Thx for this vote of confidence. I agree that we’re at a historical turning point for many industries. The new social media will upend, or even wipe out, many of the old media incumbents. Since we’re early adopters of such social media, we may indeed prove something of a disruptive force.

It’s still too early to tell, of course. I’m confident and excited about the prospects but wary of making any predictions. The more I know about this stuff, the more I realize that the future is unknowable. Change is happening so fast and it’s going to get faster. So far, riding the wave has been a great experience.

Ken Carroll

I even get the feeling that we’re seeing a little piece of history in the making. Perhaps in a few years all online language learning will be done this way. It wouldn’t surprise me and ChinesePod deserves the credit for showing the way.

I appreciate the kind words. As long as we get support like this, it’s only going to get better.

As to contextual learning, I wasn’t aware of how far medblogs had progressed. Regardless of profession, we’re all entering an era where continuous learning is mandatory. The shelf-life of a professional knowledge base is getting shorter and shorter, so we’re all going to spend the rest of our lives struggling to keep up with the advancements.

As I see it, 3 things can help us:
- Tech to create the networks and (some) content
- Pedagogy to guide good learning behaviors
- The collective wisdom of the Big Brain

The rate of change will increase dramatically. The cause and the solution is the internet. These are some of the insights that drive ChinesePod.

This is just the beginning - imagine where we’ll be in ten years!

Ken Carroll

I just read Rick Nigol’s blog entry; it is really interesting. Context. Learner control. Community. These principles apply to not just language-learning. In medicine, every practicing physician involves him/herself in continuous learning, both to increase his or her knowledge base as well as improve the “art” of medicine. After formal medical training, we must accrue medical education credits in order to maintain board certification. That’s our knowledge base. But, the “art” of medicine is applying that knowledge to the patient; that’s “contextual” learning. There are myriads of resources that allow me to be in control of my learning i.e. conferences, audio CD lecture series, online medical websites, etc. The increasing poplularity of medblogs creates the community of learners that encourage practicioners in an less didactic format and a much more accessible medium. This is 21st century eLearning.

I’ve emailed you this complement before, but it bears repeating. ChinesePod is truly amazing. I am so addicted to my ChinesePod lessons. I experience them as if I was an invited guest in a private tutorial, not just once but hundreds of times. Thank you for providing the world with this amazing service.

AZERDocMom