. One of the key challenges while learning something from scratch or even improving your current knowledge is that “learning should be fun”. The moment you take the fun away from it, it is likely to be classified into just another task.

As a developer, I have a keen interest in word games. I like to play them and like to develop them too. But often one of the key challenges while writing word games always is that the experience is not so good. It is almost like rote learning and the best example of that is Flash Cards. While the concept of Flash Cards is good, it is not an enjoyable experience, you do not seem engaged and often the social element is missing.

Having said all this, a recent discovery called Vocab Genii has been like a breath of fresh air. Vocab Genii is a web application that helps you build your vocabulary but in a fun away with the complete social experience that is now expected from consumer facing applications. Getting started with Vocab Genii is dead simple — simply use your Facebook login, Accept the Terms and move on.

To play a game, you have to first select the type of Challenge. There are 5 challenges ranging from simple words to difficult words with letters missing, etc. Then you need to select a Single Round, Multiple Round or a Learning Round game. It is nice to have a Learning Round where you are still coming to grips with your vocabulary. It is never too late to learn as they say

The UI for Game Selection is shown below and is quite intuitive and playful:

During the game, you are taken through a list of words for the duration of the game. The game duration for a single round is 90 seconds ( 1.5 minutes). Here I am referring to the Simple Words challenge. For each word, you are given the meaning of the word and a scrambled set of letters for the word as shown below:

You can then simply start typing and the Game User Interface will show which letters are correct, etc. It does that neatly by ‘graying out’ the letter that you type. For example, the above word is Approve and as I type, you can see below how the letters get grayed out:

This hint in the UI is most useful especially to inform the player that you are on the right track. If you get the word correct, you get a nice Tick mark as shown below:

When the Game is over, you get a Score for the game along with the ability to post the score to your Facebook account as shown below.

The best part of the Game Summary that is shown in the game is that of the words that you got right or missed. Along with the words, you are also shown the detail meaning of the word to revise your vocabulary.

When I played it regularly for a few times, the words did not repeat much so that is good. I also found the game quiet enjoyable when playing together with my wife. The whole experience of guessing the words together made it fun and the feeling was quiet different that any computer word games typically played.

One suggestion that I have for the team to make it viable in a school environment especially for a teacher to give English vocabulary lessons to his/her students, would be that of defining a custom word list by the user. Imagine a scenario where a teacher teaches 5-10 new words in a week to her students, creates a custom word list on Vocab Genii and gives the link to her students to play and revise their vocabulary. It would surely put the “fun” back into learning English.

Give Vocab Genii a try today. It is definitely a fun way to increase your Vocabulary and learn English in fun and social fashion. I am sure that with time, the number of words and different game combinations would this a very useful tool for schools/tutoring classes to introduce into their classrooms.

Any topic of study typically has a reference text. If you are doing anything with English, it is typically the dictionary to help you get around with words. You might need to lookup a meaning, similar words, figures of speech, sample usage and much more. In my opinion, a good reference book needs to address the following:

• A convenient and quick way to search
• Short and concise explanation of the topic you wanted more information on
• Short example to help you understand the concept and drill it into your head

The world is taking a decisive shift towards ebooks. There is no doubt about that. We are all used to the only thing that is a constant in this world and that is change. However, one cannot just convert a physical reference book into an eBook and expect that the experience is the same. You need to work harder on the above 3 points that I have mentioned. There could be many more points like design and advanced features like bookmarks, etc. — but that could be an endless list of points that are best left to a debate.

The proliferation of Mobile Devices and the rapidly expanding ecosystem around mobile applications meant that it was just a matter of time before the reference books adjusted themselves to this new medium. And I have been fortunate to experience one such reference book application that I am excited about and want to share it with everyone.

I was fortunate to get a version of the HTML 4 & 5 : The Complete Reference by O’Reilly Media, Inc. The book is authored by Jennifer Robbins and there is a video of how they went about authoring and packaging an existing “physical” HTML Reference book.

I took the application for a spin and here are my comments:

1) The application launches with clearly the reader in mind. Two actions are shown straightaway on the Home Screen of the application: Search and Browse. This is so apt since that is what you want to do with any reference material.

2) There is a nice Filter feature that will filter your results out for HTML4 and 5, so that you are only given the relevant results. So in case you really want to end up using this app for latest HTML5 stuff only, then simply set the filter to HTML5 only and boom, the rest is taken care of for you.

3) You can get any information for Elements, Attributes, Characters and much more. The information for any particular Element, for example, is nearly categorized into 3 Tabs : Description, Attributes and Example.

4) My favourite feature is that of the Example. This is a neat trick that the authors have employed. Since we are dealing here with the HTML and coupled with the fact that the Webkit Browser engine is within the application, you not only see the Example code but guess what, you can see it being rendered and run right within the application. Text has been brought alive — it is as simple as that.

For the technical folks: This app is written using PhoneGap as the video mentions. So pure HTML, CSS and JS is likely at play here with just the final native packaging for the iPhone distribution. I like that actually.

A few things that I have observed:

• The application is a bit sluggish. Maybe got to do with the loads of data that is probably present in a reference of this sort. But given that the physical book runs in upwards of 600-700 pages, no one should complain
• I would have liked an ability to bookmark some elements, attributes and related information for quick reference.
• Sharing the code snippet via email with someone would have been great too.

All in all, this application is going to be regularly used for any reference since it is completely offline. I strongly recommend to give this a look to help understand the direction in which some of our reference books are going. And if you are a Web programmer, keep this handy reference in its “App” avatar.