What’s all the fuss about Twitter? Since our call out for Twitter teachers on TeachStreet, we’ve been getting some great feedback and interest in learning more. That’s what we’re all about here at TeachStreet — connecting folks who want to learn something new with local experts.

We’ve partnered with some great local partners, Allen Klosowski (Organizer of the Denver Tweetup) and KUSA Channel 9 News, to help put together a FREE “Introduction to Twitter” class for the community to learn more about Twitter and get started on this new phenomenon.

If you would like to attend, please see the information below and be sure to RSVP for the event since space is limited.

INTRODUCTION TO TWITTER

Presenting:
Joseph Sunga, TeachStreet.com
Allen Klosowski, Denver Tweetup Organizer and Professional Photographer
4:30-6:00pm

When:
Friday, May 8, 2009
4:30-6:00pm

Where:
KUSA Headquarters – Channel 9 News
500 Speer Blvd.
Denver, CO 80203

Description:

• Learn more about Twitter and what the fuss is all about
• Learn from local Twitter experts who will provide real-world  examples of using Twitter
• Discuss any questions you may have about Twitter

Special Thanks to:

Allen Klosowski, Denver Tweetup Organizeer and Professional Photographer
With over 24,000+ followers, Allen is definitely a local Twitter expert in the Denver area. He also organizes the monthly Denver Tweetups where hundreds of “Tweeps” come together over some tasty brew at a local brewery. The last Denver Tweetup, which was on April 24, 2009, had over 150+ attendees filling up the Great Divide Brewing Co. Tap Room. Along with being prolific on Twitter, he also runs a professional photography company, K2 Photo Studio.

KUSA Headquarters – Channel 9 News
9NEWS offers breaking news, local headlines, weather and sports, along with national and world news. KUSA-TV is the number one local news source in Colorado. Backed by the strongest news gathering team in the business, an affiliation with NBC, a partnership with the Denver Post and Entercom, and a close relationship with USAToday, 9news.com is where news comes first.

To get your free t-shirt just fill out the information below and add a widget to your website or blog!

Note: This promotion is now complete — but you can still add a widget!

Embedding a widget is easy and can be done in a matter of minutes. Just go to the widget creation page on TeachStreet and get the code you need to add to your site. In addition to mini widgets, you can also get topic widgets and search widgets, each widget is a great way to and interesting content for your website visitors.

http://www.teachstreet.com/widget

Please note this offer is limited to US residents only.

If you love to cook, or want to learn how to cook, you’re in luck!

Two superstar cooking schools, Sur La Table and Bon Vivant School of Cooking, are offering free cooking classes to the lucky winners of their contests.

Here are the rules:

Sur la Table Contest:

There are two ways to be entered to win: (1) Contact Sur La Table about taking one of their upcoming classes or (2) Write an article on TeachStreet which includes the subject “cooking”. The article can be on anything: a favorite food you learned to cook while traveling, which spices you think are “must haves” in any kitchen, a favorite recipe to satisfy your sweet tooth, a story of a kitchen disaster.

Articles and contacts must be completed by May 4th.

Prizes: Winner will receive a free cooking class for any of Sur La Table’s cooking classes in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco or New York during 2009.

Bon Vivant Contest:

Write an essay on the topic “How I remember my mother’s cooking”. It could be about a favorite dish, a special occasion or maybe a meal that didn’t go quite right. Write about how your mom, or another special person you raised you, left an indelible memory for you via their cooking.

Essay must be 250 words or less and be entered by May 4th. (*Check out the Bon Vivant website for details about how to email in essay. For bonus points, include your essay as a cooking article on TeachStreet!)

Prizes: 1st Prize – Two gift certificates to a hands-on cooking class at Bon Vivant before June 2010. 2nd Prize – A Sabatier tomato knife. 3rd Priza – A Stainless Steel Sabatier Spatula

Good luck TeachStreeters. Let the cooking begin!

SEATTLE, WA – April 13, 2009 – TeachStreet (http://www.teachstreet.com), the website that has connected thousands of local students with local instructors in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Denver, has just expanded to New York.

