I teach and learn

I want to solve the problem of learning a second language in contexts that actually make it difficult (economical, cultural, etc).

Teach a second language is very difficult for teachers since details as pronunciation and spelling needs lots of repetition and while the individual feedback is key, there is not much time to make it with the students.

Even more, students frequently avoid interactions with the teacher since they have low frustration tolerance to the multiple corrections. 

The idea of this solution is to solve both, the lack of time to correct and the disgust for correction by creating an environment for learners, where they interchange their roles of learners and teachers, by teaching their mother tongue as they learn the other student's mother tongue.

Feeling that they are the experts in their part will help them bear the dislike for corrections, since they are good in their part. 

An interactive application where two kids with different mother tongues learn one word, phrase, grammatical structure in the other's language as they teach the same content in their own language. 

The application makes kids in different places see each other in real time and show them words (or more complex language structures) that each one teaches to the other. 

Each kid corrects the pronunciation or spelling of the other kid and then receives equivalent feedback for the same word but in the other language. 

On the first stages, the system would just need a system of points to let the kids consider the word is correctly learned by the other and advance to the next and make some reviews every number of words depending on the age.

As it advances, it would need extra technical support to work in the spelling and grammar of the languages.

Most people in the world speaks just one language and be able to learn a second language is very difficult due to economic situations. 

The level of feedback necessary to really learn a second language is extremely expensive, so few students can have that privilege.

This solution will give this feedback without increasing the load of the teacher and even more, will develop in kids several social and emotional skills that will empower them for their future, since they will be teachers and learners. 

I am a science teacher with 13 years of work trying to make learning meaningful to students. I teach in my student's second language, so I have noticed their difficulties in get the fluidity and confidence in real time. 

I work with teens from 13 to 18 years and I try to support low income kids that are close to my life and noticed their desire to advance but also their struggle in get feedback. 

I personally learned English mostly by the method I am proposing, since I interacted with native English teachers and we agreed in correct one another in our respective mother tongues. Since both were learners and teachers, the burden of make frequent mistakes was much easier to carry. 

I would need that Solve help me making the software and help me check the legal details in the process.

As an educator, I am in contact with teachers worldwide and am confident I will be able  to create the spaces to make the trials in the app until it works smoothly. 

Once is working, I think the benefits of it will be so powerful that its use will spread organically. 

But I am a real teacher without time to learn how to make the app. 

It will change everything!

Learn English or another language is a HUGE business for "rich" people. 

What we need is just to create the link between kids that have what the other one has (the knowledge of their mother tongue)  and give them the empowerment to realize they can be the one that will teach the other.

It will really become an active learning process, and teachers will guide the social process of learning by being close to the kids as they learn and teach. 

I want that with this program every kid with access to a computer room in their school can have at least one our a week of real, engaging and high quality learning in one of the foundations of any language: pronunciation, spelling and word identification.

At the same time, I want that students stop feeling that learning depends in the teacher and realize that it depends in their own work, to embrace their own learning process.

Finally, I want that they develop the skills necessary to improve in learning by becoming teachers and value what they can give: their own knowledge in their mother tongue, this will empower the kids since they will notice they have something to offer that is very valuable for the other. 

1. Have a structure of how to make the meetings between kids. To guarantee privacy and safety.

2. Find a technique that makes the correction between kids fun and positive.

3. Have a list of words kids will learn to start.

4. Have a list of sentences kids will learn to start.

5. Have a prototype software.

6. Make trials between two small groups.

7. Have a way to make peer assessment between kids to check pronunciation, spelling, identification of words and grammar.  

Outputs: learning a second language with a cultural meaning or from a person with a cultural relation.

Short term outcomes: learn how to interact, model and correct another person.

Medium term outcomes: development of a second language and increase value of their common culture.

Long  term outcomes: Love to their common culture, creation of friendships with people far away.

Ii think my idea as an app kids will use in class in a computer, in order to guarantee an adult is supervising the interactions and can be attentive to difficulties.

I needs to use internet to make kids be in real contact and a very simple system to congratulate or correct the other in a positive and constructive way.

By its own nature, we will need multicultural people since they are the ones we want to support and are the ones that can help making the program work. 

We will need bilingual people with different culture origins.