Quora Feeds
Active Member
Jonathan Woolf
I cannot believe this startup hasn't been mentioned, but any dialog about interesting EdTech startups should most certainly include Duolingo.
Duolingo is a widely acclaimed, free language teaching tool used by over 25 million users.
Duolingo is like a gamified version of the Rosetta Stone
Like many language learning tools, Duolingo initially teaches users the basics of the language. As users become more skilled, they are challenged to translate texts. According to a study commissioned by Duolingo, users with no previous knowledge of Spanish who spend 34 hours learning Spanish using Duolingo reach the same level of proficiency as a person who's taken a first-semester college course in Spanish. Duolingo is able to keep the product free by employing an innovative model of crowdsourcing.
Remains free through a symbiotic relationship with publishers that offers crowdsourced translation services
Basically, advanced users/learners of the product are tested based on their ability to translate snippets of articles from publishers like CNN and BuzzFeed. These publishers in turn pay Duolingo to translate their articles and since Duolingo has millions of users, the service can offer professional translation services that are not only faster but also a fraction of the cost of other options.
Founder invented the reCaptcha which also employs innovative crowdsourcing model to digitally transcribe old books
Luis Von Ahn, Duolingo's founder, was one of the creators of the captcha. His captcha technology was initially created to protect websites against bots by generating tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. Seeing the immense challenge Amazon and Google were facing when scanning old books with difficult-to-scan typesetting, Von Ahn suggested using snippets of the difficult-to-scan passages as captchas. This gave rise to a new company, reCaptcha which digitizes more than two million books a year.
Read more:
Crowdsourcing Capitalists: How Duolingo's Founders Offered Free Education To Millions
Duolingo - Wikipedia
BuzzFeed's plan to translate its ''listicles'' is brilliant, brazen, and a little nutty
Note: I'm not affiliated in any way with Duolingo. I'm just a passionate believer in what they are doing.
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...
I cannot believe this startup hasn't been mentioned, but any dialog about interesting EdTech startups should most certainly include Duolingo.
Duolingo is a widely acclaimed, free language teaching tool used by over 25 million users.
Duolingo is like a gamified version of the Rosetta Stone
Like many language learning tools, Duolingo initially teaches users the basics of the language. As users become more skilled, they are challenged to translate texts. According to a study commissioned by Duolingo, users with no previous knowledge of Spanish who spend 34 hours learning Spanish using Duolingo reach the same level of proficiency as a person who's taken a first-semester college course in Spanish. Duolingo is able to keep the product free by employing an innovative model of crowdsourcing.
Remains free through a symbiotic relationship with publishers that offers crowdsourced translation services
Basically, advanced users/learners of the product are tested based on their ability to translate snippets of articles from publishers like CNN and BuzzFeed. These publishers in turn pay Duolingo to translate their articles and since Duolingo has millions of users, the service can offer professional translation services that are not only faster but also a fraction of the cost of other options.
Founder invented the reCaptcha which also employs innovative crowdsourcing model to digitally transcribe old books
Luis Von Ahn, Duolingo's founder, was one of the creators of the captcha. His captcha technology was initially created to protect websites against bots by generating tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. Seeing the immense challenge Amazon and Google were facing when scanning old books with difficult-to-scan typesetting, Von Ahn suggested using snippets of the difficult-to-scan passages as captchas. This gave rise to a new company, reCaptcha which digitizes more than two million books a year.
Read more:
Crowdsourcing Capitalists: How Duolingo's Founders Offered Free Education To Millions
Duolingo - Wikipedia
BuzzFeed's plan to translate its ''listicles'' is brilliant, brazen, and a little nutty
Note: I'm not affiliated in any way with Duolingo. I'm just a passionate believer in what they are doing.
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...
