Livemocha

Soooo today was the big day!! Here’s how it went:

Buckingham Palace and the English-Speaking Union’s awards ceremony was just fabulously cool — we walked into the palace through a famous courtyard and into a beautiful, ornate hall with giant portraits, gorgeous, intricate gold molding, and endless red carpet, literally as far as you could see.  We were ushered directly into a small banquet room (no palatial exploring allowed…), where there were chairs for about 40 people.  We were seated right up front (I got to sit in the front row! About 3 feet from the Prince! eek!), and were told to stand as HRH Prince Philip walked into the room.

The ceremony was just lovely, with very nice speeches introducing the winners.  There were two major prizes — one given for excellence in books designed to teach English and the President’s award, given to the product that set the bar of excellence using innovative technology to teach English.  While there was an overall winner and 5 commendations in the book category, we were only winner of the President’s Award.

They gave Livemocha’s Active English a really wonderful introduction, talking about how impressed they were with the course,  how  Livemocha is a platform for world-wide, communal language learning, and how amazing it is to have a website that creates scalable, personal language learning interactions — they called us innovative and groundbreaking. It was a unanimous decision between the 5 judges to award us the prize, and, in talking to many of them after the ceremony, it was evident how excited they were about Active English and Livemocha as a whole. We each shook Phillip’s hand and were given certificates and a very cool large medal plaque.

After the ceremony, we had the chance to chat with the judges and the other winners, and Prince Philip just sort of wandered up to me and started asking about me and about Livemocha!!!! How cool to get to share Livemocha with royalty!!!
It was a wonderful, exciting day, with much celebration, lovely speeches, and lots and lots of excitement about Active English.  What an honor!!

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Livemocha has grown incredibly over the last year. Its fun making our site continue to perform well at this scale for users from over 200 countries.

We have a fantastically dedicated team here. Among the million other things we need to do every milestone, people are always working on making our site load faster for our users.  In recent weeks we made improvements such as using different CDNs, making a lot of changes on the back end to improve database and caching performance. We have also made many optimizations to our pages itself so they load quickly on the client side. We continue to work hard at this and you should see more improvements over the next months.

As always please let us know how are doing. Thanks for your feedback in helping us improve. 

-Krishnan

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Well we just touched down at London’s Heathrow airport, the first step in our exciting trip to receive the English-Speaking Union’s award for Active English.  Interestingly enough, the weather is almost exactly like it was home in Seattle, so the transition (8-hour time difference aside) is quite seamless! The plane was full of people making their way from Seattle to London and onward — I heard people speaking Hindi, Spanish, Arabic, French, Polish, and other languages that I couldn’t quite identify in my overnight-flight-haze. Listening to all of these languages, I was so proud to work for Livemocha — a company, website, and community that has managed to bring together people who speak all of these languages and more, and give them a forum to learn, bond, and share their culture without leaving their own home  (or internet cafe!).   Of course, I’m not knocking international travel (actually, I’m pretty much obsessed with it) but it’s amazing to know you can go online and explore the world at basically any given time! Okay okay, enough Livemocha love for now (though really, is there ever enough??)– stay tuned for more tomorrow from the awards ceremony at Buckingham Palace!!

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Aprender Idioma nueva con Livemocha.

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Thanks to an exciting CNN article, Livemocha just got hit by a lot of web traffic. We’re working to speed things up, so the site will be working at normal speed very soon. In the meantime, check out our Facebook fan page!

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This is pretty cool… Livemocha on CNN!

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Free online learning

With the boom in social media, it makes sense that learning a language online would take on a Facebook-like component. My general impression is that these are great ways to exchange languages with people all over the world…

With Livemocha, you get to learn the language of your choice while helping others who want to speak your native tongue. Once you complete a structured lesson, you submit your own writing and audio recordings to other users for feedback. Reading a sentence aloud and then sending my recording off was pretty intimidating, but I got a response within 10 minutes from a girl in Russia who gave it five stars and a “Good!!” — although she was surely too kind.

I also got to review English submissions from other users, which felt especially gratifying because I had just been in their uncomfortable situation of sending off my words to strangers.

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O Inglês Ativo, a mais nova (e melhor!) série de cursos de inglês do Livemocha recebeu o Prêmio do Presidente da União que promove o uso do Idioma Inglês pela sua inovação no ensino de inglês! O prêmio será entregue ao Livemocha e aos nossos colaboradores da Educação Pearson em 12 de novembro, no Palácio de Buckingham pelo HRH Duque de Edimburgo (Philip, o marido da rainha). Isso mesmo — o Livemocha está sendo reconhecido pela realeza!

A união que promove o uso do idioma inglês (ESU) é uma organização internacional, situada na Grã Bretanha, que promove o ensino de inglês no mundo inteiro. Todo ano distribuem prêmios cobiçados às companhias, editores, e indivíduos que foram além das expectativas no ensino de inglês, escrevendo e traduzindo literatura inglesa.

