[HN Gopher] Show HN: Open-source tool for creating courses like ...
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Show HN: Open-source tool for creating courses like Duolingo
I'm launching UneeBee, an open-source tool for creating interactive
courses like Duolingo: GitHub repo:
https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee Demo: https://app.uneebee.com/
It's pretty early-stage, so there's a lot of things to improve.
Everything on this project is going to be public, so you can check
the roadmap on GitHub too:
https://github.com/orgs/zoonk/projects/11 I'm creating this
project because I love Duolingo and I wanted the same kind of
experience to learn other things as well. But I think this could
be useful to other people too. I'll soon launch three products
using UneeBee: - Wikaro: Focused on enterprise. It allow companies
to have their own white-label Duolingo. I think this is going to be
great for onboarding and internal training. - Educasso: Focused on
schools. It will allow teachers to easily create interactive
lessons, compliant to local school curriculum. I want to make it in
a way that saves teacher's time, so they focus more on their
students rather than lesson planning. - Wisek: Marketplace for
interactive courses where creators will be able to earn money
creating those courses. I'm not sure this is going to work out
but, worst case scenario, I'll have products that I can use myself
because I'm a terrible learner using traditional ways. Interactive
learning is super useful to me, so I hope it will be to other
people too. If you have some spare time, please give me your
brutal feedback. I really want to improve this product, so no need
to be nice - just let me know your thoughts. :) PS. I'm also
launching it on Product Hunt:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/uneebee
Author : ceolin
Score : 343 points
Date : 2023-11-18 08:28 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (uneebee.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (uneebee.com)
| LAMike wrote:
| Will there be an API to upload lessons in bulk?
| ceolin wrote:
| Eventually, yes. Not sure if I'll be able to implement it in
| time for v1, though.
| ttymck wrote:
| What's driving the timeline for v1 release?
| ceolin wrote:
| Stability and basic functionality that allows to properly
| use UneeBee for the three products I want to create (orgs,
| schools and marketplace).
|
| This can give you a better view on the planned roadmap:
| https://github.com/orgs/zoonk/projects/11/views/2
|
| I don't have any external funding and I'm not employed, so
| I'm prioritizing functionality that can allow me to build a
| paid cloud product on top of it. I still need to pay my
| bills after all :)
| tempaccount1234 wrote:
| Good luck. Since you want brutal feedback, at this early stage,
| it looks boring and tedious to enter data. I'd concentrate on the
| course output and define the input format as JSON or CSV. Why?
| Duolingo isn't great because of the content, but because of great
| navigation (and points gamification) so the courses should work
| great on small touch screens. How to get the data is is something
| to worry about once the interface for the learner is good. Also,
| it's easier to get formatted course input, because you can just
| ask chatgpt to generate learning material in a specific format.
| (For my own out of Duolingo experience I do exactly that: I
| defined a learning csv format and ask chatgpt to give me learning
| examples in this format) - also I'd stay away from animating
| images unless you get good at it, because animations distract
| from learning (and duolingo is turning into an animation studio
| and spending the resources to get animation right, so anything
| you can do with low budget is going to look cheap)
| ceolin wrote:
| Very good points, thank you! Yeah, I played a little bit with
| animations but I didn't manage to make them right. I think I
| kept one when the lesson is completed but I recognize it's
| really bad. I think I'm going to remove it.
|
| Totally agree I need to focus more on the course output and
| overall learner experience.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Duolingo isn't great because of the content, but because of
| great navigation (and points gamification) so the courses
| should work great on small touch screens. How to get the data
| is is something to worry about once the interface for the
| learner is good.
|
| Counterpoint: twee gamification getting in the way of learning
| is why I stopped using Duolingo after reaching a 2500 day
| streak -- the last straw was the tree turning into a path at
| the end of last year, but the last time I really enjoyed it was
| back when I could load each lesson into a separate tab and just
| spend hours at a time in the zone without getting distracted by
| their attempts to cheer me on.
