Footprints on the Mountainside

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This is a social networking style site, where people can pay to learn languages. Myngle is still in beta, but I fell in love with the concept. This place connects people from all over the world and helps them learn new languages.

According to their FAQs, signing up is for free, but teachers are charged a small amount for using the platform for teaching, though they can upload their profiles for free. Different teachers set their charges and a student can pick up whatever is affordable. Sounds interesting, but one thing that I’m wondering about is the credibility of the teachers.

I mean, there are no qualifications required to be a teacher here. As long as a person can provide value….. well, that’s how learning languages is, isn’t it? So, you can actually have paid informal conversations which we traditionally call practice and do them for free in the real world. I guess that’s the price of having the right kind of person handy in the online world. However, what is there to assure us, that a teacher is as good as his charges make him seem (other than hindsight)?

There is nothing about that in their FAQs. Also, nothing that can allow for a refund if a teacher is just your average teenager trying to earn big money and you discover it too late. Or, if there is such a system in place, it is not there in their FAQs.

On the whole, an interesting concept, but a new service with an unknown paid factor, which may or not deliver. I’d say, use it for its convenience, but play it by ear. There probably will be some kind of rating or feedback system (its inevitable). Use it to figure out the people you want to learn from.

For teachers, I guess this is an excellent opportunity for some handy income sitting at home. All you need is broadband, Skype and a headset (which you also need if you’re a student)