With several million Apps now available for mobile and tablet devices how do you find the Latvian ones?

You would have thought that by focusing on the two dominant players in this ever-growing mobile space (iOS – iPhone & iPad and Android) and going to their respective online stores (the App Store or Google Play) you could quickly unearth the Latvian gems. If only it was that easy.

There are literally hundreds of Latvian Apps in both the App Store and Google Play, but unless someone else has written or commented about the new App or you accidentally stumble upon it via the Web or the social networks they are not the easiest to discover. You could search for the obvious like entering “Latvia”, “Latvian”, “latviešu”, “Rīga” and all the other usual suspects, but not all developers bother to include these keywords when registering their new software creations. In an ideal world we would have a “Latvian” category alongside “News”, “Finance”, “Lifestyle”, “Travel”, “Education” and others, but I doubt that this would be a priority for either Apple or Google. You could even try to switch to the Latvia App Store (as opposed to the US App Store or Australian App Store) and conduct your search within this country in case the developer forgot to make the App available for a world-wide audience.

You could go websites and community forums such as macforums.lv, ipods.lv or androids.lv, check out the draugiem.lv social networking site or even try a major newspaper such as diena.lv and hope that the App has been featured in a review, been mentioned in a press release or the developer has used their online marketing skills to promote the new creation in these websites. But this is still largely a hit and miss affair.

You could download “Lietotnes latviski” from the App Store, a paid iPhone/iPad App that has been available for over a year and promises to curate and highlight the Latvian content for you. The infrequent updates to new Apps, the inability to track updates to existing Apps and the fact the developers won’t respond to repeated requests through their “Kontakti” option has me wondering whether the developers are still maintaining this App. The fact that the App itself has not been updated in over a year seems to confirm my suspicions.

So what else is available? Enter lietotnes.lv. This is a new online forum that I have recently created to solve some of the above mentioned challenges. It’s main purpose is to allow anyone to register a iPhone, iPad or Android App which has a Latvian theme or has been created by a Latvian developer. Both users and developers are invited to contribute. Even if you aren’t a developer, but have a great idea for the next Latvian App why not submit that as well. The online forum has been set up as an open Facebook page – if you don’t have access to Facebook then you can write directly to linfo@lietotnes.lv and we will post on your behalf.

Over the past few years I’ve come across many flashcard and vocabulary-building software, but only recently have discovered an App, which has the potential to transform the way Latvian is taught to newcomers of the language.

Developed by Grasshopper Apps, Bitsboard is the culmination of over 3 years of creating educational Apps for tablet computers. What sets their latest creation, Bitsboard apart from all other flashcard Apps is its ease of use, the professional-looking user interface, beautiful imagery and sounds, and the ability to customize for just about any language, including Latvian. Within minutes of downloading the App you can be creating your own words, adding matching photos and recording your audio for each item.

Bitsboard currently includes three activities: Flashcards, Photo Touch and Word Builder. Word Builder will scramble letters or words at the top of the screen and ask you to rearrange them to match the picture. A new activity Match Up where you match words to pictures is expected in the coming weeks. With its flexible visual and audio features Bitsboard could easily be extended beyond vocabulary exercises – what about number counting, learning to tell the time, recognising Latvian castles, testing your knowledge on Latvian traditional foods or even identifying the face of a famous Latvian musician, historian or politician?

The Latvian School in Melbourne, Australia has been using the “Little Speller” and “Sentence Maker” Apps, both of which have now been integrated into Bitsboard. Up until now the biggest limitation was not being able to share your created flashcards with others easily. Bitsboard now takes it to a completely new level by being able to publish your flashcards to the cloud-based Catalog and share it with everyone else – a growing collection of over 100,000 picture and audio-based flashcards.

Now imagine the possibilities for those teaching or learning the Latvian language. A mother could be creating a fun Latvian game for her toddler son spoken in her own voice and be able to share this with another family with lesser Latvian language skills; a student could create his own challenge list to consistently practice the more difficult Latvian words; a teacher could be at home creating a spelling board for students to upload to their iPads at their next Latvian grammar lesson; a school could establish a curriculum based on vocabulary lists taught at each school year level using fun and engaging technology; educational providers could be creating formal and customized content instantly accessible to Latvian schools and individuals around the globe.