|
| Similar direction of changes are now actively annoying me with
| Brilliant.org
| atomicfiredoll wrote:
| Same, that plus the persistent harassment. Personally, I'm
| skeptical that Duo in it's current format is designed to
| teach. The goal seems to be giving the impression you're
| learning so you but into micro transactions. I've seen people
| with multi year steaks who struggle with the target language
| and clearly would have been better served via another
| approach.
|
| Maybe it's the course design, maybe the lack of supporting
| material, or some other weakness in the platform itself. But,
| I left out of frustration and started building Anki decks so
| I could have more control. As I'm now on my own, I've had to
| find supporting materials, which highlighted how poor Duo's
| explanations can be.
|
| That last part comes down to the course design. Hopefully
| OP's platform doesn't force designing ineffective courses.
| This isn't my area of expertise, but I think it's important
| to recognize that adult learners can have different goals,
| even within something like learning a language (e.g.
| speaking, writing, accent, etc.)
| atomicfiredoll wrote:
| Just a tangential shower thought on gamification. I found
| myself skipping Duo on weeknights so I could cram on the
| weekend, get matched with procrastinators, and ascend the
| leaderboard easier.
|
| I've heard other reports of people focusing on the game and
| not their goals. Game designers are aware that humans will
| "optimize the fun away." In the case of Duo, it seems a
| group of users will optimize the learning away (regardless
| of the goals or intention)
| bavarianbob wrote:
| I unironically believe that Duolingo is a pacifier that
| makes you feel good. It's goal is to maximize engagement,
| not help you learn a language. This is coming from someone
| who has spent a considerable amount of time on the
| platform, maxing two different language trees and am
| currently unable to speak a lick of either of those
| languages.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Yes and no. It is a great pacifier, but my grandma of
| nearly 90 years old also legitimately understands any
| english that comes her way much better after doing that
| on duolingo for a few months. She enjoys it greatly, I do
| not understand how with all the advertisements and ten
| types of currencies/points/lives that I cannot make heads
| or tails of but she likes it.
|
| Especially the animations, she often remarks how cute
| they are and wants to show us. It's adorable and I'm
| super happy for her :) though also disappointed that,
| when I installed duolingo for her, it wasn't the innocent
| learning app with good UX that I knew it as from like six
| years earlier
| playingalong wrote:
| I observe the same. I have 700 streak, have completed two
| full courses.
|
| At the same time - I think gamification and nice packaging
| are the sole reasons Duo is a success. To be precise the
| gamification is mostly not about competing with the others,
| but being held hostage for your own streak.
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| That worsening trend in consumer products was very well
| analyzed in this post that appeared somewhat recently on HN:
|
| https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-
| margi...
| watwut wrote:
| I actually found I like path better then old tree. The big
| difference is that with path, I do the next dot on the path
| or dont. With tree, I was tempted to constantly optimize the
| xp. Do I want 2x now or later? Should I do revision or new
| content? Should I continue this node or that node? When was
| the last time I did the boring node I am avoiding?
|
| With path, there is no obsessing over strategy, pop up app do
| the lesson and that is it. I also found that I retain more,
| because revision is build into path instead of me having to
| manage it.
| Garlef wrote:
| My thoughts exactly.
|
| I watched the video but all I saw was a lengthy click-process.
| The key feature is usage, not creation.
|
| (Sidenote: I agree - Most future tools will profit from a
| having a JSON-like DSL that is amenable to be fed by content
| coming from LLMs)
| westurner wrote:
| Notes from for LitNerd (YC S21) re: IPA, "Duolingo's language
| notes all on one page", Sozo's vowel and consonant videos,
| Captionpop synced YouTube videos with subtitles in multiple
| languages,: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28309645
|
| _Spaced repetition_ and _Active recall testing_ like or with
| Mnemosyne or Anki probably boost language retention like they
| increase flashcard recall:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki_(software)
|
| ENH: Generate Anki decks with {IPA symbols, Greek letters w/
| LaTeX for math and science, Nonregional (Midland American)
| English, }
|
| Google translate has IPA for some languages.