New York residents can now learn how to do just about anything they want in Manhattan, or anywhere the transit system will take them. They’re now just one click away from discovering more than 17,000 local coaches, experts, classes, and instructors on TeachStreet. Whether one wants to learn Spanish, ashtanga yoga, French cooking, or acoustic guitar, TeachStreet offers classes, instructors, and articles across more than 500 subject areas.

Aspring yogis and guitarists alike can search for classes across hundreds of categories and select results according to geographic location, real student reviews, instructor availability, cost, and more. As New York resident Aaron Wald said, “I have quickly become a raving fan of TeachStreet. The breadth and depth of their offerings are amazing. In a matter of minutes I was able to connect with both a dog trainer and a golf coach!”

TeachStreet also provides a simple yet powerful way for teachers and instructors to market their businesses online. Thousands of teachers, including dozens of New York yoga instructors have already begun using TeachStreet as a way to grow their businesses. They’ve set up profiles and are now getting more students by ranking on Google, posting HTML styled ads on Craigslist, and being featured throughout TeachStreet. With the launch of their fifth US market, TeachStreet has become the premiere destination for New York residents to find local experts.

About TeachStreet
Founded in June 2007, TeachStreet is dedicated to helping students find great local teachers, and empowering teachers with robust online tools to manage their teaching businesses. Featuring more than 100,000 classes and instructors in Seattle, Portland, the Bay Area, Denver, and New York, the free site provides the information that students need to make informed decisions about their learning experiences, including student reviews, teacher recommendations, pricing information, location, teacher training, and more. TeachStreet is headquartered in Seattle, WA and backed by Madrona Venture Group. For more information, visit www.TeachStreet.com.

Contact:
Sam Niccolls | TeachStreet
Cell: (303) 249-3900
Email: sam@teachstreet.com

We made a few enhancements to TeachStreet tonight that I wanted to share with you. Our goal with this release was to “Go Social” – by building new ways for our community to connect. We hope you enjoy the new features. If you find a bug, have feedback or need help, send us a shout at help@teachstreet.com

NEW Features:

• TeacherTalk - where teachers can connect
• Learn Something New – where students can connect
• Inside TeachStreet - where you can ask us questions about TeachStreet
• Announcements - where anyone can share upcoming news and events.

Widgets – Add a TeachStreet widget to your website or blog and help your readers learn something new. We developed five widget types – so that at least one will be perfect for you:

• Mini-Widget: Use this widget to promote your profile and class listings, show off your star rating and link directly to your profile page on TeachStreet.
• My Classes: This displays all of your classes — it’s ideal for teachers and school.
• My Reviews: Proudly highlight all of your TeachStreet customer reviews, and solicit new ones!
• Topic Widget: Add interesting, topical content to your personal website. You can create a collection of local classes or articles in a subject area (i.e. yoga, guitar, ballroom dance) of your choosing.
• Search Widget: Bring a fully-functional TeachStreet search box to your own website!  This is great for teachers, and also ideal for local neighborhood blogs and newspaper/media-oriented websites.  (And, we’d be happy to work with partners to enable larger-scale customizations of this widget).

Installing a widget is easy – just copy & paste the HTML code into your website or blog template.

Facebook Connect – you can now login to TeachStreet with your Facebook credentials. If you are a current user, first login to TeachStreet and then link your TeachStreet account with Facebook. New users can choose to login with Facebook right away.

We’ve also made some improvements to current features of the site:

Photos: Our newest engineer, Phil, has been working overtime to build a feature that many of you will love: photo cropping! You can now edit your primary profile image or class image. Just go to the photos tab and select your primary photo! We’ve also added the ability to pick from other pictures you’ve uploaded when selecting photos for classes.

Search: Our engineers went algorithmic on us and revamped our search infrastructure. This means it will be faster! They have also made improvements to our location search, related subjects and the recommendations for how to improve your search query. We also made modifications to our Featured Teacher placement so that more awesome teachers will show up!

