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ChinesePod and SpanishSense hit Facebook
2007-07-20 10:24:00
With Facebook all over the news these days, and VC-backed development teams from Wuxi to Anping scrambling to roll-out Chinese editions of the site, I’m pleased to announce our own little contribution to the social networking frenzy: official ChinesePod and Span ishSens e applications for Facebook. We’ve been lucky enough to have a bunch of brave early-adopters and testers from the ChinesePod Facebook group (thank you). Now anyone can install either of our beauties by visiting their respective pages: ChinesePod and SpanishSense. Once the applications are installed, links to them will appear in your left-side navigation bar (tip: click “more” if you can’t see them). As you can see from this screenshot, the application shows the podcast player along with links to the other lesson materials. You can switch between any of the most recent 10 or so lessons using the select box near the bottom. Changes should be nearly instant. As icing on the cake, while the a...
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The ChinesePod Grammar Guide
2007-07-16 10:27:00
Although “fashionably late,” the Gram mar Guid e has finally joined the ChinesePod party. Today I would like to explain the purpose of the Grammar Guide, how to use it, what it is now, and what it will be in the future. Before I go on, though, I should say that the Grammar Guide is a ChinesePod premium feature. It’s just one more part of our commitment to making a ChinesePod subscription worth every penny. The Purpose Basically, the goal of the Grammar Guide is to answer all your questions about Chinese Grammar. It’s meant to be the guide that I (John Pasden) wish I had when I was studying Chinese. Not only does it cover all the grammatical jargon, it also breaks it down into understandable language and provides lots of concrete examples. Through the magic of the internet, we can make the Grammar Guide entries and explanations heavily interlinked (think Wikipedia), we can tie them to lessons through grammar tags, we can add javascript rollover functionality for...

Canto-mania!
2007-07-14 05:33:00
In my last post here I talked about building language learning communities, and today I’m happy to announce the birth of ChinesePod Cant onese, a forum dedicated to learners of what may well be the coolest sounding of the Chinese dialects. It is being administered by AuntieSue, a familiar face in the ChinesePod community, and is off to a great start. In other news, we’re still looking for administrators interested in our other soon-to-be launched forums. These forums are for languages other than Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Cantonese. If you’re interested in creating a community for learners of a language other than those three, let us know! As before, we’re offering a complimentary Praxis Pass (which gives you premium access to all our products) to forum administrators, and we’re also offering AdSense revenue (if you want – you aren’t required to run ads on your forum). If this sounds like something you’d like to do, please drop me a line at john.biesnecker@praxis...
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ChinesePod Website Tweaks
2007-07-13 11:17:00
The Tech Team at ChinesePod has been busy adding requested functionality to the site, and we are pleased to announce that the following changes are already in effect: Most active users. It’s useful to know which users are most active on ChinesePod. They tend to know really well how to use the site, which lessons are the best, which forum threads the most interesting, etc. If you’re wondering who these “Most Active Users” are (Bazza), just go into the Conversations section and look in the right-hand column under your Watchlist. The number there reflects lesson comments and new posts made in the last 7 days. Admin Marking. Some of you have told us that you are not always able to tell which commenters are actually working at ChinesePod. Well, now that there is an “Admin” label on the avatars of the ChinesePod teachers and staff, it should be a lot clearer. New Footer. The ChinesePod footer has been reorganized and redesigned to make the sections of ...
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i-Lectures?
2007-07-10 05:52:00
Perhaps falling under an ‘Obvious’ category, Campus Technology concludes: “Podcasting does not contain any inherent value. It is only valuable inasmuch as it helps the instructor and students reach their educational goals, by facilitating thoughtful, engaging learning activities that are designed to work in support of those goals.” We here at Praxis see technology as ‘plumbing’ so this is no surprise to us. Of move value is the 15-page introductory PDF whitepaper ‘Teaching with Technology: Podcasting’ which explores the use of podcasting for (1) recorded lectures, (2) supplementary learning content and (3) student produced exercises. Some points of note: - Studies have shown that as many as 80% of students listen to or view podcasts at their computer, rather than on a portable device in a mobile environment. - Most students perceive lecture podcasts as a tool for review, rather than as a replacement for attending lectures. - Among the ...
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Community Building
2007-07-06 08:32:00
At Praxis Language, we realize that language learning is a social phenomenon, but when we look across the Internet there is a distinct lack of communities for most language learners. We’d like to help fill this gap by creating forums (much like our ChinesePod forum) for students of other languages. This is where you come in! We’re looking for forum moderators to help us build these communities. We are looking for people who are passionate about language learning, who know and love the ChinesePod/SpanishSense approach to language instruction, and (preferably) that have prior experience running a forum and/or blogging. You don’t have to be a native speaker of the language in question – Bazza, our incomparable ChinesePod forum guru, isn’t a native Chinese speaker – but you must be passionate (which Bazza and our other tireless forum moderators have in spades). In return, we’re offering a free Praxis Pass for as long as you are working with us, and all the support tha...
More About: Building , Community , Unity , Comm , Unit

