10 ms·

Show HN: Open-source tool for creating courses like Duolingo

• garfieldnate 3y ago
  Duolingo is cool, but I really think that having students produce something other than answers to multiple-choice questions would lead to higher quality learning results. It should be much more possible now especially, with all of the AI advances.
• LAMike 3y ago
  Will there be an API to upload lessons in bulk?
  • ceolin 3y ago
    Eventually, yes. Not sure if I'll be able to implement it in time for v1, though.
    • ttymck 3y ago
      What's driving the timeline for v1 release?
      • ceolin 3y ago
        Stability and basic functionality that allows to properly use UneeBee for the three products I want to create (orgs, schools and marketplace). This can give you a better view on the planned roadmap: https://github.com/orgs/zoonk/projects/11/views/2 https://github.com/orgs/zoonk/projects/11/views/2 I don't have any external funding and I'm not employed, so I'm prioritizing functionality that can allow me to build a paid cloud product on top of it. I still need to pay my bills after all :)
        • ttymck 3y ago
          Understood, but I was replying to a comment that made it sound like there was some external factor determining a deadline for v1.
• tempaccount1234 3y ago
  Good luck. Since you want brutal feedback, at this early stage, it looks boring and tedious to enter data. I’d concentrate on the course output and define the input format as JSON or CSV. Why? Duolingo isn’t great because of the content, but because of great navigation (and points gamification) so the courses should work great on small touch screens. How to get the data is is something to worry about once the interface for the learner is good. Also, it’s easier to get formatted course input, because you can just ask chatgpt to generate learning material in a specific format. (For my own out of Duolingo experience I do exactly that: I defined a learning csv format and ask chatgpt to give me learning examples in this format) - also I’d stay away from animating images unless you get good at it, because animations distract from learning (and duolingo is turning into an animation studio and spending the resources to get animation right, so anything you can do with low budget is going to look cheap)
  • ceolin 3y ago
    Very good points, thank you! Yeah, I played a little bit with animations but I didn't manage to make them right. I think I kept one when the lesson is completed but I recognize it's really bad. I think I'm going to remove it. Totally agree I need to focus more on the course output and overall learner experience.
  • ben_w 3y ago
    > Duolingo isn’t great because of the content, but because of great navigation (and points gamification) so the courses should work great on small touch screens. How to get the data is is something to worry about once the interface for the learner is good. Counterpoint: twee gamification getting in the way of learning is why I stopped using Duolingo after reaching a 2500 day streak — the last straw was the tree turning into a path at the end of last year, but the last time I really enjoyed it was back when I could load each lesson into a separate tab and just spend hours at a time in the zone without getting distracted by their attempts to cheer me on. Similar direction of changes are now actively annoying me with Brilliant.org
    • atomicfiredoll 3y ago
• westurner 3y ago
  Notes from for LitNerd (YC S21) re: IPA, "Duolingo's language notes all on one page", Sozo's vowel and consonant videos, Captionpop synced YouTube videos with subtitles in multiple languages,: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28309645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28309645 Spaced repetition and Active recall testing like or with Mnemosyne or Anki probably boost language retention like they increase flashcard recall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki_(software) ENH: Generate Anki decks with {IPA symbols, Greek letters w/ LaTeX for math and science, Nonregional (Midland American) English, } Google translate has IPA for some languages. "The English Pronunciation / International Phonetic Alphabet Anki Deck" https://www.towerofbabelfish.com/ipa-anki-deck/ https://www.towerofbabelfish.com/ipa-anki-deck/ "IPA Spanish & English Vowels & Consonants" https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3170059448 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3170059448
  • westurner 3y ago
    I don't know Elixir and so the hypothetical contribution barrier for nontrivial commits includes learning Erlang / Elixir. The LearnXinYminutes tuts are succinct and on github for PRs to fix typos, language learning sequence reorderings, and or additions with comments LearnXinYMinutes > Elixir: https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/elixir/ https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/elixir/
    • freedomben 3y ago
      FWIW, elixir is now my favorite language. Learning elixir is one of the things I thank past self for doing!
