My second prediction for 2012 is about two of the oldest players in the language learning community space, Palabea and italki.
Both disappeared from the main screen about two years ago but none of them ever hit the dead pool though we have to say that Palabea has been very close to a cardiac arrest. But looking at some of the recent posts, I predict that both will attempt to make a comeback in the first half of 2012.
Today’s MRU could be dubbed “the tablet edition” as four out of five stories I would like to talk about are around tablet devices. I think this is another sign how quickly tablets have become part of our hardware landscape.
Therefore today we take a look at some changes for teachers using the italki marketplace, busuu’s new iPad apps, Apple planning to sell iPads at Toys “R” US, news from the “information experience” platform Qwiki and another $30 million funding round for the Kno led by Intel and Condé Nast.
This is truly an exciting week for education 2.0. After yesterday’s launch of Mahalo 4.0 which takes on the asynchronous video learning market which an additional live Q&A community part, another well known player entered the field of language learning communities today.
Babylon, the software based dictionary that launched in 1997, is now offering an online community for linguists in its newest version 9 release. The company also teamed up with Ginger Software, a contextual spell and grammar checker.
News from Shanghai. italki took the time to do some spring cleaning on their website and also added a new feature called Notebook which was demanded by their users.
So let’s have a look.
Language learning community / marketplace italki reworked its flagship product, the Eleutian SpeakENG course by adding different levels and the SpeakENG Sampler.
italki is proceeding on its way of building a solid basis for its worldwide language learning marketplace.
After adding WebMoney, an online payment webservice popular in Russia and the CIS last week, italki announced today that the platform now offers payments via UnionPay.
italki announced on their blog that the platform is offering payment via WebMoney from now on.
WebMoney is a popular online payment provider in Russia, the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) and parts of Europe.
As I mentioned in my earlier post today about WiZiQ, italki also has some nice new features for its teachers underneath the Christmas tree.
italki has been very busily working on their marketplace recently but the features they launched today are more affecting the overall usability and the booking process on the platform.
Before starting to give you my personal review I have to thank a couple of people. Let me start with Vikrama Dhiman of WiZiQ who supported me all the way from the planning to the ETCon today. I think he did an amazing job, so Kudos to you! You made the second ETCon a really smooth event for everyone involved.
Secondly I want to thank the members of the panel. Jason West of Languages Out There who did a great presentation about communities and shared emotion, Bernhard Niesner of busuu who gave us an inside view of his company and his thoughts on self regulating communities and the difference between in house developed content compared to crowdsourced content, Kevin Chen of italki who talked about problems of international / global platforms and the right member mix and last but not least again Vikrama Dhiman who explained how non educational companies use crowdsourcing and that crowdsourcing not always needs a community.
And of course I have to thank the great audience. You asked awesome questions that led to a resourceful discussion of the panel at the end. Thank you for attending the ETCon and spreading the word. I really appreciate your interest!
The second ETCon will be on August 27 at 3PM CEST. We scheduled it this time towards our attendees and panel members in India and Asia.
As last time the E-Teachers Conference will have a first class line up of panel members. This time our panelists are:
Shirley Yiong, Marketing Manager of Livemocha
Jason West, Founder of Languages Out There
Bernhard Niesner, Co-Founder of busuu
Kevin Chen, Co-Founder of italki
Harman Singh, Founder of WiZiQ
The panel will present their own point of view about the topic Communities and the Power of Crowdsourcing. The presentations will then be followed by a moderated discussion and a Q&A session with the audience.
You can ask your questions on the ETCon directly to the panel by using the classroom chat or using Twitter and the #ETCon hashtag. If you cannot attend on the thursday but want to ask a question you can also post them in the ETCon blog at http://etcon.eteachersacademy.com
The ETCon is a free event and everybody interested in elearning is welcome to join. Just subscribe for a free ticket.
The second ETCon is hosted by WiZiQ.
Follow the ETCon on Twitter @ETConference or join out twub at http://twubs.com/etcon
You know, it took me a while to understand italki as I pointed out in my last post about them. There are two important news I did not talk about yet and both have to do with usability and customer care.
italki embeded two new payment methods to their platform. Not a big deal you might say, but hold on. This is huge.
The title of the latest italki Press release is quite a statement:
italki Partners with Eleutian to Offer US‐Certified Teachers and SpeakENG Content “Powered by Pearson®”
Pearson, does it ring a bell? Exactly, Pearson announced a partnership with Livemocha a couple of month ago. You can read my post about it over here.
But to me the fact that italki is calling themselves “the italki Marketplace” is even more interesting. So lets have a look on the news from Shanghai.
WiZiQ announced the start for Public Paid Classes in their blog today. They also got themselves a new look so I think it’s time to put them into the spotlight again.
A few days ago I received an email from Toffler Niemuth of italki.com about their announcement of launching a language tutoring marketplace on their site.
Back in january I already did a brief post about this platform but I think they are a decent alternative to Myngle.com and eduFire.com which are in the same market segment for the asian and indian sector. Therefore, lets have a look what italki offers to teachers and students.
In addition to their language exchange program italki.com is offering a new service since last week. You can now apply as a language teacher or tutor.
Teachers are defined as professionel instructors who already worked as language teachers, tutors are native speakers who share their knowledge on a paid basis, so basically the paid version of a language exchange. Continue reading
