Archive for April, 2009
Use eduFire Articles to Find Students, Gain Credibility
Posted on 30. Apr, 2009 by Koichi.
eduFire has released a new feature for teachers (and students, should they want to use it) called “Articles,” which is part of a new “content” category that will have other features in the future. Actually, articles has been up for a few weeks now (how many of you came across it? I know our awesome Tagalog tutor Katherine noticed it).
When you write a quality article, it does a lot of good things for you, the teacher. It’s just another way to promote yourself and help students to find you! Let me list some of my favorite things:
- Gain Credibility: If you write good stuff, people will notice! The more good articles you have, the more a potential student might trust you! People will read them and say “Wow, this teacher is one smart frood! I want to take lessons from this person.”
- Attract Students: When you write an article, it becomes available all over the web. People from outside of eduFire can find those articles when they’re searching on Google, using StumbleUpon, Digg, etc. If you wrote an amazing article, who knows how many people will view it and then maybe even book a lesson with you! Check out this article: “Unconventional Ways to ACE any job interview.” It has over 25,000 views already!
- Show the World Who You Are: By writing articles, you’re giving insight into the way you think, the type of person you are, and so much more. These are all things that are hard to do in your profile alone. For example, if I looked at this article, I’d know that Stephen is an inspiring and positive guy! It would be more difficult to gather that just from the profile itself.
- Promote Your Classes: When you write an article, you have the option to associate your article with one of your upcoming group classes. The article will show up in your class listing, and there will be a link to your class from your article as well (so all the people finding it from other places can find your class as well). This is also a great way to add some information, back story, and so on to your class, which you can assign to the people taking it.
Since we’ve (officially) just released this feature today, we’ll be announcing a contest to go along with it very soon. All articles written before the contest is announced will automatically be entered, of course, so feel free to get your thinking caps on. Aw heck, I’ll tell you what the contest is so you faithful blog readers can get a head start. All of you will be nominating your favorite language, test-prep, and “other” articles in a few weeks, then those will be voted on by the community (as well) to see who’s top dog. Prizes are pretty awesome, totaling to around $75 in value for each winner. To join in, all you have to do is write an article!
I’m really looking forward to reading your articles – there have already been a lot of really good ones that I’ve enjoyed so far. The eduFire community is full of really really really smart people, and I’m excited that you now have another way to share your knowledge with the rest of the world!
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Thank You for Helping us Donate $700 to DonorsChoose!
Posted on 21. Apr, 2009 by Koichi.
Last week, we had a Retweet charity that supported a classroom from DonorsChoose, where every retweet you made on Twitter garnered $3 up to $300. A bit THANK YOU to all of you. We also got some extra support from DonorsChoose (matched up to $200) Tofugu ($100) and Jon Bischke ($100), bringing the grand total up to $700! Because the classroom doesn’t need this much money, we’ll be choosing another classroom to donate to in the coming days. If you have any recommendations for a classroom (found on DonorsChoose) please let us know in the comments down below! We want to find one that supports technology in the classroom, but also really really helps out some kids.
Thank you again for your 220+ retweets to help these children! You have changed their lives for the better, and we’re really proud to be a part of it!
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Tweeting for Literacy – How YOUR Tweets can change lives
Posted on 16. Apr, 2009 by Koichi.
All day today, eduFire will be donating $3 per retweet (don’t know what a retweet is? Check out this free class on Twitter going on today!) to an ELL classroom in Oklahoma, up to $300. Click on the image below to get to the original Tweet so you can retweet it.
Please help these kids out! They are second-graders who don’t speak English at home, and that’s affecting their ability to learn how to read. By making this donation, we can help them learn using a bit of technology (we love technology!). All it takes is a simple retweet, nothing more, nothing less! We really love to support education in all shapes and sizes, so your help will be greatly appreciated, and directly help real people!
Now, this classroom actually needs $456 to reach their goal, so we want to encourage you to get involved too, if you are able! We’d like to ask any and all of you, who are reading this, to help out education and join our tweeting campaign! Just add your name on to the original tweet, and ask your followers to retweet it. We’ll be updating (below) whenever somebody else joins in. Be sure to tell us when you do, so we can write something so more people know!
If and when we do exceed $456, or if too many people donate to this cause before we get the money to them (probably tonight or tomorrow), we’ll pick another classroom to help, via this wonderful website, donorschoose.org.
So what are you waiting for! Open up your Twitter accounts and tweet tweet tweet away!
Update 1:00pm PDT: @jonbischke will donate another $3 per retweet up to $150! Go Retweet his Tweet!
Update 1:23pm PDT: @tofugu will donate another $3 per retweet up to $100! Go Retweet his Tweet!
Update 6:20pm PDT: Just received word that have another $200 match. I need to leave it anonymous for now until I know for sure that I can mention it here. Cool! :)
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Check Out Your New eduFire Dashboard
Posted on 01. Apr, 2009 by Koichi.
eduFire has been working hard on a number of things, one of which is our new dashboard, which makes things a little more intuitive, cleans your info up, and makes certain features easier to find. We really hope you like it!
If you want to check out your new dashboard, just log in to your account, and visit “my edufire.”
We’d really love to hear your feedback on it too, so please leave it for us in the comments here, or post them in the eduFire forums. Now that we’re done with this, look forward to more features coming soon! Should be a great couple of months!