|
| "The English Pronunciation / International Phonetic Alphabet Anki
| Deck" https://www.towerofbabelfish.com/ipa-anki-deck/
|
| "IPA Spanish & English Vowels & Consonants"
| https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3170059448
| westurner wrote:
| I don't know Elixir and so the hypothetical contribution
| barrier for nontrivial commits includes learning Erlang /
| Elixir.
|
| The LearnXinYminutes tuts are succinct and on github for PRs to
| fix typos, language learning sequence reorderings, and or
| additions with comments
|
| LearnXinYMinutes > Elixir:
| https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/elixir/
| freedomben wrote:
| FWIW, elixir is now my favorite language. Learning elixir is
| one of the things I thank past self for doing!
| JCharante wrote:
| This is awesome! I had the same idea in high school and wrote a
| whitepaper about it.
|
| Personally, I think Duolingo shouldn't exist in its current form.
| The courses are all created by teams of volunteers and only able
| to be contributed to by those volunteers, which slow downs course
| creation and bug fixes to courses. Additionally the data is all
| held hostage by Duolingo, which prevents you from integrating it
| with Anki for example. I don't think Duolingo should be getting
| revenue when most of the work is done by volunteers. I think a
| decentralized open source version should exist, much like how
| anyone can modify and upload Anki decks, people should be able to
| modify and upload "Duolingo-like" courses.
|
| Re: marketplace:
|
| I think this is a great idea! There are Anki decks that are sold
| by creators too, like Spoonfed Chinese. I think this is an
| actually fair way to implement learning like this.
| JCharante wrote:
| I don't have time to dive into the source code right now, but
| how did you implement the types of questions?
|
| I had the idea (I'm not saying it's original, it's just what I
| thought at the time) of course lessons consisting of a series
| of questions, and each question is defined as a JSON object.
|
| There are built-in question-templates like multiple choice,
| free-form answer, or just true/false.
|
| If a course needs something really specific, then it can
| implement a custom renderer for that new template type, so that
| a course isn't held back by the upstream project. If it's a
| template that might be useful for more people, then it can be
| integrated into the core project.
| ceolin wrote:
| There's a dashboard where users can manage questions for each
| course. It's pretty basic right now:
|
| - You can add multiple question. - Each question can have
| some content, one image and multiple options users can
| select. - Each option can have a title, an image and a
| feedback displayed to users when they select/confirm that
| option.
|
| I want to add an option to import/export JSON. It's actually
| on the roadmap for v1:
|
| - https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/41 -
| https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee/issues/40
|
| In the future, I also want to implement some kind of plugin
| system because certain subjects require a different learning
| style. But I'm not sure yet how this would work. I need to
| think about it.
| JCharante wrote:
| > In the future, I also want to implement some kind of
| plugin system because certain subjects require a different
| learning style. But I'm not sure yet how this would work. I
| need to think about it.
|
| Right. People say that HelloChinese is better for Chinese
| because some of the question types are drawing Hanzi, so I
| think this is a perfect use case for a plugin system where
| a course could add a plugin for Hanzi/Kanji drawing and not
| be slowed down by the core developers.
| dmurray wrote:
| Duolingo introduced drawing Hanzi a couple of months ago.
| Worth checking out their approach if you haven't seen it.
| JCharante wrote:
| > There's a dashboard where users can manage questions for
| each course. It's pretty basic right now:
|
| I think that while this might be useful for teachers, it
| might be more sustainable if courses were stored in a
| version controllable medium to facilitate multiple
| collaborators.
| ceolin wrote:
| > it might be more sustainable if courses were stored in
| a version controllable medium to facilitate multiple
| collaborators
|
| My initial thought was to actually use GitHub to store
| the content. Either on Markdown or JSON - to have some
| version control. I like how Exercism [1] does it. But I
| thought it would be hard for teachers - unfamiliar with
| Git - to update lessons.
