TermWiki: Term-based Online Learning Platform

It seems going a little bit social is just like putting a handful of flavoring into the dishes to spice things up. So we get social rating like Yelp, social bookmarking as delicious, social dining with Grubwithus and letslunch, and now social learning with TermWiki.

It’s been a long time since the online learning or online education concept has been raised with the coming of the internet era. People expected the “school without walls” will be forged online, just like how they expected the rising of internet would free them from commuting. It just doesn’t happen. But at least, TermWiki is working towards the aspiration. According to the Beijing based team, they’re building a “wikipedia for terms”, the site writes “TermWiki.com is aimed at sharing knowledge and connecting people with similar interests around the world. It’s like the break between classes: you can talk with your friends, pose a few questions, and learn more about the things that interest you.”

The site now provides users with eight language editions, including English, French, Germany, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Italian. Users can either browse its massive online term lists, or upload their own collections of terms. Also, you can translate these terms into another language to augment the database.

Besides terms-based language learning offering, the newly-released product AnswerBea is also trying to combine online learning with social Q&A service. You can ask questions under different categories, mostly are classified according to industries such as computer, architecture, consulting, chemistry and so on. In spite of claiming itself a social learning site, but it seems to me that the current beta-testing Answer products need to be polished to live up to its ambition.

There’re couple of learning offerings online already, including Livemocha, babble and so on.