Posts Tagged ‘busuu’

mg // 03.08.2009

The Five Most Promising Educational Startups

In today’s „Top 5“ edition, Tiburon-TV is looking at new and innovative approaches to education. Myngle, Busuu, Lingueo and sofatutor are all about learning the Web 2.0 way, whereas Twidox offers lots of precious resources for educational institutions.



Multi-awards winner Myngle.com operates a platform for online language education combining quality teaching and community. The Netherlands-based startup was founded by ex-eBay and Berlitz language company employees. Myngle asks people to pay about 300-400 Euro up front for lessons and thus is booking 20,000 Euro per month.



Language learning community Busuu.com is a project of the UNESCO’s year of learning languages. Madrid-based Busuu uses an integrated video-chat application where students can connect with native speakers for free. The startup has been nominated twice for the European TechCrunch Awards.



Another marketplace for learning languages is Lingueo.com. Courses in more than 40 languages can be taken in a personalized class any time, any place. You do not have to download anything and the only things you need are a microphone and a webcam.



Sofatutor.com is a virtual tutoring system with user generated videos for pupils and students. The Berlin-based interactive video platform has been launched in March 2009 and offers more than 1700 tutoring videos. Click here to watch a two-minute pitch from Plugg conference.



Twidox is another startup targeting the education market - although not a traditional learning website. The free online library offers an open education resource feature where universities can create a university system to share all their learn material, lecture handouts and research similar to MIT’s OpenCourseWare.

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vt // 17.12.2008

Easy and fun language learning with BUSUU: Bernhard Niesner @ LeWeb

Busuu.com is a start-up, based in Madrid, which runs a free online community for learning languages. Launched in May 2008 by Austrian Bernhard Niesner and his university friend Adrian Hilti from Liechtenstein, busuu.com already has 50.000 users from 200 countries, some of them pretty remote. Niesner and Hilti decided to create a new concept of learning languages online and include also less known languages so that they do not extinct. The company name itself is a language spoken in Cameroon by only eight people! Using an integrated video-chat application, students can connect with native speakers, i.e. an English language student from Sudan can directly practice his language skills with an American in New York City. With a high percentage of users in developing countries, busuu.com makes it easy and fun for everybody to learn a language and contributes to the diversity of languages all over the world. Busuu.com is also ideal to prepare a trip by making friends before visiting a country and thus make international friends. On busuu.com one can even learn the almost extinct whistling language Silbo Gomero, spoken by the people of the Spanish island La Gomera. Busuu.com can be used completely for free as a basis-member. To get access to additional learning tools and content, one has to pay a small amount per month. Therefore, Niesners christmas wish is not surprising:Unlimited google ad resources for one year.
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