Happy Birthday eduFire! Take a Class on Us
Posted on 28. May, 2009 by Koichi.
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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Upload Documents to Increase your Teaching Credibility
Posted on 21. May, 2009 by Koichi.
Last week, we gave you the ability to write articles, and share your knowledge with the rest of the world. We’ve already seen five articles surpass 1000 views, and two get over 10,000!
In addition to writing your own articles, now you have the ability to upload documents. PDFs, PowerPoints, docs, you name it. And, just like articles, if you have a class scheduled, you can associate it with that class, so all your documents are stored in one place making it easy for the students to access them.
Here are some benefits to uploading your documents.
- Ability to associate a document with a class, so your students can read up and prepare for your classes.
- Google Search traffic. This means people will find your documents via Google, thus finding you as well.
- Builds Credibility: A teacher with good content coming from their account means they’re a good teacher as well. Just one more thing teachers can use to stand out from the crowd.
If you’ve taught any classes in the past, and have a PowerPoint / PDF / anything you want to upload, here’s the link. First document to hit 1,000 views gets an eduFire T-shirt! :)
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We need an intern (or two… or three)
Posted on 13. May, 2009 by Koichi.
eduFire is looking to get some summer interns. Interns will get everyone coffee, do push ups, and… wait, not quite. Here’s really why you should be an intern here:
#1 – Work alongside some sharp people and learn a *ton*. Trust me on this one, you’ll probably receive an MBA’s worth of education in a single summer (and this is coming from someone who received an MBA from a Top 10 school).
#2 – A great name on your resume. We’re funded by a Sand Hill Road VC so you’ll have a good name to add to your resume. Can’t hurt in this economy!
#3 – Super convenient! We’re located in SOMA in SF, incredibly close to Cal-Train and a # of bus lines and walking distance from BART. A great commute for anyone in the Bay Area.
#4 – Free eduFire classes, tutoring sessions, etc. If you’re looking to learn a language, prep for an exam, etc. we’ll hook you up with vouchers to take free classes and tutoring sessions on our site. Not a bad perk!!
#5 – Meaningful work. If you’ve read our blog you know that we’re about trying to change education for the better. What could be a better use of your time between school years than trying to make the education system itself a little bit (or a lot!) better?
We’re mostly looking for people who are local (San Francisco) although we might hire an exceptional candidate who is remote. We’re looking for all sorts of backgrounds but the ideal for us would be people with experience in marketing (especially social media) and customer experience (especially usability). If you feel you might fit the bill shoot an email and a resume to koichi@edufire.com and title it “eduFire Summer Internship”.
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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!
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Using #teach-me on Twitter for Demand Driven Teaching
Posted on 30. Mar, 2009 by Koichi.
I came across this Tweet by Kareem (yep, one of the eduFire founders!) the other day. I thought it was pretty neat, but didn’t realize the potential of it until we talked about it a little. Twitter could be the home of a small revolution! We’re talking about “Demand Driven Teaching,” here.
So, say you want to learn something new, but have no idea where to find that Esperanto teacher of your dreams. With Twitter gaining more and more popularity, there’s bound to be someone there that knows and is willing to teach you Esperanto (and even get paid for it). Here’s what you’d do, if you were a student.
Students
Say there’s something you want to learn. You would fire up your Twitter account and type out a message. Perhaps you want to learn Spanish. You would type in something like “I need to know how to buy things in Spanish for my trip to Spain next month,” then end it with the hashtags #teach-me #edufire. This will show that you want a Spanish teacher, and you want to learn it on eduFire. You will then show up in Twitter’s Search function when you look for #teach-me.
Teachers
Of course, if you’re a teacher, you can always participate in learning something new as well, but you’re probably in it to find some students! The demand is already there, which is good for you, and people are making themselves easy to find. That’s great! All you would do is do a search on Twitter for #teach-me, and then maybe add what you teach, if you want to get more specific. For example, if you typed in #teach-me spanish, you’d find all the people that mentioned #teach-me and Spanish in their Tweets. There aren’t any right now, but hopefully that’s something we can change in the coming months! I would recommend getting a Twitter application like Tweetdeck to help organize your searches and get notified of changes faster!
Use #teach-me and #edufire to Win Prizes!
In April, we’ll be giving out eduFire t-shirts and free class coupons to students who use #teach-me and #edufire in their tweets. We’ll choose a couple of random tweets, as well as a couple of tweets we just really really like. Of course, all the tweets have to be something you actually want to learn (or be a tweet “spreading the word”), otherwise it’s missing the point, so no spamming the hashtag just for the heck of it! That’s cheating!
