E-Learning a Second Language
I was interested to see the ongoing poll by Edutopia on teaching foreign languages in schools. The poll asks, "What's the most practical language for students to learn?" Of the 166 responses so far, 51 percent said Spanish. That evidently does not count Senator Barack Obama, who inspired the poll by advocating that immigrant children learn English and American children learn Spanish. Speaking of inspiration, perhaps the Beijing Summer Olympics motivated voters to make Mandarin the second most recommended language with 17 percent of the votes. French is running third with nine percent.
Further arguing for Spanish language education is the projection released this month by the Census Bureau that by 2050 there will be nearly 133 million Latinos in the United States, making them the largest minority group.
It's hard enough for some school districts to recruit teachers for European languages like Spanish and French. But Mandarin? Arabic? Russian? And even if a teacher is available, how does a school justify offering a course for which only a handful of students will register?
One way that school districts can expand their language course offerings is by using an online learning platform like IQity. A single teacher can teach students in multiple schools at the same time via an online class. With the IQity whiteboard, the teacher can speak to students in real time in the class language. Students can record audio files and send them to the teacher for assessment.
Use of the IQity platform is free to school districts using the embedded curriculum, which includes four Spanish courses. Schools pay only a small per-student fee for use of the curriculum. Teachers can also upload their own course materials for other languages, so the potential languages that can be taught over the IQity platform is not limited. Schools may pay a small hosting fee for uploaded class materials.
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