palabea is a new online community for people interested in learning languages, getting connected with local speakers and discovering new cultures.
The site is user driven and provides various channels how to provide or consume learning material – audio, video, documents – which can be used in virtual classrooms, assembled in lesson plans, recommended by teachers or used on their own. The site is new and only a few learning objects have been uploaded, so it is not possible to evaluate the quality yet, but the possibility to easily hook up with native speakers in a reciprocal situation is fantastic.
The site provides an Online Tandem mapping which matches members with mutual interests – i.e. if Fritz is a native German speaker and wants to learn Spanish and Diego is a native Spanish speaker and wants to learn German they can text message, talk, video chat or help each other out.
palabea has been founded by Patricia Sierra Fernandez, Sebastian Schkudlara and Guido Veth, they are based in Berlin.
Company blog: Blog
This article originally was written for blognation Germany. Since blognation is gone I have reposted it here.
26.11.2007 # language