|
| Then, I thought about implementing a version control
| system for the project but I felt I was overcomplicating
| things for an MVP. But I like the idea of having some
| kind of version control to improve collaboration.
|
| [1] https://exercism.org/
| JCharante wrote:
| Right, I think that there should be an editor that can
| open a project folder (consisting of json files and
| assets like images or sound clips) that teachers can use
| and share with each other (because they understand
| copying a folder and naming it v2 then emailing it to a
| colleague), but that folder could also be uploaded as a
| repo to github for more organized projects.
|
| You could also have a cloud service to store the project
| files, and then the teachers can just login to the editor
| and click save to upload their latest copy of the course.
| mauricioc wrote:
| Duolingo courses are no longer created by volunteers. They
| stopped the volunteer program in 2021 [1], right around the
| time they increased monetization efforts. They offered part-
| time jobs and a $4 million reward fund to previous volunteers
| when closing the program, which I thought was pretty kind.
|
| [1] https://blog.duolingo.com/ending-honoring-our-volunteer-
| cont...
| JCharante wrote:
| Ah thank you, I haven't kept in touch with Duolingo's
| progression in a few years. While now I see it as more
| ethical that Duolingo charges for content that they are
| paying to produce, I still feel like it's slower progression
| than if everybody could contribute (and those most adept at
| the language would probably just focus on reviewing PRs)
| 3PS wrote:
| Disclaimer: I work for Duolingo, all opinions are my own
| and not those of my employer, etc.
|
| Part of the reason that content is slower to produce now is
| just that the standards are much higher. Internally we draw
| a distinction between the old volunteer-contributed content
| and the new content which is aligned to CEFR guidelines for
| how languages should actually be taught. Aligning content
| like this is not only more expensive but also requires more
| coordination and oversight from domain experts compared to
| previous methods.
| josiahpeters wrote:
| Thanks for the additional context.
|
| I love HN for little nuggets of explanation like this.
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| Anecdotally, I am having a much better time with Duolingo
| since the last time I tried around 2018 - the changes to
| be properly made courses in line with CEFR is actually
| resulting in better learning.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Interesting. I thought part of the duo lingo magic was
| that it didn't follow the beaten path for language
| acquisition.
|
| What made you as a company change your mind?
| yorwba wrote:
| Pretty sure it's to sell proficiency certificates, i.e.
| https://englishtest.duolingo.com/applicants Established
| institutions are more likely to accept Duolingo as
| equivalent to traditional language education if they
| follow the same standards.
| JCharante wrote:
| Thank you for the insider insight, HN is a great
| community space.
| kibibyte wrote:
| I just started the Japanese course recently and was
| trying to figure out why a bunch of the criticism I read
| of Duolingo's course seemed irrelevant or inapplicable. I
| guess this pivot explains why to some degree.
| somethingsome wrote:
| Some random comments on Duolingo:
|
| I honestly don't see the point of following CEFR for an
| app like Duolingo.
|
| Professional and GOOD teachers, that love to teach and
| did that for several years, know how to teach a language.
| THey don't need to follow something such as CEFR to know
| if they do well and what is interesting to teach and in
| which order.
|
| I find it more important to make interesting lectures
| which do not follow a standardized curriculum. When
| someone is learning a language in this way will naturally
| go toward a CEFR based courses if needed afterward, with
| a big head start and only when he feels ready.
|
| Also, not allowing to see 'already seen' vocabulary is a
| very strange move for an app, I guess it's for preventing
| having the vocab in a app like anki which makes duolingo
| less useful, but still, even if I don't use such app,
| having to screenshot all the time to have my vocab is a
| total pain.
|
| Finally, the app doesn't seem to understand which
| words/sentences you already know and master and clearly
| do not need to see for the 400time instead of new
| vocabulary. Even having maximum points all the time and
| very fast will usually result in the same vocab shown
| again and again. It seems like an almost basic
| statistical problem, so I don't get why it's not fixed.
