Is ChinesePod ahead of its time?

You're 15 hours ahead of my time, Ken.

the answer also depends on the scope of cpod. if it aims to teach highschool children some of the content might need some change... children and teenagers also lack the time (they must spend theirs in school or doing homework) and the will to spend thair leisure time on learning. as long as learning is so much mandatorily classroom-bound ChinesePod will be ahead of its time.

Saying something is ahead of its time (or was ahead of its time) usually has a rather negative connotation. ("It was great, but nobody understood and used it, because it was ahead of its time".) So if Chinesepod was ahead of its time, nobody would be using it now and people would only discover years later how useful it would have been. Setting industry standard is something very different from being "ahead of its time" and I think CPod is very successful and certainly setting trends.

Ken, I'm glad you see CPod as a good case study, I predicted long ago on your blog that some (brick and mortar) academic was sooner or later going to produce one... What really interests me is what it took for CPod to emerge and be allowed to set those industry standards. I am familiar with most of the effects and many of the causes, but it's must be the unique combination of ingredients that made this cocktail work. Timing is one of the elements, and I'm not sure you can really bundle ChinesePod and SpanishPod together. I don't know how succesful the latter is, but certainly wouldn't have been possible without the former. There's some unique excitement and characteristics that are undoubtedly due to Chinese and Shanghai, in addition to personalities, openness, UGC, technology etc. I have limited exposure to the Learning industry, much less its standards, but I think you're setting standards for user interaction, community and learning broadly speaking, probably not just language learning. One of the specificities of this site is still a predominantly 'anglo-saxon' audience as we say around here, largely US-based. There are a number of language learning podcasts / blogs out there, Chinese and otherwise, and whilst some of their content can be top class, they're lacking most of the emerging properties of this place. I agree with sebastian's point about being ahead of its time vs setting industry standards, but it remains to be seen whether you are setting trends and what real impact you will have, either on language learning (effectiveness as demonstrated by language abiliites 'learning on your own terms' really develop), or on language teaching (I've seen a few comments recently from professionals about how multimedia had promised the 'moon' and finally delivered little, vs the value of modern, adapted language teaching techniques, which don't have to be boring and stiffled). If by industry standards you mean Language

I forgot to elaborate on your specific audience, and point out that what didn't seem to work is extend to a really multi-lingual platform, the vast majority of comments (I'm talking CPod here) being in English, few in Chinese, and certainly none in any other language. It might be due to the peculiarities of Chinese and hanzi, things may be different on SpanishPod, but that is something I have an issue with if we want to measure industry standards not just in terms of fun but also target-language interaction.

Let me play devil's advocate once again: For me the real innovativeness of CPod neither lies in the pedagogical concept nor in the technology. The core of the CPod idea is actually very simple: One fresh lesson each day (at least). Consequently. Ongoing over the course of years. And that entails the need to find a source for the lesson ideas: The users. This is bolstered by the community and of course it needs both professionalism (quality of the production, efficient processes), dedication to teaching, and last not least a combination of enthusiasm & fun on the side of the team. But it would all be hollow without the "1 day - 1 lesson" scheme. Is this an industy standard? I don't know about that, yet. It surely is an industry benchmark.

back to my previous post about language interaction, I know that CPod emphasizes oral over written language acquisition, but the main return interaction still needs to be the written medium (with current technology). How would you feel about language classes, student/teacher interactions where the student would hardly ever respond in the language she's trying to learn? So, while there is no doubt about setting standards, there is one element crucially missing from the interaction, and that is the use of Chinese. This is one reason I try not to enter lesson comments in English anymore.

lol. I'm glad ChinesePod came now and not later in time... (yet earlier would have been nice, yet bandwidth wasn't as easy to come by then)

Ken, I think CPod is right on time. Without broadband availability at reasonable prices--what would be the use in subscribing? An could there be a practice plan w/o Skype or some other cost effective solution? Probably not. The model is simple, and it look like you've kept the website lean. My only beef is that it does seem slow at times. But I like what Henning said--fresh content delivered daily. Even topics or vocabulary that gets covered and recovered is taught differently. Qing Wen, Movie Madness and Dear Amber all help keep the feed fresh. But also we get a little more flavor of the culture and daily life. The social aspect of Chinese Pod is also different. There are many language learning websites, but Chinese Pod has many active listeners. And we see helpful comments and interaction in the comments. Other sources do have that element--or it's not as well done. You might look at eslpod.com or studypond.com as points of comparison. The really question in my mind is how do CPod and its cousins grow with expanding technology? 88groups are nice--but is anybody looking at Skype Conferences or semi regular sessions with or without Cpod staff involved. Perhaps an interface to organize activity of this kind among uses of Praxis Language services. I could go on, but I won't . I think you guys are doing well--perhaps slightly ahead of your time, but not really. Can you manage the growth? Bill.

paulc, I guess the focus of my blog is more or less on the questios you have posed. It's a big topic and we can only guess at he future but I think I see some patterns evolving.

Charles Leadbeater weaves a tight argument that innovation isn't just for professionals anymore. Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can't. Some Cpoddies here could match this "passionate-amateurs" description.

"that's about companies based on communities uh, that provides communities, with tools, resources, platforms in which they can share" 嗯 … " imagine you could take all the children in education in Britain, and one percent of them were co-developers of education, what would that do to the resources of the education system?" No doubt Ken can relate to this :-)

oral language, this emphasis on spoken chinese, is a core feature of Chinesepod. Kafka once said something like "I write worse than I speak, I speak worse than I think and I think worse than I should think" the dialogues and monologues lessons are a crucial test for a text, it is only good if it sounds good. perhaps cpod isn't so far beyond, only the average language learning systems were well behind their time. I showed some lessons to people with no interest in learning chinese, but who had to overcome such obstacles in english. They say "why can't we learn english this way?"

Excellent blog Ken. Any thoughts of where 2.0 is heading for the future in terms of further innovations in learning, emerging trends, what needs to be improved with the current model etc...?