Quest-based video game for learning Spanish conversational skills: La cuarentena, Redshift Education

If you've spent three to four years in Spanish classes or self-studied your way to like an intermediate level, you know, the pain that is flashcards and worksheets and verb conjugation drills. But why do we think that memorization is the way to learn a language? It's so weird, right? Because when we choose to learn a language, we learn it because we want to actually communicate with other people. There has to be a better way that is more engaging of learning Spanish that encourages you to use it to communicate and isn't so painful. Did you ever have the experience of actually trying to have a spontaneous conversation with someone in the language and totally freezing up? When you're trying to have a real conversation with someone, all of that you memorize goes out the window. You are tongue tied. You don't really know what to say, even though you've been doing all this memorization work. If anyone I just said resonates with you, I want you to keep watching because I've got something that could be really valuable for you. I founded a startup that I think can help you. My name is Maria Jernigan. I'm the founder and CEO of Redshift Education, and I'm also a high school Spanish teacher, so I'm allowed to kind of say this about language education. We build immersive computer games to help you practice your Spanish conversation. No more tedious flashcards. Instead of memorizing the language, we want you to actually acquire the language naturally, like you did English. Forget being tongue tied when you actually try to have conversations. This video game we've built is centered around having conversations to practice the language. Finally, language learning should not be a solo experience. Instead, because we learned the language to communicate with others, our platform is going to help you practice the language with your actual friends. ¿Cómo estás? Bien. ¿Cómo estás? Bien, bien. ¿Vamos? Sí, vamos. In this multiplayer experience by Redshift Education, you and a friend have been asked to join the governor's COVID-19 special task force, and it's up to you together to interview all the members of the community and understand the kinds of challenges they're facing as a result of the quarantine and the pandemic. Más o menos estoy bien, pero me preocupa mucho el estatus de la comunidad. Oh, no. ¿Por qué? Con nosotros en el supermercado, por ejemplo, nos faltan trabajadores suficientes para servir a todos los clientes. ¿Han visto más demanda que por normal? Sí, exacto. ¿Dónde estás? ¿El banco? Oh, hola. Then put your heads together and come up with solutions that will respond to the challenges your community is facing. This is Lockword Antenna by Redshift Education. Think of your younger siblings or some high school kid in your life who currently hates school. Imagine what a game changer it could be if instead of flashcards and these random worksheets, they could go into an immersive world online and practice their Spanish conversation in real context with their friends. If you love what you're hearing, here's what you can do to get involved. I want you to be one of the first people to try our game. If you've taken a couple years of Spanish and if you can rope a friend into playing with you, I want you to go to the link in the description on the Redshift Education website, and I want you to apply to be a beta tester. Try our game with a friend and give us feedback. Like, talk to our developers, talk to our artists, and be a part of this community that helps shape the future of language learning. Here are the perks we're going to give the first 100 qualified people who sign up to be our beta testers. Of course, you're going to be the very first to play Lockword Antenna before it is released to the public. We're going to give you exclusive access to a private online discussion group with our team so that you can talk to us, ask us questions, get our thoughts anytime you want. That's developers, artists, Spanish teachers, everybody. And in that group, we're going to be giving you guys tons of bonus content, behind the scenes previews, voting on new features, even telling you what kinds of games are in the pipeline and letting you decide which one's the most exciting. And we're going to call you wonderful beta testers, our Redshifters. That's what we internally call ourselves at Redshift, and you are a part of our team now. Zero cost to you, except I just want you to promise me that you'll try it and give us feedback. If you're excited about how language learning could be different, I want you to be a beta tester. You can be a part of changing the way people learn Spanish. Go to our website, redshift-education.com. And then there's a big red button on the website. Sign up to be a beta tester. We'd really love to have you. And make sure you subscribe here on YouTube. I'm going to be releasing a ton of content leading up to the launch of our first game, Lockheart Antenna, with interviews with our developers and our artists, screenshots of future, more promos and more behind the scenes stuff. So it should be a fun time. Make sure you subscribe here too. All right. That's all. Thank you so much. See you on our website. Bye.