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Relive the Glory Days with eduFire Class Recordings

Koichi — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:21:43 +0000

If you’re like me and you wish you had something to watch now that the World Series is over (and you’re also sad that the Seattle Mariners didn’t make it to the playoffs), you’re definitely in luck. We’ve been secretly asking people for permission to take the recordings of their classes and put them up for your viewing pleasure.

Introducing, the eduFire Videos channel. This page is full of our favorite class recordings, from Bert Sperling’s class on Sperling’s BestPlaces (who did studies like “Sperling’s Best Places to Live”, to Avinash Kaushik’s class on Web Analytics, you’ll find something interesting (and educational) no matter who you are. We’ll be adding new classes approximately once a week, so make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates right to your reader.

Although this is just a little taste of what’s already there and what’s to come, here are some of our favorites, listed in easy-to-click bullet format! :)

Or, if none of these interest you, be sure to browse around anyways. There’s a lot more, and we’ll continue to add content in there every week!

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Looking for a Lead UI/User Experience Designer at eduFire.com

Koichi — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:55:32 +0000

Do you want to change the world by making learning fun for students and empowering teachers around the world? Are you fanatical about delivering world-class user experiences? Would you like to join a small team where you’ll be the lead UI/UX designer working closely with marketing, engineering and a customer-focused CEO to create the best learning experience possible?

Here’s the kind of thing we’re looking for (plus a little more about ourselves!).

You…

Think in terms of tasks and users when designing applications
Possess solid HTML/Javascript/CSS skills and the ability to produce interfaces that are fast and work consistently across browsers
Have knowledge of Y! YUI Library (http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/)
Have a portfolio online of web *apps* that you’ve developed
Aren’t scared off by code or the occasional controller
Are passionate about shipping products that delight customers and enjoy watching people use your product and learning from the experience (even when it’s painful)

Oh, and you’re looking forward to having a massive impact on the direction of the product and the look and feel of the site.

Us…

A small team of experienced professionals focused on doing one thing: Revolutionizing Education
Funded by a top-tier VC
Employ the “Getting Real” philosophy and engage in test-driven development and paired programming
Results-driven, we move fast and we don’t waste time with pointless meetings

Last but not least, we have fun, love flexibility and enjoy working on a revenue-generating product that already has a lot of raving fans (check out our forums and see what our community’s talking about).

If you like how this sounds, please take a few minutes and read the rest of our blog / manifesto and spend some time on our site. If this resonates with you, drop a line with ”eduFire Lead Designer” in the subject line to jobs@edufire.com. Please send us URLs of your work!

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Learn From Successful Entrepreneurs for Free

Koichi — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:34:04 +0000

We are so excited to present to you the eduFire Business Channel. It’s kind of like our language section or our test prep section except now we’re finally “getting down to business.” Subjects you’ll find here include marketing, entrepreneurship, business development, management, career development, and more! Better yet, to kick things off we’ve partnered with twenty entrepreneurs (and growing) who will share their stories and strategies of success with you. Don’t miss out on their classes. There are several up in the business listings already and more to come soon. Here is a sampling of some of the classes available right now.

A lot of the classes are free, so there’s no excuse not to sign up (unless the class fills up first, hurry!). There are, however, a growing number of SuperPass classes also available in the business category. By signing up for SuperPass, you would get access to all of these and more (every single SuperPass class in every category is free with a subscription). Here are a few more business classes to take a look at.

If there’s one thing we’re really excited about, it’s the fact that we’re helping people become entrepreneurs. We’re helping people gain the insight they need to get a job, start a company, or do something remarkable. You won’t find a more passionate and experienced group of successful professionals ready to show you how they did it. Do not miss out on this opportunity!

As Jon said, “Entrepreneurship is the engine that drives innovation and gives all us awesome stuff that makes our lives better like Google, Twitter, Facebook, ZipCar, Mint.com and Scribd (and thousands of other amazing companies). By helping each other out and teaching each other from our knowledge I truly feel we can change the world. If eduFire could play a small role in that I’d be incredibly happy.”

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Bacon Cookies and Goodbyes to our Intern Robyn

Koichi — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:20:42 +0000

Yesterday was the last day for our wonderful intern Robyn. Even more wonderful, she brought in Bacon Maple Chocolate Chip Cookies. I’m pretty sure we’re the ones who are supposed to bring things in (like donuts, as per eduFire tradition goes), but at least we all went out and got sushi later in the day (still not as good as the cookies). Bacon, c’mon!

