It’s been a pleasure

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Goodbye picture

Dear friends,

As we have been announcing to our cloud customers since October, from today onwards we will have to discontinue the service. This decision has been taken with much sadness and regret, but unfortunately Vocabulary Notebook has not grown as we expected, we have not been able to close further funding rounds and we will not be able to keep maintaining it.

This tough decision has been taken from the 30th of September, when we made the service free and gave a few months to our customers to back up their data. Now, the last day of the year, it is time to take the last step, shutting the product down.

It has been a very interesting journey of more than 2 years in which we have lived awesome experiences, met awesome people, obtained several awards and prizes, conducted scientific research… And in which we achieved more than 30 000 users in more than 130 countries worldwide.

We want to thank you for all those awesome experiences, for your support, feedback and for being part of this adventure.

We wish you all the best.

Sincerely,
Vocabulary Notebook Team

PS: If you want to know more about what we achieved during this period, you can review these slides about Vocabulary Notebook, this video about the mobile app for students or this video about the full platform for schools.

Why using Vocabulary Notebook?

ICTs, Students, Studying, Teachers, Tests, Vocabulary, Vocabulary Notebook

In this post we are going to focus on the main advantages of using Vocabulary Notebook in any course of foreign languages.

Screenshot of a user adding a word with an image to Vocabulary Notebook

Vocabulary Notebook: Adding a word

Since English is the most studied language, we will use EFL/ESL (English as a Foreign or Second Language) courses as examples, but the tool can actually be used to learn any type of vocabulary, for any language or purpose (such as medical vocabulary). So, either if you are reading this article from a student’s perspective or if you are a teacher, you will find several ways in which this new platform can help you while either learning or teaching vocabulary.

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7 Idioms Related to Summertime

Idioms, Students, Studying, Teachers, Vocabulary

Since it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, we have collected seven idioms that somehow are related to this season of the year (all the idioms include words such as water, oceans, swimming, sun, splash or shine). However, the meanings of these idioms are not related with summer at all.

Wooden chairs of different colours in a the beach on a sunny day

Intrigued? Keep reading. We hope you find them interesting!

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Major improvements in the web app performance

Students, Studying, Vocabulary Notebook

Studying in the web appIn Vocabulary Notebook, our top priority is making the learning of new vocabulary and the acquisition of knowledge as easy and comfortable as possible.

Some of our most attentive users gave us feedback about their notebooks’ performance, and we discovered that there was room for improvement in this area. And so, our team started working on major improvements.

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Vocabulary Notebook, why should it be used with the CLIL methodology?

Billingual teaching, Schools, Students, Studying, Teachers, Vocabulary Notebook

Clilvn logo

As you may have noticed, Vocabulary Notebook can make the learning process in an ESL classroom easier. However, can we assure that it provides advantages for CLIL subjects too? In this post, we will show the reasons of why the implementation of VN within the CLIL methodology is so useful.

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A digital tool to achieve the ELA Common Core Standards

Schools, Students, Studying, Teachers, Vocabulary Notebook

The standards were drafted by experts and teachers from across the country and are designed to ensure students are prepared for today’s entry-level careers, freshman-level college courses, and workforce training programs. The Common Core focuses on developing the critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills students will need to be successful. [1]

common core vn logo

Vocabulary Notebook is a digital platform that allows students to keep a personal glossary of the new terms they learn, providing useful sorting and filtering options, easy editions and useful self-assessment tests that allow them to significantly improve their vocabulary acquisition process. The full platform not only includes apps for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, but also a web-based application that allows students to access their vocabulary notebook from their pcs / laptops as well.

Below, we will point out in which way Vocabulary Notebook can help American students to fulfil the goals suggested by the Common Core State Standards.

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Major redesign of Vocabulary Notebook app for Android

News, Vocabulary Notebook

We have great news for Android users: we have just released a new version of the Vocabulary Notebook app!

Vocabulary Notebook has been redesigned and its features have been improved. You just have to update the app to the last version to enjoy these changes.

studying, old version                            studying new version

Old version of the “study” section (left) compared to new version (right)

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Self-Assessment Tests, helpful or not?

Students, Studying, Teachers, Tests

“Self-assessment is not something to be added to the repertoire of teaching activities. It is a matter which needs to be taken into account in all considerations of learning” – David Boud [1] .

AssessmentAssessments always seem problematic for many students and teachers. Unfortunately, it is very common to see that traditional methods of assessment still prevail in the great majority of the schools all over the world.

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