It’s a tremendously exciting time I think for our profession…there’s a language learning 2.0 zeitgeist now that is re-formulating approaches to second language acquisition for our networked world. Whether it’s P2P connections via Dekita, tools for free agent teaching such as Tutopia, or “unbundled” content via ChinesePod, we’ve got a new world on the horizon. I had mentioned ChinesePod a few posts ago, and their sister blog On Demand Training has some delicious language learning 2.0 insights in this post:

One way you can see this is through ‘unbundling’. ‘Unbundling’ is an inevitable consequence where people have too many choices, to much work, and too little time. If you cut out clips or passages from an article, or some mpeg scenes from a video, you’re unbundling. The network enables unbundling and allows people to consume content on their own terms: what they want and when they want it. We see unbundling at work all over the place: on ITunes people are buying songs, not albums, for example, while blog articles are typically short - they cut, paste, link, and summarize content.

On Demand Training is the first organization of its kind to unbundle language learning content from its traditional shackles. Lessons are discrete packages of focused input, rather than a rigamarole of graded exercises to be followed. The learner dips in wherever he wishes, whenever he feels like it. (If he wants to follow the lessons in a completely linear format, he can do that too.) Everything is designed for flexibility: Learning can be a serendipitous search, or a structured highway, depending on the needs, and learning preferences of the user.

No language learning program has been able to deliver anything like this level of flexibility thus far. (The existing online language programs are the least flexible of all. They tend to just offer layer upon layer of levels and leave the student to his own devices to get on with it.)

Great stuff…exactly the approach we’re taking with the English360 software as well.