|
| Also, some vocab is very strange, for example using 'es
| tut mir leid' in German to just say 'I'm sorry' feels
| like the content is automatically generated instead of
| having a linguist or even a German behind.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Really appreciate introducing Spoonfed Chinese to me! I was
| looking for a good Anki deck about a year ago and couldn't find
| anything good, this looks perfect for me.
| leke wrote:
| That's a nice looking app! I have a similar mindset about
| duolingo. My interest is language learning and I've developed my
| own duolingo clone, but perhaps not as fully featured as yours
| https://codinginthecold.alwaysdata.net/kuku/
|
| I've also just finished an early version of an app that
| facilitates creating "parallel texts".
| ceolin wrote:
| Nice! Interestingly, I actually started learning Finnish on
| Duolingo last week :)
| Kreotiko wrote:
| Duolingo is useless, my father has 140k experience, 3 years
| streak and can't speak or understand any English in real life.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Duolingo is not useless.
|
| It works well to learn the basics, which means a few thousand
| words and the core grammar. Like ANY tool in language learning,
| it's not a complete solution.
|
| The ONLY way to speak a language is to...gasp...practise
| speaking and use other resources! Ahhh, the horror!
|
| Your father isn't trying. He's just using Duolingo as a game.
| rcarr wrote:
| > It works well to learn the basics, which means a few
| thousand words and the core grammar.
|
| This is not entirely accurate. The better courses on Duolingo
| teach in excess of 7000 words (8000 for french) as can be
| seen on DuolingoData[1] and clicking on the W column to sort
| the courses by words taught.
|
| Clozemaster is a good resource for vocabulary building if you
| want to supplement Duolingo.[2]
|
| [1] https://duolingodata.com/
|
| [2] https://www.clozemaster.com/
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| A lot of those word counters count the same words but in
| different conjugation.
|
| Run, running, ran,... Gosto, gosta, gostamos, gostou,
| gostei ....
|
| Which I do not. Though your count might be more accurate.
| bavarianbob wrote:
| "Your father isn't trying"
|
| fucking lol, the audacity
| HPsquared wrote:
| It has its uses, I find it pretty good for learning vocabulary.
| It's basically glorified flashcards.
| bavarianbob wrote:
| but worse!
| rcarr wrote:
| It's not useless at all but the quality of the courses varies.
| I've been doing the English to Spanish course (the most
| developed course on there), I'm on Section 6 (Upper B1) and I
| can now read the majority of Spanish subtitles in real time.
| Duolingo has been my main resource for learning by far, the
| only other thing I've done is watch some Spanish shows on
| Netflix and Youtube using LanguageReactor as well as
| subscribing to some Spanish subreddits and using DeepL for
| translation of words/sentences on there that I haven't
| encountered. Once I have completed Section 8 (Upper B2) I plan
| to do the iTalki language test[1] to find out what I need to
| work on and will be preparing to take one of the official
| DELE/SIELE/CELU qualifications at B2 level with a view to
| moving to Spain for study/work.
|
| To get the most out of it, I would recommend reading the built
| in grammar sections multiple times as well as subscribing to
| language learning subreddits and googling things you don't
| understand. I suspect this will become less of an issue as they
| roll out their AI offering which bakes this into the app (e.g
| you can specifically talk to the AI and delve into the
| subtleties of the grammar).
|
| I don't know but I suspect they are focussing on perfecting the
| most popular courses and getting them compliant with the
| official educational framework levels and then using those as
| templates to flesh out the other courses. They've also
| explicitly stated they're looking into AI to auto generate
| content as at the minute every lesson is handmade and approved
| by humans. I suspect once they've got this down, they'll then
| expand the Duolingo Language Test to more languages other than
| English.
|
| [1]https://www.italki.com/languageassessment/ila
| bavarianbob wrote:
| How tf do you use LanguageReactor? That app is garbage, my
| lord.