The Velcro Theory of Learning
2007-07-05 06:03:00
I’d like to return to the question of listening. Since we launched The Fix, two weeks ago, we’ve all had time to assess and consider further innovations to the audio offerings (amongst other innovations). Here are some quick observations that I’d make after two weeks of ‘Fixing’. The Fix deepens the learning experience. It can be used to preview or review lessons. It can act as a recall strategy, a test, or as way to generate utterances. It has added a new dimension in that it prompts speaking, pronunciation, etc. (This isn’t full blown conversation, of course, but it’s the next best thing.) All of this fits the Velcro Theo ry of learning. You may recall that Velcro has those little hooks and little loops. The more hooks fit into the loops, the better the Velcro sticks. For the sake of argument, it’s fair to say that memory works in a way that is not dissimilar: More exposures to an item mean more chance that those little synapti...
More About: Learning , The V , Earning

Building a Better Widget
2007-07-04 11:47:00
My name’s John Biesnecker, and I’m a new addition here at Praxis HQ. I’m helping Eileen with customer support, and dipping my toes in a variety of projects that touch on many areas of the ChineseSpanishPodSense operations. Today, like a humble apprentice going to the elder monks for guidance, I have a question for the Big Brain: what kind of lesson widget would you add to your blog? When we launched V3, we created a flash widget that you could add to any webpage (i.e., an entry in your blog) through which visitors could play the lesson, read that lesson’s discussion posts, and quickly access the review tools for that lesson. You can see an example of the widget here. The problem is that, to be perfectly honest, it’s never caught on. We figure this is for one of two reasons – either nobody knows about it (the “Add to your blog/site” link isn’t very prominent, on each lesson’s sidebar near the bottom) or nobody likes it. Hopefully this post will go a long way in el...
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Learn Spanish and Chinese with the iPhone
2007-06-29 16:59:00
This is certainly a more modest event than the launch of the iPhone (and we hope we don’t steal too much of Steve Jobs’ thunder), but we are excited to launch our own mobile initiative today. Premium users can now access a variety of learning tools at m.spanishsense.com, and m.chinesepod.com. The mobile sites provide… a) Discussion, Dialogue, Key Vocabulary and Expansion Sentences for all your scheduled lessons b) The ability to save new words to your vocabulary list c) Vocabulary list review, and flashcards d) The ability to access and participate in all your conversations and we envision the typical experience to be: Setup: (1) Set up ‘Your Feed’ with the types of lessons and additional files you would like to receive: (2) Subscribe to your feed in your phone’s podcast software Use: (1) download your lesson podcasts (via phone’s podcast software) (2) view the lesson’s discussion, dialogue, vocabulary and expansion (via XHTML brows...
More About: Iphone , Learn Spanish , Chinese , Spanish , Learn

Russ McGuire’s Law of Mobility
2007-06-29 11:13:00
  Well, since we’re all mobile, all the time this week, I have a blog I want to share with you. It’s called The Law of Mobi lity and it’s based on the author’s premise that ‘the value of any product or service increases with its mobility’. Hmmm. Now this chap is no slouch. His name is Russ McGuire and he is director of corporate strategy at Sprint. He thinks big. He believes there is a convergence of ‘laws’ - chiefly Moore’s and Metcalfe’s - together with an emerging force he calls the Law of Mobillty. Here’s  how he described it in March of last year and I think it’s holding up: That the value of any product increases with it’s mobility. (Where mobility is the percent of time the customer can fully use the product.) … The age of mobility is being brought on because we’ve reached that moment in time when the cost of adding mobility to any prduct (at least any information-rich or digitizable product) ...
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Mobile Design Choices
2007-06-29 04:29:00
Lee’s latest comments on m-learning have taken the discussion in a slightly technical direction, and covered some of the current obstacles to a good mobile web experience. It seems like a good opportunity then to explain why we think this is about to change, and to discuss some of the technical choices we’ve made. The mobile web has got off to a slow start. Many people have never even used it, and even now the vast majority of users just download ringtones. Just as the regular web has been driven by the adoption/evolution of suitable technical standards, broadband penetration, and device power, the mobile web has been held back by the lack of these. The good news is things are starting to change. On the standards front, there is a developing set of best practices (supported by the W3C, and which we have followed) including the use of XHTML as the browser protocol. Network operators are (slowly) starting to offer fixed-rate data plans, and many new phones are wi-fi enable...
More About: Design , Mobile , Mobi , Choi , Choices

