Luis von Ahn has already sold two companies to Google (one of them is reCAPTCHA which makes users digitize text while verifying that they are really human). It seems I need to step out of the typical economic mindset. I’m told Duolingo for schools intends to remain free. That’s why when Gina Gotthilf, their head of communications and international growth, told me about the launch of Duolingo for Schools, I assumed this was to become their big revenue strategy-selling big district wide contracts internationally. Most of the education start-ups I talk to are pretty clear that they want a piece of the huge international education technology market that seems to be waiting for the right revolutionary product. In the long term, this could become a very lucrative revenue strategy if they can get colleges, universities, and employers to adopt the test in a widespread way.Īre these initiatives enough to enable Duolingo to continue offering high quality language instruction for free? I don’t know. Duolingo’s test uses a smartphone’s camera and microphone to virtually proctor the test, ensuring honesty without requiring participants to travel to test centers. Duolingo’s test remains free, but they eventually plan to charge a $20 fee. The TOEFL costs $160-250 to take, depending on the country in which it’s given. The TOEFL is the ETS standardized test that foreign students take to demonstrate English language proficiency before studying in the United States. In other words, they’re taking on the TOEFL (test of English as a foreign language). Last year, Duolingo also launched a certification test that aims to create a new standard for language proficiency. But Duolingo doesn’t really want to be a translation company. Duolingo then partners with media companies to sell these inexpensive student generated translations. If you’re studying languages with Duolingo, you can participate in an immersive wiki-like translation process.
In 2013, the company began offering crowdsourced translation services to CNN and Buzzfeed.
0 kommentar(er)
