We’ve written about our friends at eduFire before — really, they’re amazing. They introduced their website a few months before we did, and while we share similar passions around encouraging lifelong learning, they take a primarily online approach to it. When they first launched, they focused on enabling live, online video learning between a teacher and student, so pretty much one-to-one. That’s all changed.
Just last week, they introduced what they call ‘classes’ — that is, eduFire teachers can now offer teaching sessions via online video to up to a hundred students at a time, no matter where they live or where they come from — we’ve tried it, and it’s really cool.
So what does this mean for you as an eduFire student?
1. Reduced Rates: Since teachers can spread their time over more students, they should be able charge a little less per student (rather than charging $25 for an hour for one person, they can charge 10 people $5 each, and still make more money.
2. Social Learning: We all know that learning with others is fun — so, learning with bunches of folks on eduFire is more fun too — the sessions we sat in on had multiple folks, and it was a blast — we were exchanging twitter addresses behind the scenes, just like passion notes in the old days of school.
3. More Choice: Besides languages and test prep classes, they’ve already seen all sorts of other categories as well. From a “Raw Foods” class, to a “Twitter for Business and Blogs” class, expect to see new and exciting things. Just like we say, “Everyone’s an expert in something”!
Oh, and if you’re a TeachStreet teacher, and have a profile at eduFire, they make it easy to link to your TeachStreet profile as well when you build out your eduFire profile — if you have questions about that, let us know!