The Tinyworld funding campaign at Indiegogo wants to rethink how we learn new languages.
Andrew Wong and the Tinyworld team want to help the more than 1.3 billion people currently trying to learn a second language. The Tinyworld Indiegogo campaign launched this week as a radical new approach to learning and teaching.
Following my favorite method of engineering project management, the Tinyworld team started with the constraints and then designed a project to meet those constraints. The elements identified as keys to learning language are Learning sources, Practicing objects, Repetition, and Feedback.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tinyworld-connecting-the-world-via-language-sharing
The learning platform matches people who want to learn a language with people who want to teach it. This method blends the elements of larger massive open online courses with social networking and the ability to learn language based on a students’ interest. Someone interested in sports could learn a language based on sports themes while another might want to study language through music. Eight different themes are currently offered, users choose a language and a theme to get started.
Benefits to learning a second language include higher test scores, better cognitive development, more creativity, a sense of cultural pluralism, and improvement of a student’s self-concept.
Engineers will need to interact with different people and cultures throughout their careers. As a profession viewed by many as calculating and cold instead of warm and friendly this is a great opportunity to open our social awareness. Many colleges do not require that engineers complete any foreign language requirements and Tinyworld offers an excellent supplement to an engineering degree.
The inspiration that comes from this project doesn’t come from the new delivery system but the possibilities of what else can be done with the innovation. Learning engineering concepts can be difficult for many but a large social e-learning platform could help to bring our knowledge to everyone.
Manufacturing variations between cultures, differences in the way we generate blueprints and call out tolerances, and variations in quality control methods can all be explored using a format like Tinyworld.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tinyworld-connecting-the-world-via-language-sharing
