official italki blog

We’re writing to let you know we’ve been changing italki.com to make it easier for you to learn a language and make friends around the world. If you haven’t been on italki for a while, you have to see what’s changed.

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

---

sponsor

25% discount for italki users (limited time only) – Coupon Code: FOR_ITALKI_USERS

design, new version, profile

Have you ever wanted to write something and get help correcting it?
Now you can write a short post in your Notebook, and get other italki members to correct and comment on it.

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

community, corrections, feature, notebook

We just wanted to let you know that we’re planning to revise many features at italki in the coming weeks. Last year we were busy making improvements on the italki marketplace, and now we’re working on improvements on the social network. We hope that these changes will help make it easier for you (our users) to interact with your italki friends, as well as other language learners who could use your help.

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

homepage, recommendations, user

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for: Packages!

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).

site, teachers, update

Over the last few months, we’ve taken in feedback from both students and teachers about how the Language Teachers and Language Courses work. We’re now releasing a set of changes, based on your feedback, to make the system easier and more useful. In the next two blog posts we’ll tell you what you need to know about these changes.

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.

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).

site, students, teachers, update