Praxis is making perfect
And yet another very positive write-up for Ken Carroll of Praxis Language. This time in the Economist. Because it's about "How Skype, podcasts and broadband are transforming language teaching," and because the market for Chinese is the focus, it was almost inevitable that the story would be called "Mandarin 2.0". And it was.
According to Carroll, "Tens of millions" of people in 110 countries now download the free ChinesePod podcasts, Praxis's flagship service. It is said that the Irish like to embellish stories, so that "tens of millions" there may be hyperbole, but the rest sounds convincing: "Now he has 35 employees, all in Shanghai, serving customers globally. He hires the city's best language teachers and pays them about $500 a month, a good wage by local standards. The customers are everywhere from Berkeley to Alaska and the Vatican. In the past, when language instruction — along with haircuts and massages — was a 'non-tradable' sector of the economy, many people would not have found a native Mandarin speaker as a teacher in their town at all. Now they need only a broadband connection."
Particularly impressive is how Carroll uses his blog to debate language learning with his pod public. The 23 May post, "Who is behind Praxis Language?", is a straightforward statement about the enterprise, but it is the 33 comments that are fascinating. This kind of quality feedback is priceless and Carroll can count himself lucky that he has customers who are so eager to help him improve the product. The term "Web 2.0" is in danger of overexposure, but the idea at its core — community participation — is seen at its best here.
BTW, loved this example of geek speak: "Personally I dodge PDFs like the plague; they are inefficient huge files, primarily concerned with page layout. I'm interested in data, not fluff. I like to save the characters to a text file, convert it to GB2312 (or Big5 in my case) and simply read/edit that text file on my PDA with a text editor (txtMemo is excellent and free). Again, you need to buy CJKOS to read or write characters. Everything else you can get at freewarepalm.com". Yes, technology is transforming language teaching, and learning.
