Web 2.0 Blog

I wanted to let you know about a new version of italki.com which was just relaunched.  italki.com is a language learning social network, and openeducation website. The premise is very good as users from all of the world collaborate together to help each other learn languages. It also utilizes the mashup methodology very well by integrating Facebook profiles into its system, allowing you to share files & resources and meet up with other Facebook users to form groups.

With the new version, users can now collaborate on creating free language learning textbooks (in addition to finding language partners, having their foreign language questions answered, and joining groups for language learning). At this point, italki.com is one of the larger websites in the language learning / education 2.0 space.  italki now has over 200,000 users around the world, and has been growing briskly since its launch in December 2006.

I think this is a very good example of how Web 2.0 Internet technologies can bring people together from around the world to help each other. It needn’t stop at language learning however, it could be rolled out into any form of e-learning. Using similar types of mashups people could explore the laws of trigonometry, discuss Shakespere literature or learn about other places in the world in the same way. I bet similar services are already available but they should be made more well known and accessible to all users. The vast amounts of casual Internet users who use sites like Facebook would be a good place to find users.