“Following” Users
One change we’re testing right now is to allow users to “follow” each other. For those users that are familiar with twitter.com or 新浪微薄, this is a pretty simple concept. If you see a user that you’re interested in, you can “follow” their public updates on your main home page. Specifically, the follow feature will show updates for asking / answering questions, writing / correcting notebooks, and posting in groups.

We think this feature is really helpful for new users who have just arrived on italki and don’t have many friends. It’s a quick way to get involved in discussions, and see how other users are learning on the site.

Finally, don’t worry about about your existing friends. You will automatically follow them, in addition to your teachers and your students (if you have them). As with before, features like online chatting, sending private messages, and the blackboard will all be based on “friend” relationships and your privacy settings.

Other Improvements

We’ve also tried to make it easier to see important features on the site. Many users still don’t know that you can find an online tutor or teacher on italki. Our teachers have also asked us for more help on promoting them to potential students. We’ll be continuing to test small improvements like this to help students and teachers get the most out of italki.

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As always, please send your suggestions to feedback at italki dot com. We’re always interested to hear what you think we can do to improve the site!

Best wishes for learning a language,

The italki team

Improved Layout

We reorganized the website to make it easier to see and respond to what your italki friends are doing. We’ve also restructured the user profiles to make it easier for other italki users to help you with answering your questions, correcting your notebook, and replying to your group posts. We think you’ll find the new site easier to use, friendlier, and more useful for learning a language. There are too many improvements to list here, so login to italki and see the changes for yourself!

New Features – Notebook

We’ve mentioned a few weeks ago that we now have the Notebook, which is where you can practice and improve your writing skills. You can get corrections from other italki users, as well as correct other people’s writings. We hope you’ll take the opportunity to help others, as well as share information about your culture.

Improved Marketplace

If you’re looking for a teacher or a language product, you should take a look at our improved marketplace. If you think learning a language is expensive or if you just need extra help, you should definitely try an italki teacher, or check out language products like SpeakENG. We’ll be releasing even more improvements in this area soon.

Other tips

One tip we’d like to mention is that for users that are experiencing slowness on italki, we now have the ability to turn off the chat. For some users, this may dramatically improve the speed of the site.

We have even more changes coming, and please keep your feedback coming as well. We hope you like the new site (and tell your friends!). We’re doing our best to make italki a great place to learn a language and make friends around the world.

The italki Team

Many of our users have been suggesting we create a feature like this for some time. One thing that we like about this idea is how you can use your notebook in a variety of ways. You can use it as a learning tool for writing — post a short essay or something you want help with. (Some of our users have already been using the answers section for this.) This can also be used as a way of expressing yourself (like a blog) or for taking notes about things that you’ve learned about a language.

When you view someone else’s notebook, you’ll be able to correct and comment on it. When you correct an entry, there will be a copy of the original text, and you’ll have HTML formatting tools like strikethrough and colors to help you point out errors and what are your comments.  If you’re just interested in giving an opinion, you can just leave a comment.

We hope you try using the Notebook (try writing a notebook entry right now!). If you’re a bit shy, you can at least help other users by correcting or commenting on their writings. It’s a great way to connect with other users.

Let us know your thoughts about how we can improve this feature, as well as other features that you’d like to see on italki. Let us know through feedback.

This is part of our planned improvements to italki. There will be more changes coming very soon, so please keep sending us your feedback and checking back here at the blog!

The italki team

Our first change is the user homepage.

We’ve shifted towards using an Updates section, which is more similar to a newsfeed of what you and your italki friends are doing. You’ll be able to quickly see your friends’ recent activity, as well as see responses to questions or group discussions that you’ve started.

We’ve also created a Recommendations box which shows you things like questions that you might be able to answer, interesting group discussions, recommendations of language partners, and more. You can control what you see for your recommendations in the settings area.

We have a lot more site improvements coming. As always, please keep sending us your ideas and feedback. We do read all of your feedback, and please just be patient if your suggestion hasn’t been implemented yet. As we hear other users make the same requests, it definitely tells us what we need to focus on!

Finally, keep paying attention to the site and the blog. We have more improvements coming soon!

The italki team

Packages are bundles of sessions that are sold together at one time. We hope this makes it easier for teachers and long-term students to schedule their sessions on italki.

Teachers can offer packages for both their courses and one-on-one sessions. As always, teachers set their own prices for both individual sessions and for overall package prices.  We recommend offering a discount for students who choose to purchase your sessions in bulk. In order to start offering packages, teachers should go to edit their teaching profile.

Teachers can set packages in bundles of 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50 sessions.  All the sessions within a package must be the same length, for example, 30, 45, 60, 90, or 120 minutes.

For students, when you purchase a package, you can schedule as many session as you want (with a minimum of one).  You can reserve the same time every week with a teacher by checking the box “repeat weekly.” By purchasing the whole package at once, you can generally get a discount from the teacher, so make sure you have enough italki Credits (ITCs) in your account for the whole package.

The idea behind packages is to make it easier for long-term students and teachers to transact on italki. By prepaying for a course, and scheduling multiple lessons at once, students and teachers can spend less time on the system, and more time on learning the language.

We’re still improving the system, so if you have suggestions about packages or what other features you’d like to see on italki, please send those to us through our feedback form or via email at (feedback at italki dot com).

New Scheduling System
We have made a number of changes to the scheduling system with the goal of making it easier for students and teachers to match up.

When requesting a session, students are required to select an available time from the teacher's calendar.

Teachers now set a schedule which shows when they are available. When students try to book a session with the teacher, they must choose from those times. This helps avoid the situation where students schedule a lesson for a time when the teacher is asleep. Therefore, it is critical that teachers update their calendars with all possible available times. If a teacher has no available times, students will not be able to request a lesson with them.

