Lingorilla wins 2009 World Summit Award

The Berlin-based LinguaTV GmbH today won the coveted biennial World Summit Award (WSA), selected by the UNESCO, the UNIDO and the Internet Society, in the category 'eLearning and Education' for its multimedia language learning platform lingorilla.com. The jury called it a "state of the art e-Learning website combining all media as well as all functions of the web."

LinguaTV features broadcasts in several languages including English. This web TV station produces language training videos with subtitles and features vocabulary. Users can use professionally produced videos, dictionaries and lessons. Contents licenced by LinguaTV include travel reports and music videos. Interactive exercises allow users to study on their own.

A game-like point system shows how much progress a learner is making and invites learners to compare and compete with each other. The community idea is central to lingorilla.com, and learners are invited to find language learning partners from over 150 countries worldwide and to communicate using the integrated video chat function. Groups can hold virtual meetings here, too, e.g. to get together again following a language course or trip.

Prof. Dr. Annette Schavan, German Minister of Education and Research, congratulated LinguaTV, saying, „Ich freue mich, dass LinguaTVs Bildungsangebot die internationale Jury überzeugen und sich gegen die Konkurrenz aus 170 Ländern durchsetzen konnte. Dies ist auch deshalb so herausragend, weil LinguaTV das mit einer kleinen und noch jungen Firma aus eigener Kraft erreicht hat.“

Lingorilla is currently relaunching their platform, which they have announced will be completed in the next few weeks.

I've signed up as http://www.lingorilla.com/eng/users/annehodg. Hope to see you there!