The conference discussed a lot of Education related topics ( E-learning- Distance Education- Education and new technologies……).
During the conference, there was great interest in E-learning and all the concepts, theories and all practices related to it.
As Myngl is always taking the lead in E-learning, we have presented our case-study about “The New Online Blended Learning”.
Online blended learning is ” bringing the best of both worlds, the offline learning, where you can get complete individualized lessons with a teacher, built around and for the exact needs of the student, and the asynchronous where you get more flexibility, as you can choose where and when to study, at your own pace”  in our perspective. We explained our case study of Myngle teachers together with the Instituto Cervantes asynchronous AVE material.

Blended learning was one of the major themes discussed and everyone talked about it in different ways. Our presentation had  the answers to many of the questions and worries that other presenters and visitors had discussed in the previous presentations, it also raised more awareness about the best way to apply this method, and gave good results.
One of the very interesting questions was about the material teachers use during the blended lessons; can they make use of their own material or simply work with the material provided for them? Another question was about the concept of “offline” learning and how we were able to define the meeting a teacher online as offline, for many people live online teaching is still something very new.
If you are interested in the presentation, or have any more questions please feel free to contact Hala at hala@myngle.com.
We look forward to reading your opinion and answering your questions about this topic!
Best regards,
Hala

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Hi All,

Today we have the pleasure to make the second announcement, for our Hall of Fame teacher, for the first quarter of 2011. You are all doing an amazing job on Myngle with your students, improving and keeping your place as the best teachers in the virtual world. And we are proud of that. We are delighted to put our teachers in Myngle’s spotlight!

Now, It is time to have a look at our Top list:

The second part in our list is for the teachers’ excellent achievements. Some teachers have achieved a high score on retention and have the highest number of lessons per student. Last, but not least, we also have selected the teachers with the best Special Project: Myngle Corporate.

Again, we would like to say that every Myngle teacher is a true star, so we  would like to thank you all for your hard work and support.

Best regards,

Myngle Education &  Marketing team

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Google gave the Boston Consulting Group the assignment to do an independent research (Dutch Research) about the current value of the internet economy in the Netherlands. Google has done this research in many other countries, to be able to compare how each country is doing and to see where countries can improve and move forward. Google would like to help companies to grow their online presence.

Google and BCG chose Myngle to be one of their casestudies, take a look at the video made at our office in Amsterdam.

You can see the video here:

Myngle - Impact van het internet op de nederlandse economie

Kind regards,

Marina Tognetti

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New Blended Learning: a case for online blended
Breaking the compromise between individualization and convenience

Brief Intro to Traditional learning:

In the past, the most trusted way to learn was by going to a school, or have a teacher come to the location of the student. That is what we call the traditional learning. The main advantages are that the classes are individualized and built around the students’ needs, level, speed of progress and more. However, this requires students and teachers to be present in the same place at the same time, with the disadvantage of commuting for both the teacher and student, physical space management (which is often a very large expense for schools) and location constraints since a student can only choose what is offered nearby and you can only study during times close to business hours. Also, students are restricted to a limited selection of teachers or schools within a reasonable distance from their homes / workplaces.

On the other side, we have asynchronous learning: which could be the book bought at the airport, audio lessons, text books, audio or multimedia and more. This is learning which can be done anytime, anywhere, at the student’s own pace.  One of the largest problems with the asynchronous learning though is that it’s not individualized or personalized, as it’s built to suit a large mass of students. It lacks therefore the critical interaction between students and teachers

To solve this trade-off between individualization and convenience, educators have tried to combine both: offering students face-to-face lessons and using one of the asynchronous learning resources for self-study.

The downside of this kind of blended learning is that they are not built together. Therefore combining them ad hoc often requires the compromise between the interest of the asynchronous content provider and that of the synchronous school or educator. The result is a learning experience with good base resources, but one that does not reach the full potential of the publisher and the educator.

We have all learned this way, by going to schools, universities and always having at least one textbook for every class. The new generations now are even lucky to have e-books and avoid those memories of back pains and huge backpacks…

The new blended learning:

As broadband and VOIP penetration keep increasing, the internet brings new solutions that were previously not possible in the area of education and e-learning, fully integrating the traditional and asynchronous learning into a New Blended Learning.

To explain more on how it works, we will use the real case example of Myngle and Instituto Cervantes.

Myngle is Europe’s leading multi-language online school, offering 45 languages with 200 highly selected and trained teachers out of a pool of more than 6.000 applicants. 95% of students rate their classes as excellent, which proves that live online learning works.

