by Saj-Nicole Joni, Forbes
With billions of people connected to the Internet, massive, inclusive collaborations are now possible for the first time in history. MacArthur fellow and Duolingo chief executive Luis von Ahn is making such collaborations a reality, and in the process he’s uncovering some unexpected lessons about how to solve challenges at that kind of scale. Duolingo is a language-learning and crowdsourced text-translation platform. Its online language classes are designed so that as part of learning a new language, students are invited to translate content and vote on the accuracy of other student translations. The content comes from organizations such as CNN and BuzzFeed, which pay Duolingo to translate articles for their companies’ international sites. This model allows Duolingo to make its language courses free for all students with access to the Internet.
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