Ian Butler, CEO, LingleOnline
Our latest One to Watch is LingleOnline, a new start-up that’s on a mission to revolutionise the future of English language teaching via its technology that allows teachers to generate exercises, lessons and resource materials from current news articles.
The company, which has spun out of the National Digital Research Centre, is headed up by Ian Butler. He says Lingle is aiming to make it easier and faster for teachers to find, analyse and create English-language learning materials, including articles, lessons, resources, glossaries and exercises.
Lingle has recently released its first product for English language teachers and is already starting to get noticed. For instance, the start-up has entered into an agreement with the British Council to provide technology to its teaching community.
Lingle also won the 2012 European Language Technology Innovation showcase award at the LT-Innovate summit in Brussels, Belgium, in June.
As well as this, Butler says the company is in the advanced development of its learner product.
“We are currently recruiting we expect to launch this product in early Q4 this year,” he explains. “There’s a high level of interest internationally from English language teaching (ELT) publishers and we’re in discussions with most of the major top ELT publishers.”
Lingle has amassed more than 200,000 authentic articles and, according to Butler, is adding between 2,000 and 5,000 articles every week.
“We automatically analyse each document, identify vocabulary, grammar rules and highlight their use in context. From this with a few clicks we can create exercises,” he says.
Check out our video interview with Ian Butler here:
LingleOnline is supported by the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC). Since NDRC was founded in 2007, it has worked with and invested in almost 80 digital ventures. “In that time we have had over 1,000 ideas and individuals come through our doors, and facilitated over €5m in following on investment,” says NDRC marketing and programme manager Amy Neale. “Whether you are a tech innovator or a keen investor, our door is always open.” For further information go to www.ndrc.ie
The One to Watch series is made possible through the support of NDRC, HBAN and Enterprise Ireland