Robyn did an incredible interny job for us, and we’ll miss her! She’s a hard worker, learned all about social media marketing, became a Facebook marketing hero, helped build our community, did some UI design work, wrote some site content, networked with some San Fran tech stars, and more. That’s not bad for a two month stint (feel free to use this blog post if anyone doesn’t want to give you a job – hey, hire this girl!).

When you go back to that Ivy League school of yours don’t forget about us, study a bit, and keep in touch! Thanks so much for all of your hard work!

P.S. That also might mean we are looking for a Robyn-replacement. You can ask about it via Twitter.

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Finding a class just got easier

Koichi — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:23:08 +0000

eduFire just rolled out a new classes page, and we think you’ll really like it. We’ve added a lot of organizational bits and pieces, cleaned things up, and improved the individual classes pages (and how you create them). Of course, we’d love your continued feedback for future version 2.1. Our community members have been posting their suggestions here. So what new features do you get in Classes 2.0?

Classes Page

Featured Classes: It looks like featured classes are still being added up (only one right there now), but this will be a really powerful widget. We hope it will help you find some great classes to take (perhaps with your SuperPass subscription?)!

Your Friends are attending: Learning alone isn’t very fun, so now you can know some of the classes that your friends are taking (so you can join in!). Make sure you friend people you like so you can enjoy their company in a class later on!

More Organization: Now you can sort by All Classes, SuperPass Classes, and Free Classes (not to mention cycling down to starting soonest, alphabetical, recently added, and popular). We also added the most popular categories to the left to help you find what you’re looking for even easier.

Class Creation Page

We’ve also made a lot of changes to the class-creation page. We’ve added a few things (and removed some as well) to help you write a great description and really optimize the class that potential students see.

About this class, Prerequisites, & Syllabus: One of the things we found was that without much direction, a lot of teachers don’t describe their class very much (which contributes to a low attendance rate). We want to make sure we give teachers the tools and guidance to write a great description, so we’ve added the “prerequisites” and “syllabus” sections. Make sure to fill these out to give your students an accurate expectation on what they’re learning in your class!

Removed the “Recording / Not Recording” Choice: We decided to take this out and just make all classes available to those thirteen and up. So, record away! This is nice for students who want to go back and re-watch your amazing class!

Individual Class Page

There’s also been a lot of changes to the individual class pages. We decided to switch to a tabbed interface to help organize all the information.

Class Description: This is where we added the syllabus and prerequisite stuff. We’re hoping to see some nice descriptions here!

About Teacher: Now students can learn more about the person teaching the class, right from the individual class page!

Class Schedule: We’ve made a few tweaks to make it easier to see the schedule and where the class is at.

Reviews: Now it’s even more important to clone classes you’re teaching more than once! Reviews get their own tab, so now you can see what people have said about previous version of the same class.

What this teacher is also teaching: There is a list of the classes that the teacher is also teaching in the right sidebar. If you like a particular teacher, this is a great way to see what else you can take from them!

Please feel free to leave your feedback so we can continue to improve. We hope you like the new classes layout!

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Cynthia Garcia is our iPhone winner! (plus more opportunities to win)

Koichi — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:44:14 +0000

Congratulations Cynthia! Out of all the people who have signed up for SuperPass, you were picked at random to receive a $200 Apple gift certificate, just the perfect amount for a fancy new iPhone 3GS! I know everyone at the office is really jealous without our compasses and video recording capabilities. We hope you enjoy it!

But, if you didn’t win something this time there’s still hope. We’ll be giving out another set of prizes on July 4th (easy to remember for everyone in the US. Everyone else? Mark your calendars). Every SuperPass subscriber (including people who subscribed earlier) will be entered in this drawing, so whether you signed up previously or are thinking about it, you can get in on these fabulous prizes.

Win the eduFire Summer Learning Package

Everybody knows what the sun does to your brains (or the snow, if you live in the Southern hemisphere). We definitely want you to keep on learning this summer, so we put together a package worth $100 to help you study. Here’s what you’ll get:

An eduFire t-shirt
$25 LearnOutLoud gift certificate
$50 of 1-on-1 tutoring on eduFire with the tutor of your choice

Check your eduFire inboxes around July 4 to see if you won! Join SuperPass now to be entered (it’s only $1 for your first week, if you want to try it out)!

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Unlimited classes for less than $1 a day

Koichi — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:52:07 +0000

We think that the opportunity to change education is huge. Our ultimate goal, which we pound into ourselves, is to “revolutionize education.” We want to change the way people learn, all over the world, and make it easy and affordable to do so. Today we introduce what we think this is the first step towards achieving that goal: eduFire SuperPass.