Reviews: We expanded our review form so that reviewers can provide more detail on their experience with a teacher or class. We definitely want your feedback on these changes!

Help content: We’ve made significant changes to our help section by adding “how to” guides for popular areas of the site. Check out the guides on everything from managing photos, to writing articles to how to rank in TeachStreet search results.

We hope you enjoy the changes to the site – if you have any questions or feedback, e-mail us at help@teachstreet.com – we’d love to hear from you!

After visiting some great local instructors in the Bay Area, we didn’t want to waste anytime visiting our next city. With that said, here we come Denver and Boulder!

We’re planning to head down to Denver and Boulder in May to meet up with our current active members on TeachStreet and folks who just want to learn more about us. We want to help teachers, coaches and experts like you learn more about using online tools like Craigslist, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and (of course) TeachStreet to market their business. So please come to the events with questions!

Meet with Sam Niccolls and Joseph Sunga in Denver/Boulder between May 7-9

What to expect at a TeachStreet Orientation:

• Networking with fellow teachers in the area
• Learn some tips on how to utilize TeachStreet better
• Open discussion and Q & A about marketing online

In order to attend each of the events, you must RSVP below. If you have friends or colleagues who may be interested, please forward them this blog post.

If you have any further questions, please e-mail me at joseph@teachstreet.com.

[**If you want to to become a Twitter Teacher in your city, click here to skip to the instructions. If you have any questions, please DM me @teachstreet, e-mail me at joseph@teachstreet.com, or call me at 206-381-0652.**]

[**UPDATED (4/10/09): Added Teachers to the Twitter Teacher Directory**]

What’s all this talk about Twitter? It’s this new internet phenomenon, which allows you to share news or updates quicker than ever before to a group of folks following you. It’s been at the forefront of all newsworthy events this past year like the Presidential Inauguration, Hudson River Plane Crash, and even the recent earthquake in Italy. It really provides people a real-time glimpse of what’s going on in the news today.

There’s definitely been a lot of interest in how to use Twitter for both personal and business use. As a Twitter teacher myself, I’ve taught family, friends, strangers, and teachers on TeachStreet; and there’s been an increasing demand during these past weeks. Our friends over at eduFire.com have also been running some Twitter classes too. As interest continues to grow, I’m officially doing a call out to all the Twitter experts out there who want to help teach Twitter to people in their city.

A Twitter class can be as easy as a coffee shop meeting to a full blown event, charged or free; it’s really whatever you want it to be. I’ve personally been teaching small groups of students at a local coffee shop, but with this increase in interest — I may have to upgrade the venue.

Twitter Class in Seattle: Getting Started on Twitter

So if you have some knowledge about Twitter, or if you’re a Twitter power user yourself and would like to share your expertise, join the community on TeachStreet and teach people in your local community. We’re looking to have experts all across the country, so please help us spread the word. The following are instructions on how to get your Twitter classes onto TeachStreet.com.

How to become a Twitter Teacher on TeachStreet:

1. Visit our site: http://www.TeachStreet.com
2. Click “Get more students” then “List a class” (Sign up is necessary)
3. Make sure you use “Twitter” as the subject for your class
4. Tweet “i’m a #twitterteacher on @teachstreet, come check out my twitter class [insert URL]“
5. We’ll list you in the “Twitter Teachers” directory below and promote your classes

Tracking Twitter Teachers: Search of #twitterteacher

Be sure to tweet that you’re a #twitterteacher and don’t forget to link to your class on TeachStreet.com since that’s how we’ll be updating the list below. We’ll be definitely helping promote your classes and teachers, so looking forward to seeing the list grow. Please help spread the word!

