In this paper we present the results of an experiment made with our e-librarian service "MatES", an e-Learning tool on fractions in mathematics. MatES allows students to enter complete questions in natural language and returns semantically pertinent multimedia results which explain the answer to the users' question.The efficiency of MatES was proven by benchmark tests. From 229 different user questions, the system returned the right answer for 97% of the questions, and only one answer (the best one) for nearly half of the questions.A class of 22 students took part in the five week experiment. Students were autonomous and learned through exploratory exercises. Students asked MatES questions. The multimedia explanations yielded by MatES allowed to acquire new knowledge, and to complete the exercises.At the conclusion of the experiment, MatES was confirmed as an efficient e-librarian service that can be used in school or at home. It can be used in blended learning, distance learning, and collaborative learning situations. The students used MatES as a tool that helps them to do better in mathematics. We measured relevant improvements in the students' school results over the period they used MatES, compared to the school results before they used MatES. One of the main reasons for this excellent result may be that the students were more motivated, and therefore put more effort into learning and acquiring new knowledge. The students also stated that MatES explained better, and that they understood the course content more easily.

On behalf of the Ministry of Education in Luxembourg (Europe), 821 teachers -from primary school to higher education -were questioned in an online survey at the beginning of 2009 about their use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education. In this paper, we briefly present the context of the questionnaire and will then focus on its outcomes. The preliminary analysis of the results will mainly focus on the closed questions of the survey and try to answer several fundamental questions related to the availability, as well as to the current and the future usage of ICT in schools. Most of the teachers use ICT in some way in education, but printed documents remain the most popular source of information during class. The main argument listed to use ICT is the increase of students' motivation, while the major concern is the technical hardware dependency or unavailability. Also, an important number of teachers is concerned about the increased preparation time that is in most cases not rewarded. Finally, a vast majority of the teachers is willing to take part in an e-learning training program, probably because they feel unqualified or do not (yet) see the advantage of ICT for their classes.

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Inaudible syntactic markers are especially difficult to spell. This paper examines how 455 fourth graders spell silent French plural markers in a dictation with real and pseudowords after one year of formal French instruction (L2). The Generalized Linear Mixed Model analysis shows first that noun plural spelling (real and pseudo) is a strong predictor for verb and adjective plural spelling. Second, the performance on real verb plural is higher than the performance on real adjective plural. In contrast, the performance on pseudoadjective plural is higher than on pseudoverb plural. Our findings indicate the strong influence of semantics and frequency in instruction input on plural spelling: noun plural is semantically grounded, and nouns are most frequent in the curriculum. Verbs and verb plural are also frequent, and inflection is mostly taught by means of memorizing the verb inflection paradigm. Adjectives are taught least frequently. The findings are discussed in the context of French L2 instruction, as the extremely low results on adjectives and pseudoverbs seem to be a consequence of instruction methods.

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