• j90srgtu0ew9srg 3y ago
  [flagged]
• JCharante 3y ago
  This is awesome! I had the same idea in high school and wrote a whitepaper about it. Personally, I think Duolingo shouldn't exist in its current form. The courses are all created by teams of volunteers and only able to be contributed to by those volunteers, which slow downs course creation and bug fixes to courses. Additionally the data is all held hostage by Duolingo, which prevents you from integrating it with Anki for example. I don't think Duolingo should be getting revenue when most of the work is done by volunteers. I think a decentralized open source version should exist, much like how anyone can modify and upload Anki decks, people should be able to modify and upload "Duolingo-like" courses. Re: marketplace: I think this is a great idea! There are Anki decks that are sold by creators too, like Spoonfed Chinese. I think this is an actually fair way to implement learning like this.
  • syntaxing 3y ago
    Really appreciate introducing Spoonfed Chinese to me! I was looking for a good Anki deck about a year ago and couldn’t find anything good, this looks perfect for me.
    • JCharante 3y ago
      Wow I’m really glad to have helped! Yeah it’s a nice deck and only $3 on gumroad (or at least that was the price when I bought it)
  • JCharante 3y ago
    I don't have time to dive into the source code right now, but how did you implement the types of questions? I had the idea (I'm not saying it's original, it's just what I thought at the time) of course lessons consisting of a series of questions, and each question is defined as a JSON object. There are built-in question-templates like multiple choice, free-form answer, or just true/false. If a course needs something really specific, then it can implement a custom renderer for that new template type, so that a course isn't held back by the upstream project. If it's a template that might be useful for more people, then it can be integrated into the core project.
• leke 3y ago
  That's a nice looking app! I have a similar mindset about duolingo. My interest is language learning and I've developed my own duolingo clone, but perhaps not as fully featured as yours https://codinginthecold.alwaysdata.net/kuku/ https://codinginthecold.alwaysdata.net/kuku/ I've also just finished an early version of an app that facilitates creating "parallel texts".
  • ceolin 3y ago
    Nice! Interestingly, I actually started learning Finnish on Duolingo last week :)
• Kreotiko 3y ago
  Duolingo is useless, my father has 140k experience, 3 years streak and can't speak or understand any English in real life.
  • vouaobrasil 3y ago
    Duolingo is not useless. It works well to learn the basics, which means a few thousand words and the core grammar. Like ANY tool in language learning, it's not a complete solution. The ONLY way to speak a language is to...gasp...practise speaking and use other resources! Ahhh, the horror! Your father isn't trying. He's just using Duolingo as a game.
    • jamager 3y ago
      It is not entirely useless, but it is an extremely inefficient way to learn.
    • rcarr 3y ago
      > It works well to learn the basics, which means a few thousand words and the core grammar. This is not entirely accurate. The better courses on Duolingo teach in excess of 7000 words (8000 for french) as can be seen on DuolingoData[1] and clicking on the W column to sort the courses by words taught. Clozemaster is a good resource for vocabulary building if you want to supplement Duolingo.[2] [1] https://duolingodata.com/ https://duolingodata.com/ [2] https://www.clozemaster.com/ https://www.clozemaster.com/
      • vouaobrasil 3y ago
        A lot of those word counters count the same words but in different conjugation. Run, running, ran,... Gosto, gosta, gostamos, gostou, gostei .... Which I do not. Though your count might be more accurate.
    • bavarianbob 3y ago
      "Your father isn't trying" fucking lol, the audacity
• JCharante 3y ago
  Erlang is an interesting choice. Do you just really like Erlang?