Instituto Cervantes is backed by the Spanish foreign ministry and provides extensive Spanish online learning courses with officially recognized certificates. With over 20 years of experience developing courses, Instituto Cervantes has proven to be an excellent asynchronous learning material.

The combination of two very different education companies is what makes it interesting:

1 - Myngle, provides individualized online lessons, with 100% flexibility, since students can choose their teacher and time to learn. But, as a language school, it is not a content publisher.

2 – Instituto Cervantes provides proven high quality content and officially recognized certificates, but this content lacks the personalization to really fit to the specific student’s needs.

By Myngle joining forces with Instituto Cervantes, the student can have the best of both: individualized lessons and live practice through Myngle built on the content from Instituto Cervantes, and with diplomas recognized worldwide.

To make this learning truly blended, Myngle teachers went through a special training made by Instituto Cervantes based on its content. With that, the publisher and educator work hand-in-hand to ensure that the content is used in its fullest potential and the student has maximum learning results. The goal is to achieve high effectiveness and efficiency.

The results:

Feedback from students and teachers that took part in this pilot is very positive.
Students feel more comfortable and confident learning and speaking, as they see that they are progressing in their Spanish fast, and are therefore continuing to the next levels.

Some teachers see that they can offer not only a successful foreign language learning solution to their students, but also use their own experience to create the best possible learning experience. This achieved through  personalized live lessons and through creating additional content adapted for the lessons.

The Future ahead

If we look at the future of the New Blended Learning, we see that there are some short term issues and questions which still needs to be addressed for an efficient use of this new solution.

•    From the educators’ perspective:

Teachers will have to find their role, as this new learning solution requires a different approach than the traditional methods. The main question is whether teachers will take an active role, bringing their expertise and helping shaping the new courses, or they will simply follow, and use what’s offered to them.
Publishers will also have to adapt their role as content developers. So far, the content provided by publishers focuses only on either synchronous or asynchronous. Publishers’ main contribution usually stops once the content is produced and distributed, giving the teachers and schools the responsibility to become familiar with their content.

•    From the students’ perspective:

Main issues here are related to the use of technology and adoption of new technology solutions.
Computer phobia - many students don’t feel comfortable enough using the technology in such an intensive way, and may take some time to get used to it.
Minimum infrastructure requirements – students taking live online classes will require a fast broadband connection with hardware capable of handling voice and video (optional) communication.
Set-up learning curve – going inside a school and taking face-to-face classes is quite familiar to everyone; however having the same experience through a web service where the student must navigate to book his/her own classes (and reschedule) can be complex for some.

Looking at the longer term future, some strategic questions for all educators will need to be tackled in order to make it a lasting success and a new standard in education

o    What is the role of the teacher in online blended?
o    Does asynchronous format need to be rethought?
o    What is the role of the traditional school in a fully
online environment?

We welcome the input from all educators here regarding these issues and what they see as the real ’future’ of language education.

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I would like to invite you all to participate to the Virtual Round Table conference.

It is a 3-day live online conference which takes place on 25-27 March (Fri/Sat/Sun) 2011. It is all about “language learning with technology” and it is a completely green conference since no-one has to travel to attend.

Myngle being the leading online school in language education, we will be making a presentation about The New Blended, you may join us here.

For a complete program see the following link.

Some of the highlights are:

5 plenaries/ panel discussions on ELTons, EVO Session, aPLaNET and m-Learning
an Adobe ConnectPro and a Second Life strand
18 presentations (30min)
16 workshops (1h)
a Pecha Kucha Night
an Open Mic session with song, poetry and other fun stuff
a live online auction and fund raising for Japan relief efforts, poster exhibition, SL exhibition and tours and much more, all taking place in virtual classrooms and Second Life. The Opening Panel  discussion “The best way to predict the future is to invent it“ will take place Thursday 12 November 2009, 1pm GMT.
It’s a unique opportunity for teachers to connect and network with other teachers and meet some of the biggest names in the language industry! Read more about the conference.

How to participate?
Please sign up for free on the Virtual Round Table Conference site
http://virtual-round-table.ning.com.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at education@myngle.com .

We look forward to seeing you all in our presentation!

Best regards,

Hala Elkhawanky

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We are delighted to put in the spotlight Myngle’s Top Teachers of 2010!

Making the overview was not easy at all, over 200 teachers have taught thousands of students from all over the world and have done really an amazing job.

The 3 winners of Top Star teachers are teachers who have been with Myngle for a long time and are highly committed, besides having a high number of students. The 5 winners for Top Star new teachers are teachers who have been with Myngle for a short time but proved to be excellent teachers with an increasing number of students.