We’ve been working on this for a long time now (thank you testers!) and we’re really excited to be able to share this with you today. Unlimited classes for only $29 a month (that’s less than $1 a day!).

World class teachers will become available to anyone anywhere in the world as long as they have an internet connection. Teachers, we believe, will be able to make more money this way too, since they’ll have more students in their classes. More students will have access to the best teachers in the world, to native speakers of the language they want to learn, and to experts in niche subjects unavailable in the places they’re living.

But we need your help. If you want to sign up and try it out for only $1 this first week, then we’d love to hear your feedback on the experience. If you don’t want to sign up, please send me an e-mail telling me what improvements you would need to see before you yourself made the plunge, even if you’d never ever join. Either way, we’d really love to hear your feedback so that we can improve on the overall experience! I appreciate it!

An iPhone 3GS for one lucky subscriber

Apple announced their third generation iPhone, slated to come out on July 19, 2009. We’ll be giving away a $200 Apple gift card to one lucky subscriber on that date. So, if you’d like to get in on the raffle, sign up before then! Of course, the gift card can be used on anything you’d like in the Apple store, and we won’t be paying for the monthly bills that cell phone carriers tend to have with them.

Thank you all so much for your support. We are really looking forward to doing this with you, changing the world one day at a time.

Update: We’ve extended the contest by a few days and will be announcing the winner of the iPhone 3GS on Monday, June 22nd. Good luck!

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World-class UI/UX/Flex/Flash skills? Come change the world with us!

jon — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:46:17 +0000

Hey all. It’s your friendly neighborhood CEO here. We have one of those really cool “change the world” gigs available right now at eduFire. It’s a contract gig and may turn into a full-time position on the eduFire team. The description of what we’re looking for is below. If this *is* you please drop us a line at jobs at edufire dot com with “Change the World Gig” in the title. And if it’s *not* you then we’ll ask you a favor, please pass this on via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. We’d appreciate it!

-Jon

***
***

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” -William Butler Yeats

You…

-Possess a world-class design aesthetic and are fanatical about creating products that are a joy for people to use.

-Have web UI/UX experience and (very importantly) have done UI/UX *applications* in Flex/Flash

-Have expertise in ActionScript, AC3 and FlexBuilder IDE (Bonus points for any of the following: Javascript/CSS/HTML/HAML/RoR/Git)

-Have a portfolio of web apps that we can play with

-Are in the Bay Area *or* have experience doing remote work for clients and possess stellar communication skills

Us…

-Venture-backed company with a mission to change education and impact millions of people for the better

-A small but scrappy and extremely hard-working group of individuals passionate about creating value and having a blast at the same time

-Have a revenue-generating websites with thousands of incredibly passionate users (search Twitter for “edufire” or go to http://www.edufire.com/forums to see what people are saying about us)

-Looking to hire someone to help create the visual representation and user experience for the next-generation platform that people all around the world will use to learn

If you like how this sounds, please take a few minutes and read our blog (http://blog.edufire.com) and manifesto (http://tinyurl.com/5dhgqx) and spend some time on our site. If this resonates with you drop a line with ”Change the World Gig” in the subject line to jobs at edufire dot com. Please send us URLs of your work!

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Who doesn’t like Pirate Badges?

Koichi — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:42:42 +0000

Yum, I love badges. Who doesn’t? We’ve added a few badges to reflect some new features (such as articles and documents), but also added a few “challenge badges” as well. The “challenge badges” should be really difficult to attain, and I think the first person to get one of these (500 classes taught or 1000 classes taken) will be rewarded with a special prize. I wonder how long it will take? Six months? A year? Only time will tell.

Also, you may run into some secret badges while bumping around eduFire. Let us know in the forums if you find any!

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Happy Birthday eduFire! Take a Class on Us

Koichi — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:16:20 +0000

Wow. We’re one year old (as in, one year since we came out of beta). Do any of you remember our first baby steps? Well, now it’s time to learn how to run.

We’ve come a really long way in the last year. We added group classes of up to 100 people, introduced the idea board, given you the ability to upload docs / write articles, and so much more. When you look back on it this way, it’s amazing how much has changed!

Take a Class, Get a Class for Free!

To celebrate, we want to give you the opportunity over the next few days to take a group class, then get another one (at equal or lesser value) free. All you have to do is take a class before June 1st (hurry!), send your invoice to koichi@edufire.com, and you’ll get a coupon code to take another class in return!

Thank you all for a wonderful year! We look forward to many more!

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