LEBTOP - Real Purpose

LEBTOP helps the English Learners you think ? Use it to either Learn or Volunteer and discover the real answer.

(LEBTOP HAS SHUTDOWN SINCE JULY 2014. WE WILL TRY TO RE-LAUNCH.)

Ofcourse it helps the learner be more confident in English, get more practice with good speakers on phone, etc .. but it really helps the volunteers more. How you ask ?

Good question, I thought you would never ask ? ;)
Volunteers will get to know different people , some from rural areas, some struggling to get a job, some students, etc.. Speak and Get to know them and that in itself is a great feeling and you can see your perspectives change.

The simple activity of talking to someone to help them is liberating and soon you will agree with this
post and will be Thankful to the many Indian learners who gave you the opportunity for helping them out.

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 Now that LEBTOP is shutdown, I can only wish for it to comeback again in a bigger way to create a culture in this Nation - A culture of helping others, even if its as small as "just talking" to them.

A nation or society in which people help each other to grow is the best one to live in, in my opinion. I am confident that a small idea such as LEBTOP has the power to bring about such a change - A change which makes people realize that helping others in reality is helping yourselves.

LEBTOP - Phone based volunteering!

ChinaDailyAsia's Jennifer Lo covers LEBTOP story here as an example of a virtual volunteering project.

http://www.chinadailyasia.com/asiaweekly/2014-03/21/content_15126354.html

 The Art of learning a language

INPUT PHASE :

TEXT
Books , articles, etc..
READ MORE. READ DIFFERENT GENRE's.

AUDIO
Podcasts, Radio, Songs, etc..
LISTEN MORE. LISTEN to DIFFERENT GENRE's

VIDEOS (with audio, obviously!)
Movies, Sit-coms, youtube, etc..
WATCH MORE. WATCH DIFFERENT GENRE's

RECORD
NOTE DOWN NEW WORDS & SENTENCES

OUTPUT PHASE

THINK
Look for similar words on thesaurus.
How is it subtly different from other similar words ?

TEXT
Write articles, blogs,etc..and use those words & sentences.

AUDIO
Use the newly learnt "words & sentences" of the day excessively for 30 mins. Make up sentences just to use them. Its fun !

VIDEO
Act it out ! - Feel the word and say it with facial expression.
Write a short film script using new words n sentences.
Film it, laugh ,enjoy.

Keep getting INPUTS from external world. Put effort to memorize them, slowly and steadily. Then create - thoughts, articles, sounds/accents, videos !

LEBTOP helps you with Inputs (from Volunteers - Get new sentences,get correct usage, clear doubts, get used to accents) and then helps you deliver the Output (regular practice increases confidence).

Telephonic language learning Community

UPDATE : BELOW SERVICE IS NOT AVAILABLE NOW. YOU CAN GO THROUGH IT TO UNDERSTAND THE IDEA THOUGH.

Almost everyone in India has a basic cell phone.
Everyone can learn English now, using...

LEBTOP - A Telephone based platform to
 
Learn | Improve | Practice |Help Others to speak good English.

Give a Missed Call

Get a call back

Talk to other users

Rate each other at the end of the call (Peer rating System)

Get connected to Higher and Lower rated users alternatively.

 Learn. | Teach. | Grow.


 

IMPROVE YOUR SPOKEN ENGLISH SKILLS OR HELP OTHERS
IMPROVE THROUGH DISCUSSIONS IN ENGLISH.

GIVE A MISSED CALL ON  022-67304949 / 040-­66588179






GET A CALL BACK & START SPEAKING TO OTHER USERS

EVERYDAY : 8 PM

Topics of Discussions:

Mon	News & Politics	AAP , Elections, Modi, Congress, Devyani, etc..
Tue	Science & Technology	Global warming, iphone 5 , etc.
Wed	Sports	Cricket, Chess, Tennis, Sachin,etc.
Thu	History	Monuments - Taj Mahal , leaders - Gandhi, etc.
Fri	Movies	Fav movies, reviews, dhoom 3 , etc.
Sat & Sun	Morning              -          News & Politics
	Afternoon         -            History, S & T
	Evening          -          Sports & movies

FIRST 50 MINUTES OF USAGE IS FREE!!

TRY IT NOW !!!

AFTER TRIAL PERIOD: Call Cost will be 1 paise/sec.
 

(FOR 50 TOP RATED SPEAKERS in the LEBTOP SYSTEM, its COMPLETELY-­FREE)

ADVANTAGES OF MEMBERSHIP

1. PRACTICE / IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS EVERYDAY
THROUGH GREAT DISCUSSIONS WITH VARIOUS PEOPLE.

2. GET CONNECTED TO HIGHER AND LOWER RATED USERS ALTERNATIVELY, SO THAT YOU LEARN AS WELL AS HELP OTHERS LEARN.

3. GET ACCESS TO YOUR CALL RECORDINGS AND RATINGS, FOR
SELF-­ANALYSIS AND TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR IMPROVEMENT.

Watch the video below on why good English speakers should join the community...

Volunteer of the Month

Happy Diwali :) !

I have analyzed the LEBTOP's call logs. In the calculation, only calls greater than 180 secs were considered as a valid conversation.
We have presently clocked over 3600 Minutes of conversation.

Most minutes of conversation took place in the month of August - 1475 Minutes. 

Here is the list of Volunteers who helped the most:

Volunteer of the month for August 2013 : Nikhil Kulkarni (Yes! ,its Me :D ... 464 Minutes of conversation )

Volunteer of the month for September 2013 : Nithindas M (190 minutes)

Volunteers of the month for October 2013 : Aditya Sharma & Tejashri Kamble (Around 70 Minutes each)

Thanks to all volunteers for the continuous support.