  • ceolin 3y ago
    I'm actually new to the Erlang/Elixir ecosystem. This is my first project using it. I wanted a full-stack framework that allowed me to move really fast but I also wanted to have a nice user experience (similar to single-page applications) and good performance to avoid spending too much on servers. I found Phoenix [1] and I loved it! I've been very productive using it. I'm finding LiveView to have a very good UX, almost as good as a single-page application. And I'm quite impressed with the performance. For this demo, I'm using the cheapest machine on fly.io. Peak usage was 184MB RAM and 8% CPU (most of the time it's under 3%). [1] https://www.phoenixframework.org/ https://www.phoenixframework.org/
• ontheway22 3y ago
  [flagged]
• demetrius 3y ago
  How does this project compare to LibreLingo ( https://github.com/LibreLingo/LibreLingo https://github.com/LibreLingo/LibreLingo )? Why would I choose UnueBee over LibreLingo?
  • ceolin 3y ago
    LibreLingo is great but they focus on language learning only. My idea is to go beyond language and build an app that allows us to learn anything using interactive lessons. Eventually, I want to have a plugin system to have different lesson types for other subjects. Plus, I'm going to use UneeBee to offer cloud products for enterprise, school, and creators. It will get much more complex than LibreLingo's current scope.
• itissid 3y ago
  Re Educasso. what kind of schools are you thinking of public private charter? Also do teachers create their own content? I thought the content always came from a tie up of the school to a publisher that supplies all of it. It's hard to supplant publishers in grade school IIUC.
  • ceolin 3y ago
    > what kind of schools are you thinking of public private charter? Initially, private schools because adoption is easier. But, long-term, I'd like to help public schools too. > do teachers create their own content? I thought the content always came from a tie up of the school to a publisher that supplies all of it. It's hard to supplant publishers in grade school IIUC. Teachers can create their own content, if they want to. Based on my experience talking to teachers, though, they prefer when the content is already created because they don't have much time to do it. At some point, I'll probably look into partnering with publishers. I think this will help distribution because it's pretty hard to sell learning materials directly to schools. In some places it's more flexible, though. I'm constantly talking to teachers and school managers to see how we can make it work but I'm foreseeing some roadblocks. I think Educasso will take a bit longer to reach the market.
• Jaxan 3y ago
  I know it’s not done to comment on the page design. But here it is anyways: the page is nonscrollable on my phone and the images are much wider than my screen. So I cannot see the screenshots. Even when I rotate to landscape, I can only see a part of the image.
  • ceolin 3y ago
    Thank you for reporting this issue. I'll look into it. If possible, please can you share what phone and browser are you using?
    • Jaxan 3y ago
      iPhone SE (1st gen). So very small compared to all other phones ;-). Safari on iOS 15
      • ceolin 3y ago
        Thank you! I've opened an issue for it: https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee.com/issues/1 https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee.com/issues/1 I'll look into it later today.
• allanmacgregor 3y ago
  Kudos on the launch and is awesome this was build in Elixir!!!! Cheers!!
  • ceolin 3y ago
    Thanks. This is actually my first project using Elixir but I'm loving it!
• tharos47 3y ago
  What are you offering that's different from already existing solutions like Moodle or Opigno[1]? For example with Opigno you can already build an open-source based education platform with content authoring with H5P[2] (HTML-5 based interactive content) I've used Opigno LMS in the past, it's Drupal based so it's easy to deploy/maintain and basically have all features you advertise. Schools especially may use a learning platform for 10+ years, at least when authoring with H5P they are not stuck in a single platform anymore. What's your solution for this problem? The loss of flash left a lot of courses or interactive learning content unusable, that's a mistake I hope new platforms don't repeat. [1] https://www.opigno.org/ https://www.opigno.org/ [2] https://h5p.org/ https://h5p.org/
  • ceolin 3y ago
    Personally, I think they serve different needs. I see Moodle and Opigno as great tools for traditional learning methods (video and text based). I struggle with that kind of learning experience and I think I'm not alone. Even using something like H5P, the overall user experience is far from what Duolingo offers for language learning. Plus, I find the overall UX too confusing. UneeBee is far from good but I hope it will have much better user experience than traditional learning tools. My vision for the long-term is to make it more practical too: A hands-on tool where we can learn by doing and seeing how things work in real-life. That's very hard to accomplish on tools like Moodle and Opigno. But, to be clear, I don't think (and I don't aim) to replace those tools. I think UneeBee (and its cloud offerings) will be an additional tool. > Schools especially may use a learning platform for 10+ years, at least when authoring with H5P they are not stuck in a single platform anymore. What's your solution for this problem? Tbh, I don't have a solution for this problem yet and I agree that's an issue. I think having an open plugin system like WordPress will help but I'm not sure how this would work yet. Always open to ideas.
