Language Links

• 

  landing page

• 

• 

  login page

• 

• 

  features

• 

• 

Inspiration

When thinking about problems in education I can think of many. But ones that are close to heart pertain to language since I was a language teacher for a few years. It's something that many countries put at the forefront of their education and always look for ways to imrpove, yet in the US it's just another grade to pass. How can we make language learning more relevant, fun, and accurate to our students? How can we also cultivate connections with others around the world to understand our understanding? That's where this comes into play. I remember when I was teaching in South Korea, I knew several teachers who had penpals with other classes in Canada and the US. THe students loved this, but it was up to the teachers to make these connections. I was also reminded of my masters thesis central findings that "holistic language learning requires culture". I used all this information to come up with this idea.

What it does

This is just the landing page and product site, but in theory, the product would either A. connect teachers with students and classrooms around the world in a mutual language exchange. or B. Connect individual students with other students for mutual language exchange. This can either happen through a mediator who would match schools and student up OR it could work with profiles and teachers can contact eachother based off what is written on the profile and the learning goals etc.

How we built it

Since I am solo (and it is easter weekend AND I have a one year old) I only built a Figma prototype with some basic animations. Had I more time I would have used angular and HTML CSS. Had I time and a team I would have built the app.

Challenges we ran into

There were some more challenging animations that I wanted to incorporate that I couldn't figure out, so I ended up realizing that I didn't need to overdo it, sometimes simple is enough. I also realized that both students want to learn the target language, how would both parties benefit. Ultimately I solved that problem too with the hidden translation :)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm really proud of doing this on my own with so little time. It's something that means a lot to me and I'm glad I got to be creative and do what I want. My current position is very dry and NOT colorful at all (banking tech) so this is fun.

What we learned

This was kind of a test to see how far I have come in a year. I will be hitting my one year mark with my company and I want to see how far I have come as a UI/UX designer. I learned I have a long way to go, but I have definirely come a long way.

What's next for Language Links

I'd love to develop the app and share with my teaching friends abroad, I'm sure they would LOVE it. I am still in a large teaching comunnity and I have a feeling they would love to add this to their lesson plans.

Built With

• figma