Do I Need Four Years of a Foreign Language?
As you have been researching potential colleges lately, I’m sure you’ve come across a handful of confusing distinctions. One such thing that we…
I get really excited about ideas that marry private interest with the public good, or repurpose things that are happening anyways towards a greater goal. I geeked out when I first heard about the idea to turn roads into solar panels, I love the idea of health plans subsidizing gym membership costs, and my friends and I have had serious discussions about the potential of turning playgrounds into energy producers (imagine if we could turn all the infinite energy of toddlers into electricity!!!). Regardless of the efficiency of see-saws and swings as producers of electrical energy, I love these types of large-scale solutions. Which is why I freaked out when I heard this guy on NPR:
For those of you who elected not to watch that 16 minute video, Luis von Ahn repurposed CAPTCHA to do good for the world. You probably know CAPTCHA as those strange looking words at the bottom of internet forms that you can never seem to get just right. Von Ahn decided to plug words from old books into those so that when people enter the correct word, that text is digitized. Essentially, it turns pdfs into searchable pdfs, so computers can recognize and organize old books with faded text. In other words, it takes something obnoxious and apparently pointless, which millions of people do every single day, and harnesses it to provide more information, for free, on the internet. It's fantastic.
So his next idea really caught my attention. It's called duolingo. Essentially, he developed software that teaches you another language and, as soon as you get goodenough, gives you real online articles to translate. So as you're learning a language, you're actually translating the web into different languages. The software amalgamates the work of a whole bunch of beginners, which he proved is just as accurate as using a professional translator.
So, Interwebs, I have decided to put my money (or rather, my time - the software is free) where my mouth is. Since it would be no fun to explore the web looking for CAPTCHAs to fill out, I am learning German. As you can see from the picture, I haven't gotten very far yet, but I'm excited to start translating the web! You should all do it too. Who can say no to free language learning software that also helps the world?!?
As you have been researching potential colleges lately, I’m sure you’ve come across a handful of confusing distinctions. One such thing that we…