| davidzweig wrote:
| The mobile version? What's the biggest complaint? :)
| rcarr wrote:
| It's buggy but a page refresh or settings tweak normally
| does the job of getting the dual subtitles working which is
| the main thing I use it for and there's nothing better out
| there as far as I'm aware. Tbh I find it odd that big
| streamers like Netflix and Youtube haven't built this in as
| a feature already. Feels like it would be pretty trivial to
| implement and would be of great value for a lot of people.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I'm using Duolingo to learn my third language: japanese. Still
| a beginner but I'm already able to piece out meaning in a
| surprising amount of dialogue. I'm actually impressed with my
| own progress, never thought I'd make it this far.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Want to try my iOS/Mac app for learning Japanese through
| reading?
|
| https://reader.manabi.io
| bavarianbob wrote:
| this is badass
| talkingtab wrote:
| Good point hidden in badly formulated comment. After two years
| of making good progress with Dutch, I can't understand anything
| in a movie. If I can read it, I can get much of it.
|
| Since my goal was to be able to have a conversation with
| someone in Dutch, I eventually stopped using Duolingo. Part of
| the "gamification" makes it fun but also misdirects a user from
| the audio part of learning a language. When I started learning
| Czech I paid much less attention to the visual and more to the
| audio. I did better, but that was despite how Duolingo is
| presented, not because of it.
|
| Duolingo is certainly not useless, but my experience echoes
| that of the poster, so certainly it has significant - and for
| me crucial - limitations.
| JCharante wrote:
| Erlang is an interesting choice. Do you just really like Erlang?
| ceolin wrote:
| I'm actually new to the Erlang/Elixir ecosystem. This is my
| first project using it. I wanted a full-stack framework that
| allowed me to move really fast but I also wanted to have a nice
| user experience (similar to single-page applications) and good
| performance to avoid spending too much on servers.
|
| I found Phoenix [1] and I loved it! I've been very productive
| using it. I'm finding LiveView to have a very good UX, almost
| as good as a single-page application.
|
| And I'm quite impressed with the performance. For this demo,
| I'm using the cheapest machine on fly.io. Peak usage was 184MB
| RAM and 8% CPU (most of the time it's under 3%).
|
| [1] https://www.phoenixframework.org/
| demetrius wrote:
| How does this project compare to LibreLingo (
| https://github.com/LibreLingo/LibreLingo )? Why would I choose
| UnueBee over LibreLingo?
| ceolin wrote:
| LibreLingo is great but they focus on language learning only.
| My idea is to go beyond language and build an app that allows
| us to learn anything using interactive lessons.
|
| Eventually, I want to have a plugin system to have different
| lesson types for other subjects.
|
| Plus, I'm going to use UneeBee to offer cloud products for
| enterprise, school, and creators. It will get much more complex
| than LibreLingo's current scope.
| Jaxan wrote:
| I know it's not done to comment on the page design. But here it
| is anyways: the page is nonscrollable on my phone and the images
| are much wider than my screen. So I cannot see the screenshots.
| Even when I rotate to landscape, I can only see a part of the
| image.
| ceolin wrote:
| Thank you for reporting this issue. I'll look into it. If
| possible, please can you share what phone and browser are you
| using?
| Jaxan wrote:
| iPhone SE (1st gen). So very small compared to all other
| phones ;-). Safari on iOS 15
| ceolin wrote:
| Thank you! I've opened an issue for it:
| https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee.com/issues/1
|
| I'll look into it later today.
| itissid wrote:
| Re Educasso. what kind of schools are you thinking of public
| private charter? Also do teachers create their own content? I
| thought the content always came from a tie up of the school to a
| publisher that supplies all of it. It's hard to supplant
| publishers in grade school IIUC.
| ceolin wrote:
| > what kind of schools are you thinking of public private
| charter?
|
| Initially, private schools because adoption is easier. But,
| long-term, I'd like to help public schools too.
|
| > do teachers create their own content? I thought the content
| always came from a tie up of the school to a publisher that
| supplies all of it. It's hard to supplant publishers in grade
| school IIUC.