The best thing about Bitsboard is that it is available free from the App Store. All you need is either an iPad or iPad mini running iOS 5.0 or newer version. An iPhone version is also in the works, but there is no word yet about an Android version.

For those that have already downloaded Bitsboard and are keen to get started – a quick tip. The online Catalog currently seems to be searchable by title only, so when you create a new board include “Latvian – “ or “Latviešu – “ at the beginning of your board title. Similarly if you would like to discover what is already out there just type in either of these two words into the Bitsboard Catalog search box.

Have fun and start to learn Latvian the new collaborative way.

Even though Melbourne-based Latvian Saturday School “Daugavas skola” is located just around the corner from one of the largest Latvian libraries outside of Latvia it recently decided to invest in several iPads to explore new learning opportunities.

The iPad, roughly the size between a smartphone and a laptop computer, is becoming the preferred personal computing platform for the millennial generation – people born between 1980 and 2000.  The iPad has no mouse or a physical keyboard and like its smaller cousins, the iPhone and iPod touch, you interact with it entirely via the touch sensitive high resolution screen. Its audio visual capabilities and ease of use have also attracted the attention of universities, colleges and K-12 schools worldwide.

So when the school asked me to help set up their newly-acquired third generation iPads, my task was to discover what new and exciting Apps had become available and how this technology could be applied to the classroom – where Latvian grammar, literature, history, geography, culture and traditions are taught. After extensive browsing on the App Store (over 200,000 Apps are now available for the iPad) as well as perusing numerous Web sites and online forums this is what I found.

uTalk Latvian

The uTalk series has been adapted for the Latvian language and uses a combination of images and audio for word practice. Three levels of exercises (easy game, easy game+ and hard game) will test your knowledge and you can record, play back and compare your pronunciation as well. Words are broken into topics (first words, food, colours, body, numbers, time, shopping, countries) and you can choose from many different interface languages (although in Latvian the word “food” has been incorrectly translated as “ēdienis”). The user-friendly interface makes this suitable for toddlers, children as well as mature-age students.

Translator

Produced by Rīga-based software development company Tilde, this App goes beyond the dictionary by providing the ability to translate words and sentences between Latvian, English and Russian languages. To test this out I copied a whole paragraph from Apollo.lv, a Latvian news portal, pasted it into Translator and in less than 15 seconds got a comprehensible English translation. Translator requires an Internet connection to connect to the Latvian corpus so you never have to worry about upgrades, but if you lose your WiFi or 3G connection you also lose its powerful translating capabilities. Tilde prides itself on more accurate translations compared to the Google Translate service.

Miljons

The author of the book Miljons Indra Sproģe came up with the idea of a flipbook divided into three separate sections – the top section containing 100 nouns, the middle section 100 verbs and the bottom section 100 nouns. Flipping each of the sections can result in wild and wacky sentences providing a fun learning experience for the young reader. Apparently to keep the words simple the author tested all 300 words with her 6 year old son – those that were not recognised were immediately removed from the list. The iPad version of Miljons is a wonderful reproduction of the book with added animation and quick search features. I found myself continually looking for the missing audio option so that I could listen to the newly formed sentence as well.

Latvian Verbs

The most difficult area of Latvian grammar has been transformed into an App which displays the many different verb forms for any verb of the Latvian language. You can choose between mood (izteiksme), voice (kārta), tense (laiks) and conjugations (konjugācijas). Even homonyns such as aust, dzīt and irt are recognised. Latvian Verbs is ideal for all levels – from the beginner learning the basics of verb conjugations to the more experienced Latvian speaker who needs a quick and useful grammar reference.

Latvian Nouns

Enter a noun (sirds, ūdens, ļaudis, grāmata, biedrs, alus..), proper noun (Kārlis, Vecrīga, Ziemsvētki), adjective (vismīļākais, pēdējais, brīnišķīgā), numeral (trīs, piecpadsmit) or pronoun (es, tavs, šis, tā, kas…) into the Latvian Nouns App to view all of the different noun forms or declensions. The most recent version allows for a combination of words, eg. šī brinišķīgā diena, mans mīļais kaķītis, Pēteris Ābele as well as the ability to change the interface language between Latvian, English, Russian, German and Swedish. You can even email the declension table to your fellow students while the teacher is not looking.

