We are very happy to introduce our new Question & Answer feature now live at TeachStreet.com.  People can ask questions they have on any subject and anyone can give answers and advice. It’s a great opportunity for learners to ask questions they have, either anonymously or not, and get real answers from the people who know best – teachers!

One unique feature of Q & A is that any teacher on TeachStreet can sign-up to get email notifications of varying frequencies about submitted questions in their area of expertise. This means that learners will get prompt and meaningful answers. Also, teachers who answer questions receive a bunch of benefits such as:

• Help others;
• Share your knowledge and expertise;
• Boost your profile in search;
• Display your answers on your profile (coming soon).

Check it out today! Ask a question, give an answer. It’s all about sharing your knowledge, helping others and learning something new.

Looking for the perfect gift for your friend or family member? Tired of facing the crowds at the mall? We have the perfect gift for you. Give the gift of learning with a TeachStreet Gift Certificate!

3 Reasons why people love TeachStreet Gift Certificates:

1. Freedom to choose what they want to learn
2. Hundreds of local classes to choose from (including yoga, piano, and test prep)
3. Easy to gift wrap!

So if you haven’t gotten that special something for your friends or family, come get a TeachStreet Gift Certificate today.

* Gift certificates are valid with any teacher that accepts enrollments using TeachStreet Payments.

It’s been a long time coming, but we’re excited to finally bring fantastic clases froms Clark College to TeachStreet’s learners/students in the greater Portland, OR / Vancouver, WA area. They’ve listed more than 150 classes, ranging from The Art and Tradition of Japanese Cooking (Clark College, Portland, OR), to Google Analytics Introduction (Clark College, Portland OR), to Dance Zumba in the PM (Clark College, Portland, OR).

The last several months have been pretty much non-stop, heads-down, customer-focused product development madness here at TeachStreet headquarters — so much so, in fact, that we’ve probably forgot to highlight several of the changes that have been rolled out to the site. They include everything from improved profile pages, listing and session pages, search results, teach page options, and many more. But, more on that later.

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve made it easier for you to get information from the best online and on-campus college degree programs, including schools you know well like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, DeVry University, and The Art Institutes.

TeachStreet College Finder homepage

This is in addition to the online class selection that we added over the last few weeks (yes, teachers can now create listings and designate them as ‘online classes’ — Joseph will write more about that soon — see some great online video learning classes from eduFire, to see how you can merchandise your online classes now as well.

So, how do online college degree programs fit in to TeachStreet? From our first days, we built TeachStreet as a place for you to learn new things — that may be from a local teacher or school, via an awesome online class, or as part of a more long-term commitment in pursuit of a 2-year or 4-year College Degree — whatever your goal, we want to help you get the information you’re looking for to make a decision, and get you on the way to more, more, more learning!

Can’t decide on what course to take? Search Degrees online to find the right career for you.

You can find degrees ranging from online and on-campus degree programs in Art, Business, Technology, Education, Health Care, Law & Justice, Fashion & Interior Design, Technician (mechanics), Culinary and Psychology fields — give it a try, and tell us what you think.

It’s nothing new that TeachStreet has been the place for teacher, school, and organization to promote their classes, lessons, and workshops. Well, now is the time to let the world know exactly what you’re doing and one of those ways is through Facebook.

As you may have noticed in the past, we’ve already made steps to integrate TeachStreet with Facebook — but now we’ve taken it to another level and improve our Facebook Connect experience. They’ve said more folks are starting share on Facebook a lot more, and it only makes sense to make it easy for you to do that. As a teacher, we know you’ve been using other social media platforms, like Twitter, in order to get the word out about you business and what you teach. Now with the seamless integration of Facebook Connect, you’ll be able to easily broadcast your actions on TeachStreet to your network.

When logging into your account, you’ll be prompted to Facebook Coonect and once you’ve connected — you’ll be good to go. You can also connect by visiting your “Settings” and clicking the Facebook Connect button. Now, once connect, upon creating a class, article, or review you will be prompted with the option to choose whether you would also like share it via Facebook Connect — simply fill in a comment and your done.

You will always have final say on what gets posted to Facebook, and you’ll also be able to change your setting on TeachStreet by just visiting your “Settings” page under “General Settings”. Don’t forget to connect today and share what you’re teaching with your network on Facebook.

