The eduFire Blog » Classes

March Madness!

Koichi — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:34:05 +0000

On eduFire this month, you can take a group class and get the next one free! All you have to do is take a paid class, and then send your invoice (or paypal receipt) to ryan@edufire.com who will get a coupon back to you in return. You can do this up to two times this month, and coupons can be used on classes of equal or lesser value to the original class you took.

Tutors, be sure to tell your students to take advantage of this so they can pay for one of your classes and get the next one with you for free (you still get paid, of course!).

Students, be sure to take advantage of this offer while it lasts and tell those love-to-learn friends of yours! This is a great opportunity to get twice the learning in for half the price!

Oh, and if you want even more opportunity for free classes, be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook Page, because we’ll be giving out some over there to help promote the March Madness promotion!

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Jam Today? / When the Education Bubble Finally Pops

jon — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:10:01 +0000

Jam Today? / When the Education Bubble Finally Pops.

Must-read blog post about the possible impending bubble in education. Plus there’s a plug for eduFire Classes. Each day that goes by I see the opportunity for start-ups to fundamentally change how people around the planet learn. It’s going to be incredibly fun to be a part of that change.

Thanks for the mention James!

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What’s your genius? Teach it on eduFire!

jon — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:40:24 +0000

We’re T-minus 9 days away from a very historic event. The inauguration of Barack Obama? Nope, the launch of eduFire Classes! OK, so we might be slightly overshadowed that day in the news but nevertheless we’re pretty excited to launch one of the first open platforms for interactive live video learning on the Web. And we’d love to have you be a part of it.

We’re looking for people who are interested in being pioneers in the field of online education to teach the first classes on the platform. The classes are done online using a combination of video chat, voice, presentation sharing and more. Students can attend from anywhere in the world. We’ve been beta testing for a couple of months now and hopefully have worked most of the kinks out. We think you’ll really dig the experience.

Although we’re mostly focused on languages and exam prep here at eduFire, teachers are willing to teach whatever they’d like on our platform (assuming it’s not R-rated :)). Examples of some of the classes that have been run during our beta period include Music Theory, PHP and The Great History of Egypt. You are welcome to run your class for free for students or to set a price for your classes. If you set a price you’ll pocket the vast majority of the class fee (85%).

Here are the only things you’ll need to run a class on eduFire:

An eduFire account – That will take you all of 30 seconds :)

A microphone and headset attached to your computer – This doesn’t have to a fancy set-up. In fact, many of our teachers plug in a pair of iPhone earbuds into their headset jack and it works just fine!

A webcam – This is technically optional but typically makes the experience more life-like for your students.

If you’re interested in being a teacher when eduFire Classes goes live, you can start preparing the items above and drop a line to Koichi at koichi at edufire dot com or Marco at marco at edufire dot com. They’ll answer any additional questions you have and get you all ready to teach your first class.

We’re very excited to launch this new service and would love to see you sharing your genius with the world!

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eduFire Classes Launching Soon – Important Info for Tutors

jon — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:47:55 +0000

For the last couple of months many of you have been participating in our eduFire Classes Beta. We’ve ran hundreds of classes and have been very happy to hear your feedback (most of which has been quite positive!). We’re happy to announce that we’re just about to move out of the beta period.

eduFire Classes will launch officially on January 20th. I’ve included some additional details in this forum post. A very important thing to mention is that when we move out of the beta period classes that we’re created in beta that have recurring sessions that extend past the 20th will need to be re-created. That’s pretty easy to do using our cloning feature but definitely something we wanted to make sure all of our tutors knew about.

So go check out the forum post and if you have any questions or comments please add a reply in that thread.

We’re really excited to launch eduFire Classes. As far as we’re aware it’ll be one of the first (the first?) open platforms for live interactive video learning on the Web. That’s pretty cool and it’s awesome to have such a great group of people who are excited to be pioneers in online learning!

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One-To-Many Gets Organized

Koichi — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 22:18:19 +0000

We’ve been testing out One-To-Many for almost two months, now. When we first started, only a few classes were running, which made the classes page really easy to navigate. As time went by, the list got longer and more varied. Thanks to the wonderful eduFire engineers, classes just got a little easier to navigate. Now, you have a few options to order the list. It looks a little bit like this:

Starting Soonest: Find out what classes are coming up next. Who knows, maybe there’s one happening in the next few minutes!

Alphabetical: Looking for a specific class? Checking things out alphabetically will help you get there!

Recently Added: Want to see who just made a class? Looking for something new (that wasn’t there before)? Click on this!

# of Students: Want to see what the most popular classes are? You can figure out which classes have the most students in them with this option.

If you haven’t gone in to try out One-To-Many classes, definitely give it a whirl! They are a lot of fun, and right now, they’re free!

