How global are we? Try this. Where else can you find someone from Australia chatting with someone from Tanzania while users from Pakistan and USA join in for a quick Swahili lesson? That is Global with a capital G!
TranceNova comes to us from Australia and speaks some Swahili, and when she is not doing that, she is rocking MIT OCW Biology! We are really impressed that she was interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Read it here.
Like many other people I stumbled upon the OpenStudy website. I remember being so curious about the questions and their answers. I spent a while roaming the numerous sections seeing what people were doing. Then I came across a question and I knew the answer! It was an interesting question and I just had to put an answer down, enlighten someone perhaps thousands of kilometers away from me. So I timidly answered the question, all the while worrying if my answer was wrong, too short, or any number of other things. So there my shiny answer sat and POP! – a message came up, someone had given me a medal! I couldn’t believe it! Someone actually liked my answer?
It was from that moment I was utterly hooked, driven by the urge to help others (make them happy perhaps?), get achievements, and feel a little smart myself. In return I found new friends and a supportive community. I don’t think there is another way someone from Australia could meet someone from Tanzania and swap Swahili lessons, chat with a medical school student from Mexico, while at the same time helping a 12th grader agonizing over AP Biology. I feel like my knowledge is useful to someone, and I have gained another friend in a foreign land.
I am now a postgraduate student in Ecology, Entomology and Soil Science. Through OpenStudy I am able to spread my knowledge of science and help others learn. OpenStudy has helped refresh things in my memory that I had learned long ago (and since completely forgotten!), which are coming in helpful, sometimes in unexpected places. I learn new things and old things and even found myself linking unrelated study areas to understand the same concepts, collaboration at its best!
How is your Swahili? Join us today on OpenStudy and make a new friend in a foreign land!
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