In addition, students must request sessions at least 24 hours in advance. This gives teachers enough time to respond and prepare for a lesson.

Teachers will allow be able to set “vacation times”, or dates when they know they will not be able to teach classes. (We will be sending a message to your inbox with a full list of changes.)

Language Courses
We have also made some initial changes to the way Language Courses are handled. Eventually, we hope Language Courses will give teachers a way of showing off specific classes or skills that they can teach. Likewise, we hope it is a way for students to find a specific teacher or structured teaching plan that fits their goals. Notably, if a student wants help on test preparation, translation, or business vocabulary, this would be the place for students to browse.

We are still making many improvements, and we are definitely interested in hearing your suggestions about how to improve Language Courses, the scheduling system, or anything else about the website. Please feel free to send us ideas through our feedback form or via email at (feedback at italki dot com).

If you’re unsure how to use a feature on italki, simply click the image at the top of any page and it will take you straight to that Help section. The Help images look like this:

In the Help Pages, you’ll find explanations of every feature and policy on italki. For example:

help.italki.com

• FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions
• How to find a Language Partners
• How to find a Language Teacher
• How to use the marketplace
• Tips on how to get the most out of italki
• Our policies and service agreements

We often hear from new users that they have no idea where to begin on italki. Even older users don’t know the details on how the teaching marketplace works. We wanted to start pulling together the best explanations of what italki can do, and put those in a central place where everyone can get access.  If you don’t want to view the help banners anymore, you can click on “hide explanation” in the upper right corner.

If you have suggestions for additional topics or questions to be covered in the Help Pages, please contact us through our feedback form or email us at feedback (at) italki (dot) com and let us know.  We’ll keep expanding these pages so that they’ll eventually cover everything you need to know about italki.

That’s why we’re trying an experiment that we’re calling Learning Requests – http://www.italki.com/teachers/learning_request.htm (you must be logged in)

With Learning Requests, students can submit information about their:

• Background in the language
• What type of lessons they want
• Their budget
• Time availability

After a student submits a Learning Request, italki will try its best to match up teachers that would be the most capable of helping the student to achieve his or her learning goals. italki will contact those teachers. Finally, italki will return a list of suggested teachers back to the student.

Only students that have purchased italki Credits (ITC) can use this feature.

We hope that this feature will be helpful for students who need help finding a teacher. We think this feature will eventually evolve into a system where teachers can easily view the demand for their services. If you’re a teacher and would like to be on a recommended list for students, please send us an email to teacherhelp at italki dot com.

If you have suggestions about how we can help match students and teachers, please feel free to send us ideas through our feedback form or through our email at feedback at italki dot com.

Click on Language Teachers in the left-hand navigation box.

First, choose your search criteria:

Teaches: Choose the language you’re looking to study. This lists the language the teacher will teach you.

Professional Teacher / Language Tutor: Do you need a teacher with professional teaching experience, or is a language tutor more suitable for your learning? More explanation of this here.

Native Speaker: Do you wish to learn from someone who speaks that language as their mother tongue? If you’re an advanced learner of the language, this may be more important to you than for beginners. Check this to find native speaking teachers of the language you’re learning.

Free Trial Available: If you want to have a trial session with the teacher before you pay for lessons, mark this option and you will only be shown teachers who offer Free Trial.  (You must have ITC in your account to be a Free Trial.)

Price (ITC per hour): If you only want to be shown teachers who fit within your budget, you may select it here. ITC are italki’s internal currency, known as italki Credits or ITCs.  US$1 = 10ITC.

Then click Browse to search by your specified criteria.

Second, after your new personalized list has loaded, choose which order in which you want to view the matching teachers.

Ratings: Sorts from highest to lowest (none) the level of positive feedback ratings the teacher has received from other italki students.  Shown by 1-5 Gold Stars.  More details here in our FAQ.

Price: Sorts from lowest to highest price in ITC per hour.  ITC are not US$.  1 ITC equals US$0.1

Once you find a few teachers that match your criteria and interests, click on their picture or name to few their profile.  Here you can learn more about them, check their availability schedule, and book a session with them.

Learning online is very quick, easy, and affordable.  Get started today!

The “Translate this page” link is located in the upper right-hand corner. When you click on it, it will open a new window or tab.  By opening the translate page side-by-side with the original site, you can refer back to the original page to get better understanding of the context.

The translate page is broken into three sections.
1. Phrases that haven’t been translated yet
2. Phrases that have translations submitted
3. Phrases that have been locked.
If you start at the top, you can start translating by just typing in the box and hitting enter or by clicking “Submit”. Don’t worry if you see phrases that don’t seem to be on the page — those are phrases that might be useful for other users.

All the phrases that have at least one translation are listed in the second section. If you see a translation that could be improved, you can click on “vote / fix”. You should be able to see a list of submitted translations. You can vote on the submitted translations or submit a translation of your own.

One thing about crowdsourcing changes to a website is that there is a time delay before having a fully translated site. This is particularly true as we’ve made a lot of changes to the site in the past few months. As new features come online, more and more translations need to be updated. We realize that it is inconvenient to deal with a site that isn’t fully translated (or translated well), and we hope you’ll help us get the site ready in your language. We will periodically merge the changes to the main site.

Finally, since we are using English as the base language for the website, if you run into bad English on the site, please let us know through our feedback or through email (feedback at italki). We want to avoid having errors translated throughout the site.

Thanks again! We really believe that italki is a product of our community, so we want to thank you in advance for all of your help.

The italki team