App of the Week – Duolingo

Learning is a life-long endeavor. Keeping your mind healthy and active means it won’t abandon you later in life. So why not learn a second language?

Duolingo is the App of the Week because we all need to learn another language. We live in a increasingly multi-cultural world and the possibility that you will need a second language is almost a sure thing. Employers are looking for people with multi-language skills so having that on your resume is a nice addition.

Duolingo was named Apple’s App of the Year in 2013 and it was well deserved because after its release it reached 10 million downloads.

The app makes a healthy game of learning a new language.  Duolingo uses pictures, your smartphone’s microphone and video clips to help you learn the new language. You can recite them and write them out as well. Each lesson contains a mixture of multiple choice, speaking, translation and listening exercises. The user gets multiple tries that are counted by the hearts on the screen. Once you run out of hearts you have to begin again. The app keeps track of how often you study by using a streak tracker that tells you how many days in a row you have used the app.

You can learn the following languages;

• Spanish
• French
• German
• Italian
• Portuguese
• Dutch
• Italian
• Danish
• Swedish.

There is another fact that you need to consider about this app. Is your child bi-lingual? How many hours a day is your child sitting quietly in a corner of the house playing a video game? You and I both know that even though they are quiet and entertained they are also wasting valuable time and brain cells. This app can really help black children gain an edge in the classroom and possibly move them forward to a college education. The way the app is created it is as entertaining as it is educational. But even if your child is not college bound the job market is, and will continue to be, competitive. Speaking a second language out of high school is an excellent skill to have. And its free!

Recently the creators of the app released a version for schools. Teachers can use Duolingo for their classes and keep track of their students’ progress through a centralized dashboard. The dashboard can show the instructor detailed reports on the lessons their students completed. The Duolingo app has the potential to give students a more personalized learning experience. The app can more easily  determine a students strengths and weaknesses and alter the lessons to these factors. The company believes that its technology is especially useful in countries where finding an English teacher is difficult.

Duolingo is available on  Apple, Android and Windows platforms.