Also, we want to mention some teachers who have achieved a high score on retention and who have had the highest number of lessons per students. Last, but not least, we also have selected the teachers with the Best Special Projects: Cervantes and Corporates Pilot.

Mr_Perdrix, the winner of the Best Special Projects, developed lesson material especially for the Spanish Cervantes AVE Courses. This contributed to a very successful presentation at the Online Educa conference in Berlin about Blended Learning with the Cervantes AVE and Myngle.

Well done to all teachers who managed to receive the most outstanding grades. Thank you for striving for fun, effective and inspiring educational teaching methods!

Would you like to be inspired and learn a new language? Log in and book a lesson with our most talented and highly awarded teachers. You can check their profiles by clicking on the names below and of course you can visit all the other teachers on the Myngle website.

Happy Myngling,

Marina Tognetti

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For the second time Myngle was invited to present in Berlin. Luckily, the -15 degrees and snow that had not stopped for 2 days, did not keep people from coming and seeing us at Online Educa Berlin. We had a  high attendance of 140%, people where sitting on the floor and leaning against the walls.

This year our presentation was about online blended learning, which turned out to be a hot topic at the fair.

Online blended learning is ” bringing the best of both worlds, the offline learning, where you can get complete individualized lessons with a teacher, built around and for the exact needs of the student, and the asynchronous where you get more flexibility, as you can choose where and when to study, at your own pace”  in our perspective. We explained our case study of Myngle teachers together with the Instituto Cervantes asynchronous AVE material.  Blended learning was one of the major themes discussed and everyone talked about it in different ways. Our presentation had  the answers to many of the questions and worries that other presentors and visitors had discussed in the previous presentations.

One of the very interesting questions was about the material teachers use during the blended lessons; can they make use of their own material or simply work with the material provided for them? Another question was about the concept of “offline” learning and how we were able to define the meeting a teacher online as offline, for many people live online teaching is still something very new.

If you are interested in the presentation, or have any more questions please feel free to contact hala at hala@myngle.com.
We believe that that was a great event  to end 2010 and motivate us more toward more improvement and  success for 2011.

Hala

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We should have announced it earlier so you would be able to book your flight ticket ;), but I think there is a chance for those who are around. Myngle is going to give a presentation in Educa Berlin conference on the 2nd of December.

ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN is the largest global e-learning conference for the corporate, education and public service sectors, it is the key annual networking event for the international e-learning and technology-supported learning and training industry, attracting and bringing together experts in the vanguard of technology-enhanced learning from around the world. Hala will be our presenter and she is going to give a presentation about “Blended Online Learning”.

Let her know if you will be around!

Thanks,
Soaad

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Let’s introduce you to one of our teachers: Marc Perdrix. He is teaching on Myngle for over a year now. And since january he is also teaching Cervantes AVE courses. Read below his positive experience with this combination.

For some months now, Myngle has been offering a very special package: the combination of a self study course of Spanish called AVE and Online classes.

The AVE or Aula  Virtual de Español is a didactic platform created by Instituto Cervantes which offers language courses at A1 to C1 level for learning Spanish online.

These courses have the advantage that they provide the students with autonomy and the possibility to work at their own pace, they can repeat the activities and consult the correct answers and even do the tests on their own which are then automatically corrected. But a very important part of AVE is the role of the tutor. It is the tutor’s responsibility to make sure the students feel very committed and valued during the course.

As an online teacher of Spanish and tutor in AVE I strongly recommend this combination because it combines the best from each type of learning. On the one hand, the AVE course is a self study course where students work on their own, they can follow their progress as AVE has self evaluation activities, they can access the platform and work whenever they want and from wherever they want and they also have a tutor, who guides them and helps them during the whole process. On the other hand, the online classes give the opportunity to have sessions with their tutor/teacher regularly, solve doubts, practice the aspects they find most difficult and work on the oral and writing expression always according to what they have worked in the AVE.

To read more about Mr_Perdrix’ experiences click here.

Find out more about all teachers who teach cervantes courses now.

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Hey everybody!

Its official. We have a winner of our special prize.

The lucky winner is Katalin Kánya from Hungary. She is learning French on Myngle with our Teacher delphinecrume, because she loves the language and plans to move to France and find a job there.

Katalin will use the KLM tickets to visit a friend in Nice. She is very happy and excited about the trip and we can’t wait to see some nice pics and hear about her experience!

Here is a picture of Katalin

We are convinced Katalin will master her French with Myngle. We wish her all the best.

Happy myngling.

Aenn

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