|
| Teachers can create their own content, if they want to. Based
| on my experience talking to teachers, though, they prefer when
| the content is already created because they don't have much
| time to do it.
|
| At some point, I'll probably look into partnering with
| publishers. I think this will help distribution because it's
| pretty hard to sell learning materials directly to schools.
|
| In some places it's more flexible, though. I'm constantly
| talking to teachers and school managers to see how we can make
| it work but I'm foreseeing some roadblocks. I think Educasso
| will take a bit longer to reach the market.
| allanmacgregor wrote:
| Kudos on the launch and is awesome this was build in Elixir!!!!
| Cheers!!
| ceolin wrote:
| Thanks. This is actually my first project using Elixir but I'm
| loving it!
| tharos47 wrote:
| What are you offering that's different from already existing
| solutions like Moodle or Opigno[1]?
|
| For example with Opigno you can already build an open-source
| based education platform with content authoring with H5P[2]
| (HTML-5 based interactive content)
|
| I've used Opigno LMS in the past, it's Drupal based so it's easy
| to deploy/maintain and basically have all features you advertise.
| Schools especially may use a learning platform for 10+ years, at
| least when authoring with H5P they are not stuck in a single
| platform anymore. What's your solution for this problem?
|
| The loss of flash left a lot of courses or interactive learning
| content unusable, that's a mistake I hope new platforms don't
| repeat.
|
| [1] https://www.opigno.org/
|
| [2] https://h5p.org/
| ceolin wrote:
| Personally, I think they serve different needs. I see Moodle
| and Opigno as great tools for traditional learning methods
| (video and text based).
|
| I struggle with that kind of learning experience and I think
| I'm not alone. Even using something like H5P, the overall user
| experience is far from what Duolingo offers for language
| learning.
|
| Plus, I find the overall UX too confusing. UneeBee is far from
| good but I hope it will have much better user experience than
| traditional learning tools.
|
| My vision for the long-term is to make it more practical too: A
| hands-on tool where we can learn by doing and seeing how things
| work in real-life. That's very hard to accomplish on tools like
| Moodle and Opigno.
|
| But, to be clear, I don't think (and I don't aim) to replace
| those tools. I think UneeBee (and its cloud offerings) will be
| an additional tool.
|
| > Schools especially may use a learning platform for 10+ years,
| at least when authoring with H5P they are not stuck in a single
| platform anymore. What's your solution for this problem?
|
| Tbh, I don't have a solution for this problem yet and I agree
| that's an issue. I think having an open plugin system like
| WordPress will help but I'm not sure how this would work yet.
| Always open to ideas.
| ricardolopes wrote:
| This looks really neat. I've definitely thought of "Duolingo for
| X" project ideas that I only wish I had the time to actually
| develop.
| sarupbanskota wrote:
| Cool idea.
|
| Would you target "first-time" creators, or experienced ones?
|
| And if experienced, why would they take a bet on Uneebee vs.
| existing platforms?
| ceolin wrote:
| I think first-time creators is a better bet. They're more
| willing to try something new like UneeBee and more motivated to
| improve the product as well, so we can grow together.
|
| Of course, experienced creators are welcome too but they
| already have an audience and usually play safe, so I understand
| why they wouldn't want to bet on UneeBee. First-time creators
| have nothing to lose, so it's a win-win situation. :)
| knigge111 wrote:
| This is awesome! Are you open for suggestions?
| ceolin wrote:
| Yes, always! Feel free to share them here, on GitHub [1] or
| send me an email at will@zoonk.org.
|
| [1] https://github.com/orgs/zoonk/discussions
| grey-area wrote:
| This looks like a great idea with a lot of hard work ahead of
| you.
|
| You mention a few different areas it could work in (education,
| enterprise, consumers), but really you need to pick one and
| really focus on it - you will dissipate your focus and energies
| if you try to serve even two of these markets at the same time.
| Might be worth picking something far away from languages since
| Duo and other apps have that sewn up already. It would be hard to
| compete.
