The “personal assistant” craze is in full effect on mobile devices, with Apple’s SIRI kicking off the fun. The dream of being able to speak out loud and have information come back to you is something that technologists have been discussing for years. The smarter that our devices are, and the more we use them, the more we expect in return. Google is in the game with its own… → Read More
With the November elections right around the corner, education reform is a hot topic these days, thanks to a flood of reports indicating that the U.S. has fallen behind its peers on a number of educational fronts — from enrollment and high school graduation rates to achievement and teacher salaries. Diminishing interest (and performance) in STEM education, in particular, has prompted a… → Read More
Open English, as its name might suggest, is an online learning platform that helps non-English speakers learn the language and speak fluently. After developing the foundation for Open English in his home country of Venezuela in 2006, Andres Moreno took his idea north to Florida, where he launched the program commercially in 2008. Since then, Open English has flourished. Today, the startup employs… → Read More
In China, learning spoken English is giving rise to a huge and growing market. For instance, in addition to English classes in public schools, parents send their children to about 50,000 for-profit training schools around the country, where English is the most popular subject. Instead of American Idol, on CCTV, the national government-owned TV network, they have the Star of Outlook English… → Read More
Can you even imagine what it must have been like to be an early explorer? Like, you leave Spain or Portugal on some rickety boat, and arrive in the New World. Cool and all, but, outside of shooting everything in sight, how do you communicate with anybody? What, do you point to the sun and say “sol,” and expect the other guy to repeat “sol”? That can’t be an efficient way to learn a… → Read More
The Nintendo DS is now being used in Japan as a study aid for high schoolers learning English. Students use for 10 minutes at the beginning of class DS software that includes over 3000 English words. By conducting class in this fashion, students receive concise language instruction that is free of human error. It still baffles me why there is so little emphasis on foreign languages in the States. → Read More
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