Important Links:

1) LEBTOP Curriculum & Guidelines (Edit/Add content to improve it.)

2) TIME SLOTS : Please check & update your time slots.
New volunteers - Please choose from the available slots and Enter your name and number in the excel sheet before Sat morning 8 am.

Weekdays : We can start LEBTOP on weekdays, provided the remaining few slots are filled

Here's another competition for people who have Interesting ideas to Improve Education in India:
http://www.edupreneurquest.in/   Last Date : Nov 25th.

October update

Hi All,

Thanks to all volunteers who are taking calls from strangers and trying to teach them. 

There are a lot of challenges and I would like to share them with you so as to have a good discussion and come out with practical solutions. Please share your Volunteering Experience, suggestions, etc this will help in making the system better.

1) Drop in the number of callers/learners

Reasons:

a) We have only 1 channel i.e we can take only 1 call at a time. Many people try numerous times to connect to a volunteer (as per my call records). Only few connect and remaining drop out.

-Click HERE to see your time slots.You can edit this. We have few empty slots to fill up for the coming weekend. I think the 10 minutes time limit is deterring few people as it gets difficult to have a good satisfied conversation.

At present we have no other option than to carry on with this time limit. Please stick to it, things shall change slowly with more support and funding.

-Inform Callers that LEBTOP now operates from 8 am in the morning.

-After every call you take, please fill the FEEDBACK FORM - This helps us maintain a learners database.

-Anshu and Aditya have raised an issue about the different native languages of the learners. To solve this issue to certain extent, please mention  (H for Hindi, Te - Telugu, B - Bengali, Tm - Tamil, etc ) beside your name in the time slots list.)
If you encounter a caller, with whom you are unable to converse properly due to language differences, then you can refer to the time slot list and ask them to call at specific times.

- Some good news:

I applied with LEBTOP idea to ISB's competition iDiya (iDiya is ISB's National Social Venture Competition that aims to stimulate, enable and develop high-impact, self sustaining social businesses in India.)  and here's their email:

---------

Congratulations!

You have been shortlisted for the Round 2 of the 5^th ISB iDiya. You are now among the Top 45 teams competing for the coveted ISB iDiya Bootcamp to be held at the Hyderabad campus of ISB during November 2013.

You have been assigned an external Evaluation Partner, who would conduct a telephonic or skype interview with your team within a week.

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When flowers bloom , bees come to them of their own accord.

If we show this experiment works, support and funding shall come.
It has to come!

September Update

Hi All,

Belated Teachers day wishes to all the Micro-Volunteers !!

Maybe you just corrected them or gave them new words to use or tried to keep the conversation going to give them more practice.. Any small thing you did, you played a teacher , never mind that it was only for 15 mins, Happy Teachers Day!! :)

-This time we received on an avg 3-5 calls per hour.

In total approx 100 calls on last weekend.

-To cut costs, I have taken the 1 yr Unlimited Toll free offer from Ziffy for 42k.
There will be no cost per min of the call bur It limits a call to 10 mins. The call will disconnect automatically after 10 mins. (I will try to increase this limit to 15 mins)

-Thanks to the article and Volunteers who spread the msg, we have close to 50 Micro-Volunteers now ! That's wonderful to grow this initiative and serve more people.

As the number is high and presently our call line allows only 1 call at a time, Some volunteers might not get any calls on a weekend.

Work is on to handle more calls at a time.

-New volunteers, please go through the links given below before you take any calls this weekend. 

We have a good number of volunteers now and I think each will get to handle at the most, 1 call, unlike last weekend where people had to handle many many calls for 30mins - 2 hrs. 

1)Guidelines for Micro-Volunteers
(You may edit the document - add tips/new content to help other volunteers)

2)Check your time slot here - Time Slots

3) LEBTOP CURRICULUM (Edit/Add content to improve it.)

 

Some general info :

-Lots of calls maybe waiting while you are on a call, please ignore them, till you complete atleast 10 mins of conversation.

Regards

Nikhil

LEBTOPs mega-Weekend

Hi All,

It was one hell of a last weekend. We received close to 500 calls !!! Unfortunately, we couldn't take all.

Here are the stats:

Total calls answered on Saturday, 24th = 97

Total calls answered on Sunday, 25th = 106

Approximately 3000 minutes of conversation took place on the last weekend between Volunteers and Learners.

yay!! :D

Here's what some of our Volunteers say about the LEBTOPing experience:

"I received my first call today at 4:40 pm.

Duration: The call lasted almost an hour!! 

It was very nice, he was very enthusiastic and had a lot of dreams. He loved the idea of LEBTOP and wants to call again. I also told him that he could reach out to us on facebook."

-Aakriti Gupta, IISC student.

"I spoke with kids of age 6 to an uncle aged 71..trust me its been awesome and people love it too..and appreciate our efforts!"

- Varalaxmi Pillai, Marketing Manager

"Amazing weekend! I really felt wonderful attending to the calls. The callers are really upbeat about the LEBTOP concept and it is a very satisfying feeling being a part of their learning process. Housewives, students, professionals- the calls are from all sorts of people. "

- Anshu Sharma, Student 

"It was definitely a wonderful experience, I received some 9 calls, and many were on waiting calls... So I could feel the intensity of callers need. My slot was on Saturday : 7 to 8 pm... I received calls from, school children, teachers, house wives (home makers), some post graduate students. people had called from, thane, Mumbai, Nashik, Pune- Bhor."
- Tejashri Kamble, Research fellow

Thankyou Volunteers!! for such wonderful mails .. 

Lets make it Big!