The eduFire Blog » New Features

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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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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Use eduFire Articles to Find Students, Gain Credibility

Koichi — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:24:37 +0000

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!

[image source]

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Check Out Your New eduFire Dashboard

Koichi — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:19:44 +0000

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!

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Post an eduFire Class to Twitter or Facebook!

Koichi — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:30:16 +0000

Sometimes it’s the small things that make me happy – in this case, doubly so! On any class page, you’ll now see some text that says “Post to Twitter / Facebook.” All you have to do is click on the social site of your choice, and we’ll automate 90% of the work for you!

Let’s take a quick look at what happens when you click on an individual site, starting with Facebook.

With Facebook, you can choose to send a message to an individual / group of friends, or just post it to your profile. Choose the image that is best associated with the class, and then post! You’ll have to be logged into your Facebook account for this to work, but otherwise it’s really easy!

Just like Facebook, you’ll have to be logged in to post to Twitter. You’ll have a chance to change the text to whatever you’d like (maybe “I’m teaching a class on…” or “I’m taking a class on…come join me!”, to name a few), then you just hit update to post it. That’s even easier than Facebook!

Thank you for sharing eduFire classes! Every time you share you’re building up the eduFire community, helping a teacher, and putting a kitten in a warm home. We really appreciate it!

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eduFire Educates Teachers and Students

Koichi — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:49:53 +0000

eduFire has created two class-list pages: The eduFire Teacher Class page, and the eduFire Student Class page. Now, just to clarify, we’re not here to tell you how to teach, or how to run your classes. We do, however, want to show you how to use the tools that are available to you, and help you with marketing your classes and teaching services. The actual teaching part? That’s all up to you, of course. We’re not going to step on that. We just want to make sure everything works for you, and you know the potential of the platform before you start teaching!

When you join eduFire from now on, you’ll get links to these classes in your eduFire mail, but for you eduFire veterans, it might be worth scanning these pages every once in a while to see what’s new. It’s not just tutor and student orientations that we’re offering! There will be marketing classes as well.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for classes that you think could help you as a teacher or student, please let us know and we’ll see what we can do! We hope that these classes will help you squeeze every bit of potential out of the platform, and let you be the best possible teacher!

Once again, here’s the links: Classes for Teachers and Classes for Students

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The first live video class from 30,000 feet?

jon — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:57:19 +0000

Today I took Marco’s awesome class on Memory/Mneomics. Like all of the eduFire classes I’ve taken so far I really enjoyed it and learned a lot. However there was something different about this class…I was taking it from 30,000 feet. Courtesy of the fine folks at Virgin America (I highly recommend flying them whenever you can!) and the awesomeness of Gogo Inflight Internet I was taking the class from onboard the plane exactly the same as if I were sitting at home.

And then a thought occurred to me…am I the first person to take a live video class from a commercial airplane??!!

Wi-fi is just being made available on flights (Virgin just started a few months ago) and live video learning is pretty brand new as well. Hmmm, this might have been a historic event! :)

Regardless, it was pretty amazing and I thought I should capture the moment for posterity so I’ve included a short snippet of the video below. It’s not much to watch but you can see people going up and down the aisle. I didn’t capture the sound properly (all you hear is jet noise and me typing on the keyboard) but that’s me you see live with Marco on video and I could hear him fine the whole class. I could have even participated via audio if I had really wanted to annoy my seatmates. ;)

Today was just another one of a lot of “Anything is possible.” moments I’ve been experiencing lately. If we can participate in live video classes while on a cross-country flight at 30,000 feet then what can’t we do? :)

(P.S. The other fun part was that I encoded the video using HeyWatch, uploaded the video to YouTube and wrote and posted this all while still in the air. I heart the Internet! :))

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Record Your eduFire Classes for Future Viewing

Koichi — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:02:43 +0000

Until recently, you were only able to record your 1-to-1 sessions. Classes (with up to 100 participants!) could be recorded before, but your recordings would fly away into the unknown, and you’d never see them again. Now, with classes out of Beta, we’re happy to give you the ability to record (and view) your recordings after the class is finished. This means that if you hit the record button, all your students will be able to go back and re-watch the entire lesson, just like they were in the class again (yep, the video size and quality is that big!).

Only teachers have the ability to record their classes (students, don’t forget to remind your teachers if you want a recording!), and it’s pretty easy to do.

Click on “Meeting” in the top-left menu, and bring your mouse down to “Record Meeting.” Another prompt will come up asking you a few things. Feel free the change the name of the recording and write a description, but do not click “Record Audio from Speaker Phone” unless you are using an audio source that isn’t through the eduFire platform. So, for most of you, this means ignoring this button.

Enjoy your new ability to record classes! After the class is over, give it an hour or so to process, then check your “My eduFire” page. A link to the recording will appear under the class that it’s associated with!

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eduFire Classes Goes Live! Let Social Learning Begin!

Koichi — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:47:20 +0000

It’s finally happened! Just the other day (on the same day as the Obama inauguration – we do feel bad for overshadowing his big day), eduFire classes came out of testing and went live (along with a brand new home page), and we’ve already seen a lot of activity. Classes are being added, and all that is left is for you to join them (or create some more)! Since we’ve recently added an “Other” category, there’s been a lot of new things as well, such as a class on raw foods, a class about Twittering for Business and Blogs, and even one about network security!

So what does this mean for you? Well, a lot of things, but here’s a few, nicely numbered out:

Reduced Prices for More Students: Think of it like getting a bulk discount at the store. By allowing for more students (you can do up to 100 participants in a class), teachers can charge less and make more! Not only that, but students will pay less (or nothing, for some classes), which means everybody wins!
Social Learning: Did you ever try classes when it was in beta? Learning with other people… learning with your friends… can be a lot of fun! Students help each other out, they can practice with each other, and have a grand old time. The culture of a group class is really interesting!
More Choice: Now, anyone will be able to create a class. It doesn’t have to be about languages. It doesn’t have to be about test prep. Feel free to make up new categories, and teach a class based on your expertise! We definitely look forward to see what your creative minds come up with.

If you have a chance, help eduFire spread the word! Just a Tweet on Twitter, a blog post, or telling your friends about it will be much appreciated! We look forward to seeing you in a class!

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How to Record Your Lessons

Koichi — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:35:29 +0000

Recording your lessons is a great way to allow you to go back and review, especially since the recording is full sized, making it really easy to experience the same lesson twice. Currently, students and tutors of one-on-one sessions can record their sessions and re-watch them later. We’re working on one-to-many recordings, so I’m sure you can expect them in time.

Recording your one-on-one classes is really easy. When you’re in your session, just click on “meeting” then find “record meeting.”

From here, you’ll get a prompt. You can name your session and add a description if you want, but you don’t have to. All that is up to you. There is however, one thing you don’t want to do, and that is clicking on the “Record audio from speaker phone” button. If you click on that, you’ll suddenly find that your audio doesn’t work. Just skip that step and click “okay.”

And now, you’re recording! Your students can now go back and review everything that went on (and so can you!). Definitely take advantage of this amazing feature!

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