M-Learning under the tree
2007-06-28 07:57:00
Recently I talked about how m-learning will give us the freedom to learn wherever we please. Some people responded to the effect that: “But I can just take my book and go sit under a tree to read somewhere. Books (flashcards, etc) are just as portable. What’s the difference?” Let me try to elaborate. Reading a good novel under a tree is definitely one of the great pleasures in life. More of it. But let’s just say, for example, that you wanted to research something rather than read a novel. To do that, you’d either need to bring a stack of books or be limited to the one you brought with you. You’d also be on your own - not connected to other sources of information, other learners, or practitioners. (Obviously being alone is desirable at times, but learning in a social context can be much more effective for many tasks.) In this case, your portable, wireless, multi-tasking device could offer you a more effective learning experience. It fits neatly i...
More About: Learning , Tree , Under , Earning

Microlearning?
2007-06-27 08:54:00
Continuing on our theme of mobile learning (with all the iPhone madness going on), I thought this presentation by Ajit Jaokar from futuretext entitled “Mobile Web 2.0, Mobile Widgets, Microlearning and Intertwingularity” fit right in:
More About: Earning

Praxis Subscription Packages
2007-06-27 05:25:00
We’ve made a number of big additions to the service recently (i.e. The Fix, Qing Wen, and soon to be released mobile review site) so we’ve updated the Product Comparison Charts to help you choose the subscription that suits your needs. We are in the midst of adding The Fix and a QA show to SpanishSense, and eventually SpanishSense will offer all the features on ChinesePod, except the Practice Plan. Now seems like a good opportunity to remind you all of our current promotion as well - if you sign up for a 12 month Praxis Pass (and get Premium access to both sites) we’ll give the friend of your choice 6 months Premium free (worth $150) on the site of their choice. Hank.
More About: Axis , Pack , Package , Subs

8 Observations about Mobile Learning
2007-06-25 11:28:00
  Any portable (usually hand-held) device used to communicate over a wireless network has the potential for mobile-learning: cell phones, PDAs, laptops, etc. We believe the near ubiquity of these devices will bring mobile, or ‘m-learning’ into prominence in the next 2 to 3 years. (Actually, there are many other trends out there that suggest this - the subject, perhaps, of a later discussion.) Now, I’m not going to talk about the tech, or speculate about the future, but I do  want to talk about the learning part of m-learning.   Observation One: In a wireless world, m-learning will allow us to escape the confines of time and location. Simple sentence, massive implications. Learning can now move right out of the classroom (possibly never to return?) and go wherever it wants. This will dramatically affect life-long learning, corporate learning, and eventually traditional education. I leave it to you to extrapolate! Observation Two: The new levels of choice, fle...
More About: Mobile , Observations , Mobi , T Mobile

Practice Around the Clock
2007-06-25 04:02:00
What with us being in China, and you all being scattered around the globe, timezones have presented a bit of an issue for the Practice service. With a bit of flexibility we’ve always been able to schedule sessions, but we knew eventually the service would need to be offered 24 hours a day. We’re happy to say that from now on, it is. Starting today, you can receive your Practice session calls from Monday to Friday at any time you want.
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Listening is central to language learning
2007-06-22 10:44:00
We’ve made some innovations in listening recently. This is part of an overall development focus and reflects a belief in the vital importance of innovation. Never before has it been possible for the humble instructional designer to collaborate with communities of language learners in the ways that we now can. In fact, it would be a dereliction of duty to neglect this marvelous opportunity to do that. So, for now, I want to stay on the topic of listening and how we get better at it. There’s plenty to talk about. Audio is just coming into it’s own as a learning medium. We’re only beginning to see its potential. Listening is central to the language learning process. In fact, it seems to me that human cognition itself, has only one goal: to locate and process relevant information. Whether its attention, perception, or interpretation, cognition is organized around relevance. Surely this must be the starting point of listening materials. Fine. But the brain can on...
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Praxis & Netvibes
2007-06-21 04:26:00
Today with the help of Netvibes we are launching a ‘Netvibes Universe’ for both ChinesePod and SpanishSense. Netvibes is a leading provider of personalized homepages, along with iGoogle, Pageflakes, etc. We have been looking at a number of ways to customize the learning experience and using Netvibes is one good way to start along this path. ChinesePod Universe: http://www.netvibes.com/chinesepod SpanishSense Universe: http://www.netvibes.com/spanishsense Right now we have just added modules to view the latest lessons for each level and a module to keep up to date with the latest conversations on the site. We are looking at developing a number of other modules that we think might be useful, such as: - podcast player - lesson review functions - flashcards - dictionary Once we get a better understanding of how we can ’slice-and-dice’ the website into individual modules/gadgets, we are thinking that we will re-work the current Study page (soon to be Home?) int...
More About: Axis , Praxis , Vibe

