Duolingo is a language-learning
platform that I believe would be extremely successful in the classroom.
Duolingo is accessible to everyone. It is completely free of cost and includes
a language-learning website, app, crowd sourced text translation, and a
language proficiency assessment center. The app is available on iOS, Android, and
Windows 8 and 10. The website and app together offer over 50 different language
courses across 23 languages and additional courses are currently in
development.
During account set up, the user is
asked to set goals and expectations including how much time they hope to
practice a day. The time they put in
each day is tracked and recorded, giving you daily reminders of how far along
you are, what topics you have covered, and how much more progress you need to
reach your designated goal. Duolingo understands the importance of continually
refreshing each skill that you learn and keeps a strength bar that
reminds you of which skill has not been reviewed recently and reminds you to
refresh it before having to learn it all over again. Duolingo has also
partnered with LinkedIn so users can post their fluency with a certain language
directly to their LinkedIn profile.
In January 2015, Duolingo released Duolingo for Schools.
This technology provides teachers with a centralized dashboard that can display
their students’ progress and track how many assignments each student has
completed on time, submitted late, or missed. The dashboard allows teachers to
understand each individual student’s stengths and weaknesses at each skill
they cover and helps them optimize their language-teaching methods. It also
allows students to follow friends and classmates and see the progress of those
around them in order to stay motivated through a healthy competition.
Duolingo offers various learning
tools that will properly cater to each student’s preferred learning style. They
have activities that incorporate listening, reading, and speaking skills. Using
the microphone Duolingo will ask the students to speak specific words and
phrases and will only allow them to move on to the next phrase when the student
pronounces everything correctly. Duolingo also has activities that ask the
student to listen and translate. Duolingo allows the students to immerse
themselves in the language and practice their skills by reading and translating
real articles from the internet. They categorize the articles by progress,
category, and difficulty and also give the option for users to upload their own
articles. Duolingo gives students multiple faucets to learn in creative ways
and lays out a structure for teachers to help keep students engaged and
improving.
A pitfall for teachers is that it
is extremely structured and does not leave much room for flexibility. Once you
sign up, it keeps you active by diminishing strength bars and sending daily reminders
to practice. Duolingo also does not allow teachers to jump ahead to different
skills. You can only open a new skill when you have completed the one before it.
In 2013, Apple honored Duolingo as
the iPhone App of the Year, which was the first time this recognition was
awarded to an educational application. Duolingo also won Best Education Startup
at the 2014 Crunchies, which is an industry award given out by several technology
blogs to the Silicon Valley companies and venture capitalists they cover.
Wow, this is a great learning tool for both adults and students. I have been wanting to learn a language for awhile now and I actually created a profile because it seems so user friendly. The for schools version seems like a great way for language teachers to keep track of students progress. With so many students in the class it can be hard to make sure everyone is completing their work and learning. Compared to just a class website, the teacher can actually see how students are progressing in their learning.
ReplyDeleteI love this Kelly! Thank you for sharing your research information on duolingo. I am amazed at how easy it is to get started and how many languages they offer to learn for free. I am really happy that you shared information on duolingo because my previous job offered free Rosetta Stone but I no longer have access to it. I would love to use this free language learning platform to continue my Spanish studies.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a great tool for students and for teachers. Especially since duolingo offers listening, reading and speaking practices. Duolingo seems like a great resource for students and parents that are from other places all over the world and move here and wish to learn English. This is a great tool for teachers to have their students start using a young age. I feel that if I had been exposed to tools like duolingo at a young age I would know much more about other languages as an adult.
I also think this is a great resource for people that want to learn a new language as they enter the workforce. Our Country is so diverse especially California. It is almost mandatory for individuals to speak more than one language. The capability of being able to speak multiple languages is a great resume builder.