• ricardolopes 3y ago
  This looks really neat. I've definitely thought of "Duolingo for X" project ideas that I only wish I had the time to actually develop.
• sarupbanskota 3y ago
  Cool idea. Would you target "first-time" creators, or experienced ones? And if experienced, why would they take a bet on Uneebee vs. existing platforms?
  • ceolin 3y ago
    I think first-time creators is a better bet. They're more willing to try something new like UneeBee and more motivated to improve the product as well, so we can grow together. Of course, experienced creators are welcome too but they already have an audience and usually play safe, so I understand why they wouldn't want to bet on UneeBee. First-time creators have nothing to lose, so it's a win-win situation. :)
    • tetha 3y ago
      I'm new, but this is looking quite interesting. I've been looking for something like this e.g. music theory or instruments. Some kind of spaced repetition for reading staff, building chords, maybe even chords and notes on a guitar. I'll have to set this up somewhere and play with the editor some.
• knigge111 3y ago
  This is awesome! Are you open for suggestions?
  • ceolin 3y ago
    Yes, always! Feel free to share them here, on GitHub [1] or send me an email at will@zoonk.org. [1] https://github.com/orgs/zoonk/discussions https://github.com/orgs/zoonk/discussions
• grey-area 3y ago
  This looks like a great idea with a lot of hard work ahead of you. You mention a few different areas it could work in (education, enterprise, consumers), but really you need to pick one and really focus on it - you will dissipate your focus and energies if you try to serve even two of these markets at the same time. Might be worth picking something far away from languages since Duo and other apps have that sewn up already. It would be hard to compete. I like the education/school idea but you'd have to make the product free and focus on curricula and really serving those well. Perhaps target it at teachers and make it easier for them to construct lessons. Need to make sure it targets the device that your markets will be using, which probably means phones rather than desktop or ipad. Feedback: 1. Password requirements are a little annoying, perhaps loosen those a bit. 2. First examples are way too broad - pick an area, focus and try to execute just for that area, so that people see immediately what it is for (e.g. make your lessons as a teacher) and you have a target customer you can go after. 3. Your examples need a lot more work and polish, I did the launch to moon base alpha - the pictures don't add anything IMO, and I didn't feel like I really learned much because the questions were too fuzzy and the answers were not informative, you need to build in a better feedback loop and probably pick examples which are far more clearcut. 4. There is some very weird/wrong content IMO e.g. use a 'gravitational slingshot' instead of burning fuel - the vast majority of spacecraft burn fuel to change course, including the rare cases where they use a gravitational slingshot. 5. Content is king - I get this is supposed to be some quick examples you threw together but you need to step back and consider what impression this gives of your product - it makes the whole thing seems slipshod and ill-thought out. You need some real, very well thought out content here to make it seem worthwhile. The user should feel like they learning something in your examples. So it looks like you have the basics here for your goal, but you need to focus on content and make sure you provide good feedback when the user gives a wrong answer as this is the biggest point of friction when learning. Also consider how someone like a teacher would give this to kids and how the kids would react to it - I'd recommend trying to connect with a teacher and get their honest feedback, that sounds like a promising direction even if initially they'll tell you it'll never work, they might give you some good pointers.
  • ceolin 3y ago
    That's really great feedback, thanks!
