I’ve signed up for a few more of these language learning communities that are built on social networking software. www.italki.com is the first up for review…
italki.com – what is it?
italki.com offers 90+ languages. The site’s free and doesn’t mention that it might move to a subscription model any time soon. But being a social network, you’ve got to sign up, give away the usual personal info, before you’re free to explore.*
italk.com – appearance
Ok. So italk.com wins out over livemocha.com on this one. They’re prettier. They feel younger. Their palette is pretty pink and cool grey on white white white. It’s clean and simple.
italk.com – what you can do
Once you’re signed up, you can find a language-learning partner or group to practice with. You can get answers to questions, and share and find resources.
italk.com – will you learn?
italk.com doesn’t work for me. The site is a pretty much a social network for language learners, which is great. But they don’t have any bespoke learning materials – the only content seems to be user-generated or skimmed from other sites.
For example, the Shared Files tab lets you search files uploaded by other members of the site. You can choose to view content by selecting the most recent, most liked, most viewed, most discussed and most downloaded. My problem with this is quality control. How do I know what’s decent? Not having time to waste at the moment, I simply didn’t touch any of these learning materials. I need to know what I’m learning is quality assured.
The Language Resources tabs leads you to what seems to be a search engine that pulls in language resources from the general web. Again, not knowing exactly what the content was, who authored it, or of what use it was, I simply didn’t use it. And I wonder how they’re dealing with the copyright issues of sharing and finding content.
So for learning materials, italki.com scores a big zero for me. Compare them to Livemocha.com, who offer you a social network integrated with learning materials. Ok, so the materials are sometimes inaccurate and I still question their instructional design methods, but the content is there, you’re encouraged to take a course, you’re tracked on your learning, your performance is rated on a leader board – even if no-one makes friends with you, you can learn.
italki.com – did I make friends?
No I did not. I messaged a few of the Irish language learners, but no-one’s replied yet. No-one has asked to be my friend. I feel LONELY.
*I just wish someone, somewhere could create a little app that would let me fill out this basic info just the once, have it on my PC so I could upload it to all these sites. I’m sooooooooo tired of typing my name, address, DOB, favourite film and favourite funny quote of all time.