[image]

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New One-to-Many Features for Tutors

Koichi — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:27:58 +0000

Recently, tutors got a plethora of new features when it comes to setting up a one-to-many class (thank you eduFire engineers!). Although they’re pretty small, all of them are really useful, so if you’re a tutor (or you’re planning on teaching some one-to-many classes when we get out of testing), definitely play close attention.

In the image above, you can already see a few of the new features. Now, instead of having to show the Youtube clip that’s on your profile, you can choose a different one that fits your course better. You can make your own video and upload it, or just simply use someone else’s. It’s up to you! Along the same lines, you can now upload a custom image that goes along with your class. For example, for my “Japanese Counters” class, I used an image of “Nabeatsu,” a comedian in Japan who just counts (funnier than it sounds…maybe).

Now that we’ve gotten that out of our systems, let’s take a look at the other features tutors will now have access to.

Tutors will now be able to choose how long 1:M classes last. I know my classes rarely only take an hour (with question and answer, anyways), so it’s nice to have this flexibility. Or, maybe I want to teach a really short class. This will really give teachers more power to advertise their class more accurately, so students can have a better expectation about the class.

After a tutor has put together a class, they’ll have a few extra options whenever they visit their class page. They are now able to “clone their class” (which allows you to make a copy so it’s easy to make more similar classes), “contact participants” (easy contact with the click of a button), and “change number of participants.” This last feature was highly requested when popular teachers set the maximum number of students to something too low, and then students started clamoring to get in. Now you can fix your limits to make them higher and let those waves of students join in on the fun!

More improvements are on the way, and they are all thanks to your input and support! If you have any more ideas you’d like to see implemented, definitely post it over in the idea board, where ideas can become reality!

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eduFire Classroom Culture

Koichi — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:31:30 +0000

*First of all, if you haven’t checked out the free lessons that are going on at the moment, you can do so by clicking here. It’s in testing right now, so don’t expect everything to be perfect, though we are definitely moving in that direction at a nice and quick pace!

One thing that’s been really fascinating about eduFire’s One-to-Many classroom testing is the culture that’s being built up around it. Live video learning hasn’t been done a whole lot, at least not with the same amount of accessibility that eduFire is providing, so it’s pretty new phenomenon. I was thinking about the differences between this and traditional classrooms. Remember your high school days? I decided to compare eduFire with those turbulent times, and I hope you help me out and do the same! Here’s what I came up with:

Everyone Wants to Learn Something:

This is definitely something you don’t see in a traditional learning environment. In school, I have memories of all kinds of people: There were the kids that raised their hand and went “oooh ooh! Pick me!,” there were the kids that just feel asleep all the time (that would be me), there were those that played games on their fancy calculators, and then there were a bunch of kids who were somewhere in-between. All of these people, no matter how bummed they are about school, still want to learn something. Most likely, that thing isn’t being offered at their school. All the people who join in on eduFire one-to-many classes are there because they want to be there, and because they are interested in the subject. Pair that up with eduFire’s rock star teachers (who are also here because they are passionate about the thing they are teaching), and you have yourself a winning combination.

The Students Can Help Each Other During Lectures:

Remember how you would always get scolded for talking to your classmates during a lecture? I certainly do. In a one-to-many class, students can chat to each other in a chat box, without interrupting the teacher (though the teacher can disable this feature if they wish). Although there’s always a class clown typing in the funny remarks, there are also those who ask questions and provide more information. I don’t know how many times someone has typed in a question, and even before I noticed it they got their answer from someone else in the class. Even better, students who are familiar with the subject often add to the lecture by filling in missing information, giving examples, and providing links to websites that give more detail. If you tried to do these things in a traditional classroom, you’d get your wrists slapped with a ruler (figuratively or literally, depending on where you are from / what generation you grew up in).

It’s Easy to Distribute Information:

In a traditional classroom, the teacher hands out papers, tells you to do problems out of a book, and murders trees. Murder! That’s something we’re trying to avoid. With eduFire, it’s so much easier to distribute the power point presentation to the students, as well as homework, review sheets, and links to more resources (isn’t the Internet great?). With the click of a button, everyone can download the materials, paper is saved, and there’s more time to learn.

Most Classes Don’t End When the Bell Rings:

Five minutes before class was over, I would be packing up my backpack sneakily and quietly, so I could get out the moment the bell rang. Out of all the one-to-many’s I’ve attended and taught, I don’t think there’s a single one that hasn’t gone over the “normal” one hour scheduled slot. Most times, people stick around to talk, ask / answer questions, and continue learning. Like I said, people want to be here and want to learn, and this only makes things better and helps build a vibrant community! Not to mention you are meeting other people who are interested in the same things as you.

So What About You?

Have you attended a one-to-many class yet? Have you taught one? What do you think is different from a traditional classroom setting? How has it affected your life? I look forward to hearing more about your experiences in the comments section!

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