Although the world market for e-learning is estimated to top $52 billion in 2010 (in 2007, revenues exceeded the $17-billion mark in the US alone), it’s still quite hard to find good resources for education and training in the Web 2.0 space. It seems that so far, the e-learning industry as a whole focuses on applications for enterprises and educational institutions.
But now there is a new player in town: iKnow!, which calls itself an intelligent social learning platform, initially offers a number of English vocabulary extension, SAT preparation and Japanese language courses, but more content will be added in the near future. Tokyo-based Cerego actually started the beta version (in Japanese only) in October 2007 with English courses for Japanese people, now counting more than 280,000 users in Nippon alone. iKnow saw 350,000 unique visitors in September 2008, up 40% from just two months prior in July 2008.
The platform is built upon a learning engine that is supposed to free users from sorting study materials, devising study plans, measuring learning progress and self-managing knowledge on a long-term basis. Users can set personal learning goals and let the system do the heavy lifting. Cerego holds a number of patents on its learning algorithms, which are based on years of research in cognitive science and neuroscience. The performance of its users is continously analyzed, enabling iKnow to promptly adjust learning processes on an individual basis.
iKnow disaggregates information into bite-size pieces (called items), making it easier for users to store, absorb and manage it as personal knowledge on the site. For instance, the “Erudite Vocabulary 1″ English course features a total of 89 items (i.e. verbs like “immure”, “bruit” or “adumbrate”) that are embedded in 134 different example sentences. The system recommends (and automatically schedules) 28 days for this course but users get to decide themselves whether they want to absorb the study units through multiple short bursts or long study sessions.
Items are studied mainly through multiple choice questions, dictations, brain training games, quizzes etc. In order to attenuate memory decay effects, difficult items have to be reviewed in individually timed intervals and in a different manner (i.e. by letting users spell certain words instead of asking multiple choice questions). The site allows for users to stop and resume studying anytime and also keeps track of how many items they learnt in the process. After finishing a course, all content studied can be stored for later reference and accessed again anytime.
Acceleration of knowledge acquisition through creating and sharing content
The free site’s key element is the social network functionality, combined with extensive video, image, audio and gaming content. iKnow users are supposed to not only study on the site but also to accelerate the learning process by creating content and sharing this content with others. In this example, a user uploaded a YouTube clip of the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain and extracted key items and sentences himself. Here Steve Jobs teaches Japanese people English via a similarly processed video. Other users can now systematically learn these items in a structured lesson the system semi-automatically creates based on the user-generated content.
The idea of connecting people is especially powerful in the realm of learning languages and in fact, it’s relatively easy to make international friends on the platform. But in contrast to sites like Babbel, for example, iKnow’s learning algorithms are not limited to languages: Soon users are supposed to learn any type of fact-based information on the site. Think pulling the main bits of information from a Wikipedia article as study units, mixing them with text-based and multimedia content from other websites and sharing the lessons generated by iKnow with other users.
iKnow’s approach of combining a hypermodular, personalized learning methodology with collaborative human power spurred by a social network built on top of it, has the potential to become a blueprint for future online education concepts. The amount of things you can learn and do on iKnow is simply overwhelming.
Online learning is becoming an increasingly crowded field, with sites like LiveMocha, PrepMe or TechCrunch50 runner-up Grockit cropping up by the week. Compared with iKnow, however, most existing e-learning sites set fundamentally different priorities by focusing on non-scientific approaches to learning, paid services, enterprise solutions or neglecting social networking aspects.
And iKnow is likely to expand even more: Cerego opened up their learning API for third party developers from all over the world just today.
It seems that the company is not only gaining momentum with users and now potentially developers, but according to industry insiders, Cerego is close to closing a significant round of financing led by Japanese top-tier investors. We will stay tuned.
A e-learning platform that helps users to gain, create and share materials and therefore knowledge. Genius. I have worked with e-learning for long but this is by far the application that I can see a real use for. Most of the time e-learning is being used inside colleges and schools, but it has always been closed for financial reasons. With this new social network everybody gains. Congrats.
I tried resisting the temptation to indulge in some flagrant self promotion but I just had to point out that myself and 3 friends built something along similar lines with a budget of $0 in 1 month at http://www.spicyelephant.com
Rough around the edges sure, and nowhere close to the Goliath that is iKnow, but I felt it deserved a modicum of horn tooting :)
Nice beginning, but iKnow has patents on their technology and the e-learning modules are the core of their service (plus, they add social networking to it). You would need to work more on e-learning modules to improve your site, in my opinion.
I would love too see these patents — there is a substantial prior art in this field, and even if their patents are defensible, circumventing them legally shouldn’t be daunting.
I was playing with iKnow a few weeks ago.
The japanese learning materials are very impressive, and pretty speedy once the site loads up. Though I still prefer using software like Genius or Anki, iKnow is a promising step in online learning for sure.
They don’t seem to have much traction in the US yet, less than 1500 registered uses. But over 60,000 in Japan!
I work at LearnHub which has a similar mandate. Our registered users are spread the US, Canada, and India.
The education space is heating up. Its a great sector to work in during a recession. The stock prices of public sector education companies are all up.
“It seems that so far, the e-learning industry as a whole focuses on applications for enterprises and educational institutions”
Not the entire industry. Articulate (www.articulate.com) builds kick ass eLearning tools without letting the enterprise space get in the way. The upside is that the enterprises and educational institutions really like the tools because they are so different from everything else and Articulate has won a ton of awards in the industry over the last few years as a result.
i use iknow here in japan for learning japanese. it’s a great service as a consumer, and also a beacon for web2.0 in japan!
