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 concepts of interactive CD/DVD-Roms online, and to integrate some social networking. Up til now there are subjects like math and biology. But besides German there are no other languages offered yet.

On the whole it is nothing groundbreakingly new, but it’s well executed. Small wonder though, as about 15 to 20 million euros have been invested in it by the one of the biggest German media conglomerates, Bertelsmann. Or at least that’s what we’ve heard. The service is now in beta and free to anyone, but the business idea is to charge a monthly fee for unlimited use. According to a study (pdf in German), more then one million young students in Germany get private tutoring for which their parents spend about 1.2 billion euros a year.