The language learning community Babbel receives 1 Million Euro Funding from the European Regional Development Fund and the State of Berlin. There will also be an investment of 200.000 Euro from the Babbel Team in their company. That’s what I call dedication to your project! Chapeau.
For a long time I did not cover all the new partnerships that were made in the education 2.0 sector. One reason for this is the huge amount of new companies which enter the game.
Really exciting times but nevertheless lets have a look at the “grown up” rebels. You will see that there is lots going on, too. Especially building alliances with the established top dogs in education.
As a kid back in the nineties I loved to watch Wrestling on TV. Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker, Bret Michaels, The Heartbreak Kid, you name them. One of the events I loved the most was the Royal Rumble where every two minutes another Wrestler entered the ring. The rule was simple: the last one in the ring won the match and you had to get all the others out of the ring above the top row. But their two feet had to touch the ground to be out of the match.
At some moments of the fight there were up to 20 Top Wrestlers in the match, building alliances that broke the next minute and so on. You see, the WWF taught me a lot about business 
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Now what has this to do with online education? Well, you can say that in the Royal Rumble of language learning communities we are now at the point where the World Champion entered the Ring. In this case Rosetta Stone with their new product TOTALe.
Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning.
This is the title of a report published by the U.S. Department of Education. I think it is a must read for online education companies although it was made for K-12 education in the U.S. because it clearly shows why language learning communities like Livemocha, Busuu or Babbel are so popular and seem to satisfy the needs of their members.
The two european based language learning communities Busuu.com (Spain) and Babbel.com (Germany) are nominated in different categories at the Europas, the european TechCrunch Awards in London.
I will be there, too and hope to get some “insider info” out of those guys. And some free cocktails, of course.
If you want to vote for your favourite platform, here are the links.
Busuu.com is nominated as
The Europas: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)
The Europas: Best Bootstrapped Startup (less than 3 years old)
Babbel.com is nominated as
The Europas: Best Web Application Or Service (EMEA)
The Europas: Best Design
Votes are open until wednesday (July 2nd). So, go vote 
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The Berlin based Babbel.com just launched its first Premium Course about a week ago. It is called “Spanisch – der leichte Einstieg (Spanish – the easy Start)” and based on the course “Spanisch ganz einfach in 20 Tagen” from Christof Kehr published by Hueber.
One of my subscribers of my YouTube Channel asked my the following question.
Hi,
Could you recommend to me the best way to memorising and learning German vocabulary? Because of my lack of vocabulary I am afraid to speak German. I would be very appreciative if you could tell me how I can learn vocabulary and retain it in my memory. Would this be the same with German verbs?
Many thanks!
