Partnerships – a new Trend in Education 2.0

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Kirsten Winkler

In one of my last blog posts I wrote about the partnership announcement of Livemocha.com and Pearson.com.

One day later I came across the announcement of FriendsAbroad.com that they are now a part of the language learning platform Babbel.com.

Then LanguagesOutThere.com, a content provider for ESL material, announced a partnership with italki.com.

And finally this morning I saw the following tweet of Jon Bischke, CEO of eduFire.com:

Ok, this tweet might just be a joke, it probably is but still I think there is some kind of a trend towards teaming up between different companies in the education sector which can complement each other. Or is it to beef up for a weak economy in 2009 and to show some muscles to the competitors?

Let’s have a look on the recent partnerships and how they complement their business.

  1. Livemocha and Pearson
    Livemocha is the biggest online language learning community on the web with over 2 million members. Pearson is one of the biggest if not the biggest publisher of offline ESL material.
    This partnership brings high quality content to the Livemocha platform and 2 million potential new clients for Pearson.
  2. FriendsAbroad.com and Babbel.com
    FriendsAbroad is a platform for language exchange. Babbel.com is famous for its online exercises to learn vocabulary.
    The partnership will bring a whole new community to Babbel.com and free learning material for the members of FriendsAbroad.
  3. LanguagesOutThere.com and italki.com
    Same pattern as Livemocha and Pearson. A content provider teams up with an online community.

As this is speculation I won’t put it on the “official” list.

  • eduFire.com and TeachStreet.com
    eduFire.com is a language learning platform with an online classroom environment and online community. TeachStreet.com is the web 2.0 version of the classic circular you receive in your mailbox or the notice on the blackboard of your highschool, just better.
    What would a merger bring them? They already have a partnership which allows users from both platforms either to post their online lessons on TeachStreet.com or link the other way from their TeachStreet account to their eduFire.com online classes.

Picture All Blacks

Related Posts:

  1. Livemocha and Collins announce Partnership for Premium Courses
  2. Partnerships, Partnerships, Partnerships
  3. Exclusive Preview of the new Livemocha Active English Course
  4. Pearson – Full Steam Ahead
  5. Livemocha and Pearson Announce Partnership for Online Language Learning

About Kirsten Winkler

Education 2.0 Blogger at KirstenWinkler.com, Interviewer at EDUKWEST.com, Consultant at WinklerMedia.com.
This entry was posted in Education 2.0 and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • chinamike
    Kirsten,

    As I understand it was a straight buy-out and Babble wanted to take advantage of the tens of thousands of people who were members of FriendsAbroad.

    It terms of LiveMocha and Persons it will be interesting to watch which side benefits most. If you are Pearson you gotta be worried about all those titles that will be threatened in a non-book (or free book), services centric world.

    There is no reason that the same thing that happened to music and is now happening to movies and newspapers couldn't happen to the ELT publishing industry. It sounds to me like Pearson has placed bets on a changing market place- from servicing schools to servicing students directly. I see this as a switch from an institution-centric model to a student-centric model.

    When a book provider aligns themselves with an company like Livemocha, schools (by way of bookstores), currently the main customers of Pearsons, will ultimately suffer in the end. Cue the "end of the dinosaurs era" music.

    I would have loved to have rewritten the press release for this announcement. Mine would have gone something like this:

    Pearsons sides with On-line provider, language schools under threat. Are teachers next?


    It seems to me like a good content partner can support schools, or teachers or students but it is stretching it a bit to believe that you can fully and strategically support any two at the same time.

    So, who is you know who going to end up supporting most, teachers or students?
  • Hi Salar and Katie,
    welcome to my blog :).
    I think I have to chat with Jon again, maybe he will tell me all the secrets ;). The level of cooperation between teachstreet and edufire is already great. And I can see some more interesting prospects for the future...

    @China_Mike I already thought they did because of the entry screen of friendsabroad. Interesting.
  • This post made me smile.

    While I haven't heard anything about Edufire and TeachStreet merging :), our partnership is fun and fruitful. Most of all, we love working with great leaders in the education space and we appreciate learning from them.

    Cheers,

    Katie Gruver
    Community Manager, TeachStreet
  • Nice sleuthing, Kirsten. :)

    I love TeachStreet and eduFire. There are some definite possibilities for collaboration in the future. Jon and Dave are both great guys, and I'm really looking forward to watching both TeachStreet and eduFire grow.

    Thanks for the post.
  • chinamike
    Actually Babble acquired Friends Abroad if my memory serves me correctly.
blog comments powered by Disqus