NEWS RELEASE
U.S. Army to Provide Rosetta Stone® Foreign Language Training Via Distributed Learning System’s
Army e-Learning
Web-Based On-Demand Foreign Language Training Available to All U.S. Army Personnel
October 3, 2005 - The U.S. Army has announced it is making foreign language training available at no cost to all active Army, National Guard, Reservists and Department of Army civilian personnel worldwide through its Distributed Learning System’s Army e-Learning, under the Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems.
In the past, the high tempo of operations, limited resident school capacity and the scarcity of contracted language training opportunities have worked against the Army’s goal of fielding a force capable of engaging in basic communications with the local population in deployed areas. Now, with the help of Fairfield Language Technologies, creator of the computer-based language immersion program Rosetta Stone®, the Army anticipates it will be able to significantly increase basic foreign language skill-level across the force.
“Critical foreign language capability and skills are increasingly important to our Army. Rosetta Stone provides the Army with an immediate, interactive language training tool to train our Soldiers, leaders and civilians for operational deployments and professional development,” Brigadier General James M. Milano, Director of Training, Army G-3/5/7.
Army e-Learning, the U.S. Army CIO/G6’s answer to fulfill IT training requirements, provides access to commercial, information technology, business and self-development education and training courses. It will now also serve as the Web-based language training platform the Army has determined it urgently needs to strengthen its language capabilities. Courses offered through Army e-Learning are available via the web 24 hours a day from any place in the world – at no cost to Army organizations. To date more than 213,000 users have accessed Army e-Learning, with 300-500 new users being added each week.
“To provide U.S. Army personnel around the world with the language instruction they need, the Army sought a proven Web-based foreign language training tool that could teach speaking, listening, reading and writing for a variety of target languages utilizing an immersion methodology,” says Tom Adams, chief executive officer of Fairfield Language Technologies. “We’re pleased that Rosetta Stone’s philosophy, design and effectiveness are providing the solution they were seeking.”
Rosetta Stone provides 26 state-of-the-art language courses through Army e-Learning, including Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Danish, Dutch, French, Farsi (Persian), German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish (Latin America), Spanish (Spain), Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese and Welsh. These Web-based foreign language training courses teach reading, writing, speaking, and listening with immersion, completely without translation.
Access to Rosetta Stone® will be available within 30 days of contract award. AKO provides single sign-on access for Army e-Learning.
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For additional information on how to access Army e-Learning, log onto
http://www.us.army.mil; My Education; Army e-Learning portal page. Or you can access Army e-Learning at
http://usarmy.skillport.com. You must have an AKO account to access the system.
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