Duolingo

            Duolingo is a free app that allows users to take short lessons to learn a new language.  The app offers around 36 language options, but often is adding new languages to the list.  Some of the languages include German, Spanish, Russian, French, Japanese, and much more.  The lessons are categorized from easy to difficult, and learners can work through these lessons at their own pace.  For example, Spanish has a total of seven sections, and each section contains multiple lessons.  Each lesson contains about 5 parts, and each part contains about 15 questions.  This allows for a ton of content to work through and learn.   Duolingo is a widely popular app with over 300 million users.

            One thing that I really appreciate about Duolingo is the fact that individuals can volunteer to help test out new language courses, and make suggestions on how to make the courses better.  Each new language goes through a testing or "incubation" phase before it becomes a solid course.  I also really like that Duolingo includes short stories as well.  This can help give some context to sentences and vocabulary words.  Duolingo also has a leaderships board and point system that allows people to compete with one another from around the world.  This can be really fun for students because it can act as an incentive to complete more lessons and read more stories.  

            I think that Duolingo could be a great tool to use in a classroom setting when teaching about different cultures and languages.  Duolingo can be a great tool to use continuously, or even occasionally.  For example, if I taught a lesson to students about the island of Hawaii, I could encourage students to complete just a few Hawaiian lessons to get an understanding of the native language.  There are so many possibilities with this app and I would love to share it with my students one day. 

            For more info on Duolingo, visit:  https://www.duolingo.com/