Basic Formatting Added to Listing Descriptions

Another small update that should bring smiles to teacher’s faces – we’ve added basic formatting to listing descriptions.  Now when a teacher creates a new listing or edits an existing listing, they have more control over how their listing description appears with new style and editing options.

Teachers can now do the following:

  • Bold text
  • Italicize text
  • Add bulleted or numbered lists (like this one!)
  • Edit in HTML

No longer are teachers stuck with just plain text for their listings. With the above new options, teachers can highlight phrases and important sections of their listings regardless of their familiarity with HTML.

Update your listing today and try it out!

Posted in Building TeachStreet, Homepage, Learn New Things, Teacher Tips | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Learn Something New: Mama Janosky’s Holiday Snack Mix

We’ve passed Thanksgiving, but the gluttony ridden snacks never leave the TeachStreet office and now we’re turning it up a notch leading up to the holidays. It’s Dave’s turn for Learn Something New Friday and he pulled a recipe from his mother-in-law to get us in the holiday mood.

Food hasn’t been his forte in past Learn Something New Fridays, but there’s always a first for everything. Watch Dave draw his cooking classes of years past to put together a quick and easy holiday snack mix. Enjoy!

Mama Janosky’s Holiday Snack Mix

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup dry roasted peanuts
  • 1 cup broken up pretzel sticks
  • 1 cup Cap’n Crunch Cereal
  • 1 cup Rice Krispies
  • 1 12-ounce package white chocolate candy melt wafers

Instructions:

  1. Break up pretzels. Spray a large cookie sheet with Pam.
  2. Mix pretzels with nuts and cereals in a BIG bowl.
  3. Heat chocolate wafers in a pyrex-type container in your microwave until melted and warm (You have to stir them every so often. I use a spatula–the non-melting kind.)
  4. Once the wafers are nice and creamy, the word “quickly” comes into play.
  5. Quickly pour the creamy chocolate over the cereal mix, scraping all the melted white chocolate onto the cereal mix.
  6. Quickly mix it all together.
  7. Immediately, spread everything out onto a large cookie sheet that you’ve sprayed lightly with Pam.
  8. Now, chill everything…and relax, because you’ve done such a stellar job! (If you want to hurry it along, freeze for a few minutes.)
  9. When the candy clumps are chilled, break them into pieces and put them into a pretty bowl.
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5 Best Gifts for Families

It’s everyone’s favorite time of year – the holidays! As Christmas trees and lights go up all around, the big question on everyone’s mind is: “What should I get everyone for Christmas this year?”

Here at TeachStreet we think that one of the best gifts you can give someone is a class! A gift class is a great way to show someone that you appreciate their passions, allows that person to try new things or explore their passions more deeply, and it is something that you can with the gift receiver making it an experience to remember!

Over the next few weeks we’ll be putting together some Gift Lists for those special people in your life. Our first list is for families and kids, including activities that are great for kids and ones that kids and parents can do together. Enjoy!

5 Best Gifts for Families & Kids

1. Cooking
Cooking is a great family activity, and there are many things that kids can do and learn to help out moms and dads in the kitchen. Whether it’s a class specifically for kids or one for families, a cooking class is a great gift for the family to do and create something together.

Find cooking classes near you!

2. Language
There are so many languages out there and the best way to learn them is either by moving to the native country or practice. What’s a better way to bond then for a family to learn a new language together – plus it will be so much easier to practice when everyone around the dining room table is yelling off words for food in Mandarin.

Find language classes near you!

3. Art Classes
Whether is ceramics or painting or making friendship bracelets, art is a great way for kids and parents to release their creative side. Parents love seeing their kids artwork, and kids love to see that their parents can also create something unique and special. Decide as family would medium would be fun and take a class together!

Find fun art classes near you like Ceramics or Painting.

4. Music
Again, this is another creative outlet that is great for both kids and parents. Now we’re not suggesting you become the next Partridge Family (but if you do want to then go for it!), but making music together is a just another great way to bond and it will make practice time more enjoyable if everyone is participating.

Find music classes and teachers near you!

5. Dance

Doing something active as a family is always a great idea, and dancing is a fun thing that everyone can do at every skill level and age. Plus, there are so many different dance types available from Salsa to Hip Hop, that you are sure to find something that everyone will be excited to try.

Find dance classes near you to start that dance party in your house!