O prêmio do presidente “reconhece e incentiva o uso difundido e bem sucedido da tecnologia para melhorar o ensino e a aprendizagem do inglês no mundo inteiro. É oferecido pela inovação e bom design do uso da tecnologia no ensino, aprendizagem e avanço do inglês como um primeiro, segundo ou como um idioma estrangeiro.” O prêmio tem sido divulgado desde 2003 a pedido do duque de Edimburgo, presidente do ESU.

Estamos emocionados com o prêmio, orgulhosos do Inglês Ativo, e naturalmente, muito honrados em estar em Londres no próximo mês. Então, até mais!

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Ingles Activo, el curso más nuevo de series en Ingles de Livemocha (¡y el mejor!) Ha sido otorgado con el Premio de La Unión de Presidentes del Habla en Ingles por su innovación a la enseñanza del Idioma de ¡Ingles! El premio será presentado a Livemocha y a nuestros colaboradores en la Educación de Pearson el 12 de Noviembre en el Palacio de Buckingham por el Duque HRH de Edinburgh (Philip, el esposo de la Reina) ¡Así es – Livemocha ha sido reconocido por la realeza!

La Unión del Habla en Ingles (ESU por sus siglas en Ingles) es una organización internacional, con sede en Gran Bretaña, que promueve la enseñanza del Idioma Inglés en todo el mundo. Cada año, dan algunos de los premios codiciados a las empresas, editores y personas que han ido más allá en la enseñanza del Idioma Inglés, la escritura de la literatura en Ingles, y la traducción de la literatura en Ingles.

El premio del Presidente “reconoce y fomenta el uso generalizado y eficaz a la tecnología para mejorar la enseñanza del Idioma Inglés y el aprendizaje en todo el mundo. Es presentado por la innovación y el buen diseño en el uso de la tecnología para la enseñanza, el aprendizaje y el avance en el Inglés como primer o segunda lengua extranjera.” El premio ha sido entregado desde el 2003, a petición del Duque de Edimburgo, Presidente de ESU.

Estamos muy emocionados por el premio, tan orgullosos de Ingles Activo, y por supuesto, estamos muy entusiasmados por recibir Honores en Londres el próximo mes. ¡Cheerio!

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Active English, Livemocha의 가장 최신이자 최고 영어 학습 시리즈가 혁신적인 영어 교육 프로그램으로 인정받아 English Speaking Union’s President’s Award에 선정되었습니다.

수상식은 11월 12일 버킹햄 궁전에서 HRH Edinburgh의 공작 (Philip, 여왕의 남편)에 의해 행해질 예정입니다. 그렇습니다-Livemocha가 황실에서도 인정되고 있답니다.

영어민 연합회(ESU)는 영어 학습을 세계에 홍보하는 영국에 위치한 국제적인 단체입니다.
매년 이 단체에서는 영어교육, 영문학, 영어 번역 등에 공을 세운 회사나 편찬인 그리고 개인을 엄별히 심사하여 수상자를 선정합니다.

이 단체의 회장은 “전 세계 학습자를 위한 성공적인 기술을 이용하여 영어 학습을 세계화하는 데 기여하였습니다.. 첨단 기술과 디자인으로 영어를 모국어로 하거나, 제 2 외국어, 외국어를 가르치고 배울 수 있는 방법을 제시한 공을 인정하여” 수상자로 선정하게 됨을 알렸고,
2003년에 제정된 이 상은 ESU 의장인 Edinburgh의 공작의 제안으로 시작된 바 있습니다.

저희는 Active English 가 다음주 영국 런던에서 영예로운 상을 수상하게 됨을 기쁘고 자랑스럽게 생각합니다. 지화자!

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Active EnglishとはLivemochaの一番新しい英語コースで英語教授の革新的なアイディアとして、English Speaking Union’s President’s Award（イングリッシュスピーキングユニオンズ　プレジデントアワード）を受賞しました。この賞は11月12日にイギリスのバッキンガム宮殿にてエディンバラ公（女王の夫であるフィリップ氏）よりLivemochaおよびPearson Educationの製作協力者に贈られる予定です。そうです。Livemochaはイギリスの王族にも評価されているのです！

English Speaking Union (ESU)　とはイギリスに本拠地をおき、世界中に英語の教授を推進している国際的な組織で、英語の教授、英語文学の執筆、また他言語文学の英語翻訳においてすばらしい功績を挙げた会社や出版社または個人に毎年大変名誉のある賞を贈っています。

President’s Awardとは「世界的規模で、英語の教授や学習を促進するために効果的にテクノロジーを使用することを奨励しその評価をすることを目的としており、第一・二言語また外国語としての英語の教授や学習の進歩を図るためにテクノロジー使用した革新的なアイディアやデザインに対して贈られます。」この賞はESUのプレジデントであるエディンバラ公の要請で2003年より贈られるようになりました。

私たちはこのような名誉あるアワードを受賞したことにとても興奮し、Active Englishを誇りに思うとともに、来月ロンドンで行われる受賞式に参加できることをとても楽しみにしています！

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