Author Archive
Playing Chinese in Korean
Assuming that most of us can’t read either Korean or Chinese characters, news about a new Multiplayer Online Game - Hanjamru - for school children to learn the latter, might not be so exciting. But the blog of the creators of the game - Eduflo - is a little: they describe there the design process [...]
Failed symbolism - perils for non-native speakers
Imagine the moment, when the responsible editor of the “Max Planck Research” magazine learned, that the chinese symbols on the cover of its latest issue were an advertisment for some kind of strip club. That was not intended by the publication of the old and respected German research institute - as can be read in [...]
Lack of language a security risk?
More then 200 Million high school students in China study English while about 25,000 of their U.S. counterparts study Chinese language according to a Report from a Northwestern University graduate journalism student. It is not only global competition in economic terms which suffers under the unwillingness of more then the half of US high [...]
Jason Lutes: “Making the leap from cold history to something that feels more alive”
The recently published “Berlin - City of Smoke”, playing in 1929/30, is the second book in an eventual graphic-novel triology. Its creator, Jason Lutes, talks about diving into German history without speaking German.
You hadn’t been to Berlin before you started the comic - How did you make a picture for yourself?
I did about two [...]
Scoyo: Private online lessons for fun… and money
A new online learning platform - scoyo - has been up for nearly a month now in Germany. It’s a service for private lessons for kids around 12, claiming that “learning can be fun”. There is a US-version in the works for the “near future”. The core concept of scoyo is bringing the learning [...]
Does code count as a language?
The following statement of Kristian over at web-translations made me wonder. He was writing about how much is too much in language learning, and ends with the following: “As for me, well, I speak 6 languages…English, French, small talk, MSN speak, some basic programming languages (do they count? They should as they have strict syntax [...]
Connectivism: Education as an act of liberty
How about a glimpse into the future of online education? Stephen Dowes’ article about “The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On” is an informative read about recent trends in eLearning. It also gives quite plausible predictions for things to come. Besides statements about “informal learning” (have a look at our factsheet for all these [...]
Using the globe as a learning tool
Did you know that there are about 30 endagered languages on the westcoast of the US alone? Take Hupa or Hoopa, which nowadays is spoken by less than 10 people, according to the Rosetta Stone Project. It provides several layers for the online-globe Google Earth: Besides an archive of endangered languages you can [...]
When words go fractalicious: An interactive dictionary that branches out
There you go, web magic at its best: Visuwords gives you an interactive dictionary, letting you dynamically examine the connections and relationships betweens words - it’s a blast, and a bit mind-bending, to toy around with. Just have a look at the short video above to get an idea. The flash-based service incorporates WordNet, a [...]
We found new friends abroad
Big things are afoot at the Babbel language platform these days: Besides reaching the 100,000 user mark, Babbel announced today acquiring the British language community FriendsAbroad.com. This makes Babbel one of the largest players in the online language learning market. To incorporate the huge community of language learners from FriendsAbroad.com, Babbel is integrating new features, [...]