• uglycoyote 3y ago
  if you're targeting enterprise clients, they may insist that your course fit in to their existing LMS (learning management system). A bunch of large corporations use these old and stodgy technologies and require learning materials to support the ancient SCORM API or the slightly less ancient xAPI API. You might find, if you go that route that you spend more time dealing with the complications of improperly implemented APIs, poor developer documentation for integration into those systems, organizations who don't really have people with the technical knowhow to help with the integration issues, Subject Matter Experts who aren't actually experts at anything, etc., and less time developing your own technology.
• welzel 3y ago
  As a founder i can give you one advice you did not ask for: Stick to one market and one solution. do Enterprise, do Schools. Don´t do both. It takes an insane amount of capacity and resources to penetrate a market, and it really does not matter how much you have - trying to be in two places at the same time will fail. If you care for both, start with one and get it done. Also: i strongly suggest to stay away from a marketsplace. Pulling off a working marketplace is unicorn-level hard. Spend a day to research how many successful marketplaces exist and then another day to find for every successful marketplace the failed ones - getting a startup right might be 1:100 chances, getting a marketplace right is more like 1:10.000.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• petee 3y ago
  Is there a guest account to try the demo? Seems odd to lock a demo behind registration
  • ceolin 3y ago
    Yeah, I thought about not requiring login but I'd have to add some specific logic to it. I figured it wouldn't be worth for now. But I'm not requiring email confirmation to use the demo. Feel free to just use any random email to try it out (e.g. whatever42@blabla.com).
    • lucb1e 3y ago
      Please use example domains as examples :). Example.com, example.org, and example.net were made for this and it avoids accidentally-existing email addresses ending up on spam lists because someone posted it publicly as an example
    • petee 3y ago
      Will try, thanks!
• Beijinger 3y ago
  " your brutal feedback. " I did not like Duolinguo, it was too playful for me. I prefer https://clozemaster.com/ https://clozemaster.com/
  • lucb1e 3y ago
    connect to clozemaster.com (3.33.152.147) port 443 (tcp) timed out My vantage point is within 93.132.0.0/15, in case it's geoblocked Edit: found a screenshot https://www.programosy.pl/download/screens/19186/android-clozemaster-1_s.png https://www.programosy.pl/download/screens/19186/android-clo... which looks like a straightforward/nice learning experience indeed
    • Beijinger 3y ago
      Is up again. Man, you scared me. :-(
      • lucb1e 3y ago
        Still doesn't load here but my IP changed, so it is geoblocked. This is the first time I saw a website simply firewalling a country (or ASN?); typically you get a proper error message. Works from a Dutch mobile IP address so the site is indeed up (bless mobile data tunneling traffic through their home countries)
• mNovak 3y ago
  Looks really cool! Just a quick note - The 'Live Demo' probably shouldn't be locked behind a login unless there's a good reason for it. More broadly, do you plan to have general free courses? i.e. would I go to your site to hunt around for something interesting to learn, or are you always behind the scenes, and some third party is advertising their course to me (which uses this as a backend)? Just wondering about the marketplace; how/why I would end up on the site in the first place.
  • ceolin 3y ago
    > The 'Live Demo' probably shouldn't be locked behind a login unless there's a good reason for it. I agree. But there were some technical issues I'd have to deal with to make it work properly and I didn't have the time to deal with it right now. > do you plan to have general free courses? The marketplace (mywisek.com) will likely have free courses. > would I go to your site to hunt around for something interesting to learn, or are you always behind the scenes You'll be able to hunt around for something interesting to learn.
• ayabee 3y ago
  Great project! Finally some fresh air in the open source scene.
• nothrowaways 3y ago
  Was trying to create a course for my grandkids over the weekend, will give it a shot.
• zubairq 3y ago
  Bookmark
• GlassOwAter 3y ago
  This looks great. I am involved in a crypto community and could see using this to help onboard users to our ecosystem. Get them familiar with how to use the various applications and learn about the technology behind the chain.