Samohi grad finds calling
SAMOHI With eight years mastering the clarinet and saxophone to his credit and a three-year stint at a French music conservatory under his belt, Dallas Bluth was on his way to a career in entertainment.
Coming from a family of entertainers — Uncle Don Bluth headed FOX animation for years, producing “All Dogs Go To Heaven” and “Land Before Time;” and Uncle Toby Bluth enjoyed a long career as an artist and animator who also starred in several films — Bluth seemed destined for a career in show business.
But life works in mysterious ways. Bluth, who graduated from Santa Monica High School in 1997, was studying music at UCLA when a friend introduced him to Linux, an open-source computer operating system.
“For me, it was like a duck to water,” Bluth, who now lives in Culver City,said on Thursday.
With music on the backburner, Bluth found himself spending endless hours on the computer just for fun. After graduation, he began bouncing from job to job, finally deciding to launch his own Web development company while tutoring students on the side.
From his Web development company, called MZ Projects — the MZ standing for “Monkey Zone” — came the creation of MZ Language Review, a site offering virtual flashcards for foreign language studies.
Bluth, 28, had initially created the program to help him learn Spanish and Japanese vocabulary words and had no intentions on making the site public. It was at the urging of friends who found the site useful that he decided to launch the site.
For $2 a month, MZ Language Review allows the user to create an unlimited stack of vocabulary flash cards, which are inputted by the user. The user can organize the flash cards by category, such as by animals or food.
“You can organize and reorganize and pick what you want quickly,” said Bluth, who speaks French fluently. “If it’s a small group of vocabulary words you’re working on, it’s not that useful.”
The site launched in January and now has a client list of about 60 people.
But Bluth’s pride and joy, the project he has been working on for more than a year, is The Monkey Zone, an online tutoring service for young children.
Geared toward supplementing elementary school education, The Monkey Zone offers lessons in geography, arithmetic vocabulary and music.
Bluth created the site in entirety, from the content to the animation, drawing on his family background in art.
A tutor since the age of 16, Bluth was also able to draw on his experiences in teaching when developing the content.
“That is what I like to do most, It’s an extension of being a teacher,” Bluth said. “I realized I sort of have a limited amount of students I can get to in a week.”
The lessons provided in the site go above the curriculum offered at most public elementary schools, Bluth said, such as chemistry and music, teaching students molecule names, how to read chords and build scales.
The lessons are all interactive, making the learning process enjoyable for the student.
The site is set to launch in mid-July, at which point Bluth plans to go back and work on developing MZ Language Review to add more features.
Growing up in Santa Monica surrounded by a musical community, coming from a family of animators and entertainers, Bluth has taken a completely different path from what he seemed destined to do.
“I think Monkey Zone is what I’m supposed to be working on,” Bluth said.“The more and more I sink my teeth into it, the more I don’t get bored doing it.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 25, 2007. Read the original PDF.