Colingo
| Free language learning for all
Contents
What is Colingo?
Colingo builds tools to help people share languages.
Founded upon the pillars of free software, Colingo is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and maintaining a platform for web-based global language exchange. Colingo takes an innovative and multifaceted approach to providing the tools for people around the world to collaborate and overcome linguistic barriers.
Currently, Colingo is working on three synergistic projects: Colingo.org, ColingoXO and LibColingo. All aspects of these projects revolve around a vast and growing user-generated public domain library of video clips. Each short clip consists of someone saying a phrase in their native language/dialect as well as metadata about that clip for categorization and searchability.
Colingo.Org
Colingo.org, our web-based community portal, allows users to tap into and add to this library and serves as a brokerage for linguistic and cultural exchange. Members build curricula of and around the videos to share with the rest of the community while simultaneously interacting with others around the world. These community-based interactions turn each member into both teacher and pupil, building a more equitable pedagogy on a global scale.
ColingoXO
- Main article: ColingoXO
ColingoXO, Colingo's software package for the One Laptop Per Child project, takes an innovative approach to language learning and harnesses the power of the laptop's (the XO) cutting edge technology. ColingoXO takes advantage of the built-in video camera, microphone, and networking capabilities of the XO to create a new paradigm of linguistic education. ColingoXO allows students around the world to add to the public library of videos and collaboratively construct narratives out of the video clips. ColingoXO allows students to splice together voices from all over the world while putting them in the driver's seat to foment global cultural exchange.
LibColingo
LibColingo serves is a record of human activity. It is the library of user-generated video clips from around the world. While providing the basis for Colingo.org and ColingoXO, LibColingo simultaneously archives and preserves languages and dialects. As cultures, languages and dialects traverse their life cycle, LibColingo serves as a global video/audio repository for global posterity. With historical and anthropological preservation in mind, LibColingo serves as a way for communities and cultures to document themselves; providing a grassroots basis for ourselves and our children to better understand the human race as a whole.
Beyond the Internet
The aforementioned projects are by no means limited to users sitting in front of a computer. Instead, Colingo advocates for discovering innovative ways to bring these tools out of the virtual world. Organizations and businesses working globally and/or locally are encouraged to harness the power of Colingo and bring it to the communities they serve.
Open and Free
All of Colingo's software is free, and all of its source code is freely available to view, modify and redistribute under the Copyleft guidelines of the Gnu General Public License. All of our content is also free and publicly available, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. Anyone and everyone is encouraged to develop new and existing Colingo tools and technologies.
Content bundle
- Colingo released its first content bundle on August 22, 2007. (No longer maintained)
- Colingo released four more content bundles on November 7, 2007. Download the XOL's
Community and Developers
Colingo is an open project growing at a quick pace. Check out the current core of Colingo.