TuneIn Radio

Not only can you connect to thousands of radio stations worldwide, but this App allows you to record audio content for playback at a later time. Finding “Latvijas radio”, “Oira” and more than 20 other radio stations from Latvia was remarkably easy (for a current list of Latvian radio stations go to the Radio section of Latvians Online). Where it gets even more interesting is using the tablet’s AirPlay feature together with an Apple TV – suddenly your favourite Latvian radio station can be piped to your living room speakers and all wirelessly controlled from your iPad.

Skype

Almost every Latvian uses Skype – it is both free, but even more importantly, it was invented in the Baltics (to be precise – in Estonia). With the recently enhanced video features of the iPad there is no excuse for not connecting up with a fellow Latvian from the other side of the world.

Draugiem

The Latvian social network equivalent to Facebook – draugiem.lv – is still going strong with as many accounts as there are people living in Latvia (nearly 2 million). It seems that just about every Latvian primary school kid has a draugiem.lv account. Although the iPhone version has been available for several years the management recently hired iOS programmer Kristers Jurševskis who didn’t disappoint and managed to release a new iPad version just in time for his 16th birthday.

5Diena

One of the most popular newspapers in Latvia, Diena has been providing an iPad version for over a year. It is available for download every Friday and presents a summary of news and events from the previous week using a combination of text, video and interactive links. Rumor has it that a six figure investment was required to develop the original custom App, but when Apple begun offering its Newsstand App late last year, it was only a matter of time before 5Diena would join the ranks of other newspapers and magazines onto the new publishing platform. Diena also provides their daily newspaper via the Diena App, a great alternative to receiving the paper copy.

Vārdenīte

A Latvian word a day – every day you will be alerted to a new and unusual Latvian word together with an explanation and how it is used. These words have been hand-picked by the author of the Novadu vārdene and Tautlietu vārdene dictionaries, prof. Janīna Kursīte. If a word pops up that takes your fancy you can share it with others on Facebook and Twitter.

Sentence Maker

A great example where the built-in Latvian language support of the iPad can be used to customise an existing educational App for Latvian use. Sentence Maker helps students learn to make and complete their own sentences by moving words around with the touch of their finger. It offers a wide range of customisation options so you can replace or create new words, phrases and sentences and attach new voice recordings and images. This flexibility allows the teacher or parent to determine the complexity of the sentences.

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There were also several Apps that didn’t make it onto the school’s iPads. The Draugiem TV App is yet to sort out the licensing issues to enable the sizable Latvian population living outside of Latvia to view Latvian TV. The Eyes of Latvia App, which lists Webcams ranging from the evolving National Library, Rīga Old Town, Daugava River and the ski resorts, also failed to provide a real time view.

Lietotnes LV, which claims to list all Latvian related iPhone & iPad Apps, has not been able to keep up with the increased number of new Apps in the last couple of months and continues to refer to older versions that no longer exist in the App Store. iPhone Apps that have not been adapted for the larger iPad screen were also excluded.

After spending considerable time browsing the App store I also came to realize that the iPad already came preloaded with many useful Apps. Maps and Google Earth can transform a dry Latvian geography lesson into a virtual walking tour of the streets of Riga or a bird’s eye view of the lakes of Latgale, the YouTube App has videos ranging from Latvian history, news and current affairs, song festivals to the latest Latvian rock groups and flash mobs in central Rīga, the Videos App can play the latest Hollywood blockbusters in Latvian, the Camera App can take videos of students for language coaching purposes, iBooks can access the growing list of electronic books and iTunes provides a convenient way to tap into the latest Latvian music.

Then there are Apple’s own Apps such as Pages which allows you to create and edit Microsoft Word documents (you can also use a physical wireless keyboard if you can’t get used to the touch screen keyboard), Keynote for producing presentations and iMovie for creating school video projects.

With each advance of technology the possibilities for learning Latvian are growing. Any suggestions for other Apps Daugavas skola should be installing on their iPads?