If not Study, then what?
2007-06-20 10:18:00
The switch from ChinesePod Version 2 to Version 3 (V3) involved many changes. One of the most fundamental changes was in navigation. The whole site is now encompassed by a four-element horizontal menu at the top of each page: In designing the menu, we decided that using verbs was a good way to go because ChinesePod users are typically active, independent people that want to take charge of their own learning. They do things. However, some users have found the word choice “less than intuitive.” Well, we’re not always as stubborn as you think. After giving the current top menu some time for the users to warm up to it, we have decided that it should be improved upon. Whether it’s simply common web convention or a deep human connection with things, we feel that using nouns in the top menu would result in more intuitive navigation. So what changes will be made? Well, first of all, “Help” doesn’t need to change. (Whew, that was easy!) Second, &ldq...
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Now you can review and practice speaking with ChinesePod
2007-06-18 09:40:00
Two things to tell you about, and both concern additional audio features that we’re introducing. First, we have the ChinesePod News and Features show. This show will bring you updates and information to help you keep up with any developments on ChinesePod, get more from it, and make your study as effective as possible. I’m particularly proud of the loud (garish even?) yellow banner and and the masterful jingle that opens it. (You must listen.) Here News and Features will be a regular offering. In our first show I talk with John Pasden and Dave Lancashire about some exciting news. One item dominates today, and that takes me to my second announcement: the release of the new audio feature called the ChinesePod Fix. (We include a sample of the new feature.) The Fix is an new, premium audio feature that will accompany each lesson, starting from today. We created The Fix as a response to several months of user feedback. The Fix does a number of things, and amongst them are ...
More About: Review , Practice , Speaking , Peak

Qing Wen does reduplication of verbs
2007-06-16 05:50:00
I case you haven’t seen it, the second installment of ‘Qing Wen’ was released yesterday. Just go to the Connect section and you’ll see it. (The first one is here.) In this show I rap with Amber and Aggie on the subject of verb reduplication, that tendency amongst Chinese verbs to reduplicate for effect, such as with kan kan, for example. We look at when and how to use them, as well as to what effect. Qing Wen does not purport to be exhaustive or thoroughly analytical. We choose items that we think are interesting and informative. The nature of the podcast medium demands that we keep the chat relatively simple. What you get is accurate, but there may be exceptions or aspects we choose not to analyze. (For more depth or specifics you can go to the lesson comments or here on the blog to get a discussion going. Feel free to join in.) [Btw, reduplication occurs not just with verbs, but also with adjectives, xiaoxiao de meaning small, and with nouns, baobao, meani...
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Remix Praxis!
2007-06-15 03:21:00
We get a fair amount of feedback on our belief that lessons should be distinct, non-sequential, learning objects. While we have experimented with linear narratives, such as the lover’s tale on ChinesePod, we produce each lesson with the thinking that it is an individual entity that can be re-mixed by anyone that feels so inclined. Similar to Steinberger’s theories in ‘Everything is Miscellaneous’, we believe that there are multiple categorization schemes for anything we produce. For example, while the ChinesePod lover’s series has a clear narrative, individual episodes might also be bundled with other lessons based on alternative criteria, such as common, grammar themes. The link below (featuring our SpanishSense) is a great example of this. Personally, I believe this type of re-mixing will be a key element in the future of educational publishing: http://theecuatraveler.com/spanish/articl es/learn-spanish-online-for-free-guide After browsing the suggeste...
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Clive Shepherd reviews ChinesePod
2007-06-14 07:36:00
Clive Shepherd is a UK e-learning consultant who writes a great blog. He has 30 years experience in the field and I find his insights engaging and readable - recommended. Yesterday, he did a short review if ChinesePod. I was delighted to see his expert observations. Unfortunately, Blogspot is blocked in China, so I couldn’t leave a reply over there, but here’s an interesting paragraph that I’d like to comment on: There’s an opportunity here to learn some more about what really works in online language learning. I’d like to know how successful subscribers are in achieving their goals with the free service and the various grades of paid service. Are podcasts enough? Does the visual/written element matter? Do the games and exercises aid learning? How valuable is the human element? Perhaps ChinesePod could let us know. To me, the answer to most of these questions is ‘yes’. I see learning as multi-deimensional and subjective. You couldn’t...
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Other Praxis Languages?
2007-06-13 00:17:00
With our feature in The Economist this week, we have been getting a lot of feedback asking us if we have plans for other language products. We thought this would be a good opportunity to put the polling plug-in back up on the blog and ask you: What other languages would you like us to do (select one)? Arabic French Japanese German Other Russian Korean Italian Portuguese Hebrew View Results If we neglected a language you are interested in, please let us know in the comments. Thanks, Hank.
More About: Languages , Axis , Praxis , Ages