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TeachStreet Labs launches OnTheWay

Someone call a doctor; the Startup Weekend bug has caught Team TeachStreet in a big way!  After several employees were on the winning team at the Madrona Startup Weekend several months ago, and after organizing Startup Weekend EDU several weeks ago, we thought that we’d hold our own in-house lab hackathon where we take a few days to hack against something not specifically TeachStreet related.

Today TeachStreet Labs takes the wraps off of our Hack Week project, called OnTheWay.  It’s a free tool for travelers to create personalized road trips quick and easy. It’s always been a struggle for folks to find out the great stuff that’s on the way when going on a road trip, so people end up missing that tasty roadside diner or the World’s Largest Frying Pan — who’d want to miss that?!?

Check out OnTheWay, and let us know what you think.

Remember that it’s only a few day’s worth of work, and we’re now back, fully-engaged on all-things-TeachStreet, so your suggestions may take a while :-)

Oh, and if you have a second, give OnTheWay a Twitter follow, and a Facebook Like!

Plus, someone posted this to HackerNews — w00t!

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2 New Features Added to Listings

When teachers create a listing, they can do all sorts of things like add photos, pick how and when they get paid, add class times and days, and more.  And if that wasn’t enough, we’ve added two more features to listings!

  1. Maximum Enrollments (Available Class Seats) 
    Teachers can now add information about the number of seats available in each session, if they want. For example, when a teacher adds 10 seats to a class, that number is displayed on their live listing, and the seats count down after each enrollment so students know how many seats are left at all times. Once a class fills up, teachers get notified and have the option to add more seats or not, and prospective students are no longer allowed to enroll but still have the option to contact the teacher.
  2. Auto-Accept Enrollments 
    When a student enrolls in a class the old standard was that the teacher had 4 days to accept or reject the enrollment. Now teachers can choose to have all enrollments automatically accepted, removing the 48 hour time frame, and students get informed that their spot is secured right away.

Both of these new features are a part of the class session, so check them out and update your classes today!

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Photos from Sunday of Startup Weekend SEA EDU

Most of Sunday teams finalized their demos and got ready to pitch to an audience of over 200 people.

To kick of our closing ceremony Sunday evening, we had Dave (rockin his “Haters gonna hate” t-shirt) intro an incredible keynote by Mitch Kapor (check out full video here). After his keynote, all teams presented to a panel of judges consisting of Mitch Kapor, Michael Arrington, Greg Long, Jason Stoffer and Dale Stephens. The winning team was Text2Teach.

Thanks to our amazing photographer Ryan Wong who took all photos covering the weekend. Also, make sure to check out photos from Friday and Saturday of Startup Weekend SEA EDU as well.

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Photos from Saturday of Startup Weekend SEA EDU

Saturday was mostly dedicated towards teams building out their ideas and interacting with over 25 mentors who helped from idea validation to business models to formulating team pitches.

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Photos from Friday Night of Startup Weekend SEA EDU

Friday night over 125 people came together at the University of Washington’s brand new business building, Paccar Hall, to kick off Startup Weekend SEA EDU.

After some networking/ice breaker games, we convened in an auditorium to listen to a fireside chat featuring Michael Arrington and Vinod Khosla (check out the full video here). After their chat, attendees were asked to start off the pitching process to see what projects were going to be built over the weekend and we had over 50 ideas pitched.

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Videos of Fireside chat w/ Michael Arrington & Vinod Khosla + Keynote of Mitch Kapor @SWSEAedu

At Startup Weekend SEA EDU we had the absolute honor of hosting three of the most influential people in the startup world to come speak at our event. Friday night was kicked off with a fireside chat between Michael Arrington (founder of TechCrunch) and Vinod Khosla (Founding CEO Sun Microsystems & Khosla Ventures). We concluded our weekend event with a keynote from Mitch Kapor (Founder Lotus Development Corp and Chairman at Mozilla Foundation). Check out the videos here:

Fireside chat with Michael Arrington and Vinod Khosla

Keynote by Mitch Kapor

To see all of the teams who pitched at Startup Weekend SEA EDU, click here.

 

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Videos of all Startup Weekend SEA EDU team pitches

1. SeeQRs

2 1001 Mentors

3. LetsTeach

4. Budding World

5. Text2Teach

6. SkillupLearning

7. TextWorks

8. StudyBuddy

9. TeenStarter

10. SpeakerBuddie

11. Microryza

12. Babble Math

13. MathBoxee

14. DeathMath

15. Game2Code

Posted in Seattle, Startup Weekend SEA EDU | Leave a comment