|
| I like the education/school idea but you'd have to make the
| product free and focus on curricula and really serving those
| well. Perhaps target it at teachers and make it easier for them
| to construct lessons.
|
| Need to make sure it targets the device that your markets will be
| using, which probably means phones rather than desktop or ipad.
|
| Feedback: 1. Password requirements are a little annoying, perhaps
| loosen those a bit. 2. First examples are way too broad - pick an
| area, focus and try to execute just for that area, so that people
| see immediately what it is for (e.g. make your lessons as a
| teacher) and you have a target customer you can go after. 3. Your
| examples need a _lot_ more work and polish, I did the launch to
| moon base alpha - the pictures don 't add anything IMO, and I
| didn't feel like I really learned much because the questions were
| too fuzzy and the answers were not informative, you need to build
| in a better feedback loop and probably pick examples which are
| _far_ more clearcut. 4. There is some very weird /wrong content
| IMO e.g. use a 'gravitational slingshot' instead of burning fuel
| - the vast majority of spacecraft burn fuel to change course,
| including the rare cases where they use a gravitational
| slingshot. 5. Content is king - I get this is supposed to be some
| quick examples you threw together but you need to step back and
| consider what impression this gives of your product - it makes
| the whole thing seems slipshod and ill-thought out. You need some
| real, very well thought out content here to make it seem
| worthwhile. The user should feel like they learning something in
| your examples.
|
| So it looks like you have the basics here for your goal, but you
| need to focus on content and make sure you provide good feedback
| when the user gives a wrong answer as this is the biggest point
| of friction when learning. Also consider how someone like a
| teacher would give this to kids and how the kids would react to
| it - I'd recommend trying to connect with a teacher and get their
| honest feedback, that sounds like a promising direction even if
| initially they'll tell you it'll never work, they might give you
| some good pointers.
| ceolin wrote:
| That's really great feedback, thanks!
| uglycoyote wrote:
| if you're targeting enterprise clients, they may insist that your
| course fit in to their existing LMS (learning management system).
| A bunch of large corporations use these old and stodgy
| technologies and require learning materials to support the
| ancient SCORM API or the slightly less ancient xAPI API. You
| might find, if you go that route that you spend more time dealing
| with the complications of improperly implemented APIs, poor
| developer documentation for integration into those systems,
| organizations who don't really have people with the technical
| knowhow to help with the integration issues, Subject Matter
| Experts who aren't actually experts at anything, etc., and less
| time developing your own technology.
| welzel wrote:
| As a founder i can give you one advice you did not ask for:
|
| Stick to one market and one solution. do Enterprise, do Schools.
| Don't do both. It takes an insane amount of capacity and
| resources to penetrate a market, and it really does not matter
| how much you have - trying to be in two places at the same time
| will fail. If you care for both, start with one and get it done.
|
| Also: i strongly suggest to stay away from a marketsplace.
| Pulling off a working marketplace is unicorn-level hard. Spend a
| day to research how many successful marketplaces exist and then
| another day to find for every successful marketplace the failed
| ones - getting a startup right might be 1:100 chances, getting a
| marketplace right is more like 1:10.000.
| petee wrote:
| Is there a guest account to try the demo? Seems odd to lock a
| demo behind registration
| ceolin wrote:
| Yeah, I thought about not requiring login but I'd have to add
| some specific logic to it. I figured it wouldn't be worth for
| now.
|
| But I'm not requiring email confirmation to use the demo. Feel
| free to just use any random email to try it out (e.g.
| whatever42@blabla.com).
| Beijinger wrote:
| " your brutal feedback. "
|
| I did not like Duolinguo, it was too playful for me.
|
| I prefer https://clozemaster.com/
| lucb1e wrote:
| connect to clozemaster.com (3.33.152.147) port 443 (tcp) timed
| out
|
| My vantage point is within 93.132.0.0/15, in case it's
| geoblocked
|
| Edit: found a screenshot
| https://www.programosy.pl/download/screens/19186/android-clo...
| which looks like a straightforward/nice learning experience
| indeed
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