ChinesePod, SpanishSense, and Praxis in the Economist
2007-06-08 05:24:00
The Econ omist ran a story on Praxis this morning, Mandarin 2.0. It’s usually me who talks to these journalists, so I get all the quotes. Yet, what am I but a mere pawn, or mouthpiece, or a piece in the jigsaw … or something…? We have such a great team, but they don’t usually get to talk much in these pieces. Feel free to tell them your feelings or ask your questions here! Ken Carroll
More About: Ense , Sens , Axis

Qing Wen
2007-06-07 12:45:00
Qing Wen Today we’d like to bring something new - an audio show called ‘Qing Wen’. Qing Wen answers to your questions about speaking Chinese. The hosts, Amber and Connie, have been answering your questions on ChinesePod.com for the last year, but now we bring you a sample of their great work in audio format. The questions are all real. We gather them from Aggie’s Practice Plan learners. The Practice Plan gives learners the chance to practice speaking through daily Skype calls with a ChinesePod counselor. In today’s show, Amber and Connine look at the verb ‘kan‘, to look, and the expression,’kan qi lai‘, meaning ‘to appear to be‘. This episode is suitable for Newbie and Elementary learners. Qing Wen will be a regular offering. The questions will come from the Practic e Plan learners, but if you have a pressing issue you’d like to know about, feel free to post it here. [The question in today’s audio actua...

Listening and learning
2007-06-06 16:31:00
I’d like to share some insights I’ve had during the 18 months of working pretty intensively with audio. First of all, I’d make the distinction between listening and hearing. Hearing is involuntary, while listening involves conscious orientation. Listening also requires a tremendous level of of cognitive activity. For example, the brain is forced to filter out the vast majority of the of the peripheral data it hears - we just don’t need to focus on most of the sound that surrounds us. This is because the brain has a limited capacity for conscious attention - we can really only concentrate on one thing at a time.  Attention is selective, and it is only partly under the control of the individual. To get through to a listener with a language lesson, we have to get past the brain’s natural spam filter. If our message isn’t engaging, your brain will simply filter it out. (Remember in college, you may have wanted to listen to a lecture, but the pr...
More About: Learning , Learn , Earning

Students First
2007-06-03 08:40:00
With the growing popularity of our Practice Plan, we have been looking at adding additional management tools to help support its three primary functions: needs analysis, course design and on-going speaking practice. This research has brought us in direct contact with more traditional, ‘Learning 1.0′ if you will, course management systems, such as Blackboard, Angel Learning and eCollege. What is most striking about most of these systems is just how clumsy they all appear when viewed side-by-side with more modern web 2.0 tools. Take Blackboard for example. Originally designed in the late ’90’s, Blackboard sells to institutions and its primary purpose is student and course management designed for use by teachers and institutions. While Blackboard does have tools to enable inter-student interaction and aggregation of information sources for students, these features are very much a secondary focus and look extremely primitive when you look at the platforms studen...
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ChinesePod in the Shanghai Daily
2007-05-31 01:54:00
The Shanghai Dail y ran a story on us in this morning’s edition.  Ken Carroll

Speaking practice
2007-05-30 11:57:00
The Practice Plan offers the chance to practice speaking Mandarin for a few minutes every day on Skype with a ChinesePod coach. (Here’s a description of the Practice Plan when it was known as the 8 Week Program, though the details differ slightly now.) You can never reach fluency in a second (or 3rd) language without actual speaking practice. You simply have to find someone with whom you can speak Chinese on a semi-regular basis. However, whether you work with a night school or an individual, time constraints mean thst most of us need to do it in the most efficient way possible. It was in this context that we came up with daily practice sessions with the Practice Plan. The daily phone call is designed to maximize your time, instill good learning habits, and consolidate the lesson input. The coach focuses on the patterns and lexical items from an agreed lesson, so you can practice using them in conversation. here Here’s an audio recording from a Practice Plan class....
More About: Speaking , Peak