We look forward to seeing this tweet in action! I think there’s a lot of potential here – and a lot of students and teachers will be able to find each other when this thing takes off. We definitely need your help to spread the word, or to use this hashtag yourself! Thank you everyone for your support!
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Add Your eduFire URL to JapanSoc
Posted on 25. Mar, 2009 by Koichi.
I just came across this in JapanSoc today! We love this website, so thank you for making us a part of your e-lives!
JapanSoc is a social bookmarking site a lot like Digg, but only for Japan-related things. I know there’s a lot of people learning Japanese on eduFire, so you should definitely check it out. It’s a great site and community!
Anyways, another big thank you!
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What if…
Posted on 19. Mar, 2009 by jon.
OK, I’m about to go a little out there. But a thought occurred to me as I was checking out the site tonight and seeing all sort of cool things happening ranging from lots of people Twittering about us to us being on the verge of hitting 30,000 posts in the forums to new classes in all sorts of amazing subjects ranging from social investing to holistic nutrition. It pretty much hit me straight between the eyes.
What if that moment we have all been waiting for had arrived?
Bear with me here for a minute. If you’re reading this blog it’s probably because you actually give a damn. You care about education. Maybe your education. Maybe education in general. Maybe education for people in places who weren’t quite as blessed as we are.
And you’re probably here because you think that education can be better. That you shouldn’t have to suffer for a mediocre education at a price that increases at an ever-increasing rate (health care is the only thing that has increased in price at a faster pace than tuition over the last 20 years). That no one should for that matter. That high school drop-out rates that exceed 50% in some cities in the U.S. are a national travesty. And that our inability to re-train workers being displaced by shrinking industries shouldn’t have to be an international catastrophe.
Like a lot of other people you’re waiting for a change. So let me suggest something radical. What if that moment has arrived?
Two weeks ago I was out in New York City to attend Hacking Education, an amazing event put on by Union Square Ventures, a top-tier VC behind such success stories as Etsy and Twitter. The guest list ranged from people who are about as distinguished as they come to 25 year olds with the best resume on the planet. And they all came together to discuss one thing: How to revolutionize education.
Sitting in that room that day, listening to the ideas (and contributing a few of my own!), I couldn’t help but feeling that maybe this is it. Maybe the change that people have been talking about for some long is actually happening. And certainly not at all just at a place like eduFire. But with other amazing edge startups like TeachStreet, Knewton, Smart.fm and LiveMocha.
And so while the whole world seems like it’s off it’s rocker with talks of bailout and corporate greed maybe there’s something else going on here. Something more powerful than any of us yet have realized. An opportunity to create a true system of Global Intelligence. A chance to turn teachers into rockstars.
That’s a big frickin’ opportunity. Massive. And with big opportunities come big responsibilities. Especially in times like this it’s easy to throw in the towel. To see another depressing piece of news and just say “Screw it.” Or not. Or instead to realize that we can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves and go out and build amazing stuff that will change the planet.
That’s what we try to do every day here at eduFire. Build something that will help someone. Maybe a student who is look for some extra help in an important subject. Maybe a teacher trying to earn a decent living doing what they’re most passionate about.
And we’d love to have you help us out. Because ultimately at the end of the day it’s not about us as defined by the people on our team. It’s about *us*. What we’re all building together and the legacy we’ll leave to the generations that will come after us. By supporting the platforms that are trying to change things and supporting each other you are playing a role in being a part of this change.
So I’ll leave you with a few action items before your day is done. With each one of these that you do you’re playing a role in being a part of the change:
Know someone who is studying for the GMAT? Tell them about Grockit. It’s a ridiculously cool multi-player game that helps you study for the GMAT alongside other students.
Know someone who does local (face-to-face) teaching? Have them sign up on Teachstreet (if they’re in the US) or on School of Everything (if they’re in Europe). You’ll be doing them a big favor!
Know someone who is learning a language? Tell them about Smart.fm and LiveMocha, two of the most butt-kickingest language learning sites out there.
Last but not least we’d of course love your help too. :) We’ve put together a special Spread the Word page on edufire that you will give you a bunch of ways you can help us out. We’ve also added new “Post to Twitter” and “Post to Facebook” links on all of our Classes (more details here). As I mentioned before, every little bit helps.
I’ll close by saying that I’m really, really excited to look back on this moment in 5 or 10 years and say “Wow, that was it. That was when it all started.” The collective moment that we’re sharing, one infused with hope and optimism for a future that doesn’t exist but is brighter than any we’ve ever envisioned before. That moment is perhaps the one we’ve been waiting for.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
-Lyrics from “Blackbird” by The Beatles