Have you had an issue finding the best test prep class in your neighborhood or even online? We’ve now made it easier for you by introducing our new TeachStreet Test Prep page. We highlight the best test prep classes in your area (both live and online), whether you’re looking for SAT prep, LSAT prep, or even PCATs — we have it here. You’re just one click away from the test prep class near you.

We have several aspects of this page that is unique making it easier for students to navigate to their test prep class they’re looking for:

1. We highlight the Top Test Prep Subjects: SAT, LSAT, GMAT, and GRE
2. We highlight our Top Test Prep Providers with Featured Classes
   (i.e. Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, Knewton, or ManhattanGMAT)
3. You can sort through Test Prep courses closest to you

So when you’re thinking of taking a test prep courses to get into college, business school, medical school, or law school — come to TeachStreet Test Prep for all your test prep needs.

We’re excited to unveil our upgraded profile for teachers! We’ve listened to the teacher feedback, and have revamped this page to be more clean and focused on what teachers care about most — getting more students. With this, you’ll notice the following changes live on our website today.

Profile Example: Bridget Benton

New Changes to Teacher Profiles!

1. Cleaner Profile: We make it easier to scan teacher profiles and understand who they are.
2. Prominent Listings: Quickly see the classes, events or workshops teachers offer.
3. Better Visuals: Less clutter and more visually appealing, with bigger photos!
4. Consolidation: Contact and reputation information are grouped together.
5. Navigation: Tabbed navigation to highlight teacher offerings

We’re excited about these upgrades and we’re hoping you’re excited too. We know there may still be some kinks, so if you have any questions about the improvements on the profile page, feel free to visit our Profile Help Page or Known Issues Forum. We’re eager to hear your feedback!

Thanks to the folks at Zillow for being so inviting — a few weeks ago, they released the new Local Market Explorer Wordpress plug-in, making it really easy for real estate agents and other locally-focused bloggers to add hyperlocal information to their blogs with the click of a button (or, more precisely, with the installation and activation of this spiffy Local Market information plug-in).

To see how it can work, check out this realtor’s local class and real estate results — it includes home and market activity from Zillow, local K-12 school information from our friends at Education.com, the ‘walkability’ information from WalkScore, restaurant reviews from Yelp, and voila, now new local class information from TeachStreet!

So, if you have a Wordpress blog, we invite you to install this local plugin, and make hyperlocal information that much more convenient for you and your readers! And, if plugins are still a new concept for you, check out our local TeachStreet blogging and WordPress classes

p.s. We’re still wrestling with some PHP5 upgrade issues with our own blog, else we’d point you to a nicely formatted example here — those issues have nothing to do with Local Market Explorer, but rather with our budget-constrained Web Hosting Service!

It’s been a long and glorious summer up in the Pacific Northwest and the TeachStreet team has been taking full advantage of long days and warm nights… while at the same time working diligently on a little summer project that is officially launching today: TeachStreet Pro.

TeachStreet Pro is  a new suite of tools for TeachStreet subscribers. TeachStreet Pro makes it easier for teachers to connect with new students, collect payments online (without any teacher processing fees — that’s right no fees!) and grow their business.

Our CEO, Dave, has been so excited about this new offering that yesterday, in anticipation for today’s launch, he created the following video explaining the benefits of going Pro:

If you don’t have time for the video, here are the key new features we’re offering with TeachStreet Pro:

• Free Credit Card Processing — that’s right, Pro Members get free online payments!
• Customize your profile and class pages with your own personalized banner
• New members-only marketing tools (Craigslist ad tool, tear-sheet flyers, and table-top signs)
• Priority placement across TeachStreet site, search, and student e-mails

We’ve also made it super-easy to try out pro — with a 14-day trial you can sign-up without any hassle.

What are you waiting for? Go check it out now!

A couple of weeks ago we announced that we would be launching TeachStreet Payments in July… and today, at 9:34 our engineers pushed the button and we are now live with PayPal powered payments on TeachStreet.

TeachStreet Payments make it easy for Teachers to get paid by students — with minimal fees and hassle. Here’s how it works:

Teacher payments are assessed fees that have been designed to be fair and competitive with other alternatives on the market, while covering the costs related to processing payments and lead generation.

>> Learn more about Payments related fees.

We’re super excited about the launch of this new feature — and hope you are too! If you have any questions about payments, please do not hesitate to contact us.