Automatic creation of materials for vocabulary learning based on pictures by mobile phones of learners

When we learn a vocabulary, memorizing words with their corresponding images and pronunciations is more effective than memorizing them with only the texts of their spellings and meanings. But, unfortunately, it is arduous for some specific instructors to prepare a large amount of learning materials by combining movies and sounds. Hence, in our research project, we have developed and opened an online vocabulary learning environment where learning materials are automatically created by just inputting the movies captured by digital cameras of learners and the spellings and the meanings of the words. In this paper, to decrease burden of creating learning materials for learners, we extended the system by adding a new function so that a learning material is created automatically from a still image captured using a mobile phone equipped with a digital camera and sent to the SIGMA system by an e-mail with the corresponding spelling and meaning. By introducing the new function to the environment, we can accumulate the learning materials efficiently, and learners have opportunities to touch new words with a wide range of learning materials.