—

Twitter Teachers:

Boston, MA

• Laura Fitton (@pistachio) – Twitter for Musicians, Twitter for Business 101
• Jeff Cutler (@jeffcutler) – Twitter Basics

Denver, CO

• Joseph Sunga (@joesunga) – Getting Started on Twitter (5/7-5/9)

Greenville, SC

• Woodrow Hill (@raqsasim) – Twitter 101

Healdsburg, CA

• Shana Ray (@sharayray) – Social Media for Business Owners (More than just Twitter and Facebook)

Los Angeles, CA

• Tim Gillons (@eyeintim) – Introduction to Twitter

Miami, FL

• Matthew Chamberlin (@mchamberlin) – Twitter

New Braunfels, TX

• Jennifer Norene (@juntiongen) – Social Media: Twitter Basics

New York City, NY

• Eric Friedman (@EricFriedman) – Twitter for Beginners
• Danielle Maveal (@daniellexo) – Tweeting For Your Small Business

Pheonix, AZ

• Jennifer Maggiore (@Jenn_ex) – Twitter for Beginners

Philadelphia, PA

• Sara Selepouchin (@girlscantell) – How to Twitter (How Not to Twitter)

Portland, OR

• Bram Pitoyo (@brampitoyo) – Twitter: Why Should You Care (Or Not Care)
• Kelly Guimont (@verso) – From Zero To Twitter: Make an impact in 140 characters
• Nedra Razinas (@bluedeerdesigns) – Twitter as a Tool for Small Business

Seattle, WA

• Joseph Sunga (@joesunga) – Getting Started on Twitter
• Dave Schappell (@daveschappell) – Introduction to Twitter
• Vik Duggal (@vikdug) – Twitter is a fork: An Introduction to Twitter
• Damon Cortesi (@dacort) – Building Twitter Apps
• Kintan Brahmbhatt (@kintan) – Twitter (become a twitter pro in 30 minutes)
• Crave Company (@craveparty) – Coffee Chat- A Caffeinated Casual Conversation About Business
• Salar Salahshoor – (@salario) – Intro to Social Networking on the Web (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
• Anurag Jain (@anujain) – Twitter 101

San Angelo, TX:

• Angela Guerrato from Genone Institute (@biblianet) – TWITTER EM PORTUGUÊS – OFICINA

San Francisco, CA:

• Dave McClure (@davemcclure) – Twitter for Geeks
• Natala Menenez (@natala) – Twitter Basics

Venice, CA

• Tim Gillons (@eyeintim) – Introduction to Twitter

Washington DC

• Rosalyn Lemieux (@rozlemieux) – Intro to Twitter

Interested Twitter Teachers (Awaiting Classes):

• Amy Tuggle (@amytuggle) – New York, NY
• West Seattle Blog (@westseattleblog) – Seattle, WA
• Danielle Morrill (@daniellemorrill) – San Francisco, CA
• Maxine Appleby (@maxineappleby) – Sodus Point, NY
• Robert Ferrero (@nymous) – Portland, OR
• Rebecca Shapiro (@rebeccashapiro) – Portland, OR
• Ed Borasky (@znmeb) – Beaverton, OR
• Kathy Gill (@kegill) – Seattle, WA
• Shannon Evans (@shannonevans) – Bainbridge Island, WA
• Daryn Nakhuda (@daryn) – Seattle, WA

Learn more about Twitter on TeachStreet.com where you’ll find more teachers, classes and articles surrounding Twitter.com.

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In our March to the Beat contest, we asked TeachStreeters to share their musical knowledge by submitting great music themed articles. And from concert pianists to guitar heroes, hundreds of experts and instructors submitted great articles over the last 31 days.

Sadly, we had to pick three winners. So after reviewing all of the great submissions (really there was a lot of good stuff), we’re pleased to announce the winners of TeachStreet’s March to the Beat Contest. Each article is sure to help you March to the Beat, no matter what month it is!

Congratulations to the following instructors. Each will receive a $25 iTunes gift certificate for their pitch perfect prose.

Winner #1
Name: Alan Mayer
Title: “The Importance of Tuning Your Guitar Make Music Not Noise”
Subject: Guitar
Location: Albany, CA

Winner #2
Name: Anne Wallace Peterson
Title: “The April Fools Recital”
Subject: Piano
Location: Redwood City, CA

Winner #3
Name: NW Vocal Arts
Title: “Sing for Your Supper”
Subject: Singing
Location: Seattle, WA