I don’t understand some entries by Serkan. He is getting famous with asiajin and TC here. He is often not journalistic. He knows the developers at iKnow! very well. You can just search Twitter. All the developers are working hard to impress him and to get their review on TC.
It’s sad.
I agree with you. I am in Japan (Tokyo) too.
I would like to connect with you because I think we can share common opinions.
Here is my email address:
o_ojhk@hotmail.com
iKnow is pretty disappointing. When I saw this article, I was really excited. But, iKnow is not the solution that I was expecting. It does nothing to further the bounds of online learning beyond what has already been done.
I agree, there is not much innovation on iKnow. But that’s the right start, similar to livemocha.com by the way, who got $7M funding.
I am more critical of iknow! than I am in favor of.
From my perspective, It is flawed in its very basic concepts:
1) People do not share learning lists with strangers. A learning list is a personal tool built by and for his creator. Who on earth shares his English list with a friend?
2) They say that it is free. Free of financial charge, right. But not free of advertising noise.
Who on earth will bother looking at ads while being busy with the very intellectual process of working and learning something?
3) About the “SNS” aspect.
When learning a foreign language, the only “SNS” aspect that I see is the following: being able to interact with native speakers of the language that you learn in order to ask them questions on their language. But even that is quickly boring for the native speaker.
So learning foreign languages does not imply “SNS” at all.
4) About the learning “algorithms”…
Where are they? I do not see them in action at all.
Oh, you were talking about this repetitive, robotic and annoying flash platform that makes you choose answers in the multiple choice question session?
No, all that is flawed and iknow! had better reflect deeply on how to take advantage of what the Web truly means, in order to redefine its product from A to Z. I have my ideas and I think they are much better.
I totally disagree.
I myself discovered Iknow a few months back, and have enjoyed it ever since.
You state that no one will share their vocabulary lists with others. Well I would for instance.
You can ask the same question about Wikipedia sites – who on earth wants to spent time to help other people to understand a subject. Well luckily lots of people are willing to share their knowledge with others, and this has resulted in lots and lots of nicely organised data about everything between heaven and earth on the internet.
I think the same concept of give-take is true for the Iknow site.
I’m happy for you that you have your own great ideas – but unfortunately Iknow got there first, and I don’t see any long articles about your ideas.
The point is not who has the ideas, but rather who implements them into a usable product!
Congrats to the Iknow crew! Great to see more innovation in this space. I think they do a nice job with the language learning tools and integrating some 2.0 technology. We at NIXTY (www.nixty.com) are doing something similar, but taking a more disruptive approach.
Iknow looks awesome. Glad to see heaps of innovation in the learning space.
No longer is learning force fed and scattered over the web. We can now go to web sites that are learner centric where anyone can teach and share their knowledge and skills.
It is just like in a school. Students learn better by being engaged, involved and contributing in classes with their teacher. The teacher becomes a facilitator not the sole source of information. It is cool to see this sort of environment translate to the web.
I am from http://www.clivir.com. Clivir is an informal learning community where you can be both teacher and student. We think the best way to learn is to teach.
The most interesting to me is that they have proposed new microformats:
http://microfor...g-brainstorming
I don’t believe everyone in the learning 2.0 market is running to Enterprises and Educational Institutions. We at http://Questler have our own learning network where anyone can reflect on their everyday learning through text/links/media much of the same way without any formal education references, no hierarchy or being called a student. Your a Questler, someone with a quest to learn. (couldn’t help to do some promotion here :D)
Iknow is not really good but just a good start up. I hope, they will bring changes and improvements with the passage of time ..
i love it love it! “social learning”? great idea. it’s obviously still in it’s nascent stages of development. there needs to be a greater breadth of content and more users for it to really take off. i can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
Another website I use a lot is http://www.wiziq.com/ – it is coming up slowly but steadily and building up the momentum. They have tests, virtual classroom and educational tutorials. I think if they can come up with a community approach it would be great.
Not sure if TechCrunch has profiled them as yet.
A lot of our students *love* iKnow. It seems like a very cool too and from what I hear it’s consistently getting better with time. The open API route is smart and I wish these guys the best of luck.
BTW, if you’re looking for another platform to teach classes on that’s similar similar to wiziq, please feel free to check out out: http://www.edufire.com
There are many tools for elearning could help you teach smarter. Articulate is a good elearning software provider, but it is a little expensive, I use Wondershare eLearning software (http://www.same...ash-pro.html#10) to help me.
BTW, Wondershare PPT2Flash Professional could help you convert PowerPoint to Flash for high-impact Web presentations and eLearning Courses with rich media, quizzes and simulations
“Social Learning” Buzz Masks Deeper Dimensions, Social Learning Dimensions – Gilfus Education Group
Mitigating the confusion surrounding “Social Learning” — Article by Frank Ganis
Foreword –
It is our hope that by leveraging socially based technologies the education industry can shape a new educational technology paradigm that realizes the promises of true “Social Learning”.By understanding its applications we can create a unique opportunity to improve student engagement, student retention, academic success and overall educational outcomes. – Stephen Gilfus, Gilfus Education Group
“Social Learning” Buzz Masks Deeper Dimensions
Many years back, I have thought of something like this before and it was 4 years later that I decided to give it a try. That is why i came up with http://www.iknow2.net
I know at this stage, it is very basic. But if this thing can take off well, I am thinking of upgrading the platform.
If anyone feels like giving feedbacks, you are more than welcome.
Thanks in advance.