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).

For Students – Give Yourself the Joy of Learning and Get a Bonus

When you buy 200 or more ITC in a single purchase during the month of December, italki will give you 10% bonus on that purchase.  This applies to each and every single purchase of 200 or more italki credits you make during the month of December.  So that means, Buy 200 ITC and you will receive a total of 220.  Buy 300 ITC and you will receive 330, and so on.  If you haven’t bought ITC yet or tried finding a teacher online, now’s the time to start! More learning, more lessons, more time with a teacher to improve your foreign language skills.

For Learners of English – Give the Joy of Learning English to a Friend

When you buy the 1-year SpeakENG multimedia course, you can give the same 1-year package to a friend for free!  The SpeakENG 1 year course gives you full access to the premier online teaching program from our Marketplace Partner Eleutian.  Also included is one 15-minute videoconference with one of Eleutian’s American certified ESL teachers. Give a friend a gift this holiday season and let him or her learn English too!  Please provide the person’s email address when purchasing this package.

For Teachers – Bring the Joy of Learning to New Students

No Commission on New Students:  For all *new* students you start teaching during the month of December, italki will waive its commission for those students. That means extra money in your pocket. That is, any students you’ve never taught before (for paid sessions) that begin lessons with you during December, there will be no commission on all of those lessons.  We highly encourage teachers to look for new students and try to get some lessons taught throughout the month of December.

These promotions are not exclusive and may be combined.  Promotions lasts from December 1, 2009 12:01AM until December 31, 2009 11:59PM China Time (GMT+8).

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!

We were definitely impressed with the potential in virtual classrooms, and we’re sure that as the technologies mature, we’ll begin to see more of these classrooms gain wider acceptance.  There are many important features which are not presently integrated or handled well by standard communication tools like Skype, such as whiteboards, direct document viewing, shared screenshot viewing, and group / class management.  One thing that is clear from the conference is that virtual classrooms are being designed with significant input from teachers.

If you’re interested in following this debate, you can follow Kirsten on twitter (@KirstenWinkler) as well as the ETCon twitter itself @ETConference.  We’re definitely looking forward to the next conference.

Kevin and the italki team

Whiteboard – twiddla.com

• Twiddla has a great whiteboard that lets you write and share ideas with multiple participants.  It is free, and incredibly easy to use.  You can start typing or drawing on it immediately, and all you need to do to share is to send someone a URL.  The whiteboard also comes with a text and audio chat, and you can also import pictures and documents .
• You can try marking up this page right here:
  

Documents – scribd.com

• We’ve been long-time fans of Scribd.  With Scribd, you can upload and share word documents, powerpoints, PDF, and other types of files with students and other italki users.  We’ve integrated Scribd into the italki Resources section, so when you upload files to italki, all your students need to view it is just a link.  This avoids clogging up everyone’s mailboxes, and is a great way to spread the word about your services.
• Note:  scribd.com has been blocked in mainland China.

Powerpoint / Slideshows – slideshare.com

• Slideshows or powerpoints can be great tools for teaching or sharing information.  Slideshare has a nice way interface for flipping through different pictures and for full screen views.  If you like to teach with powerpoints, uploading to slideshare might be a nice option to have.

Communication Tools – Skype.com

• We continue to think Skype is one of the best tools for teachers.  Skype continues to have some of the best
• Microphone and webcam.  There are numerous options for this, and we haven’t actually made — if your connection can support it, we recommend doing video chats as well.

italki resources (documents, wiki, and more.)

• italki resources are still in a very early stage, but we also want to recommend taking a look in there.  For example, there are many handouts and study guides in italki documents (this links is for learning Chinese, but you can switch the language).  Wealso  encourage to contribute to the community by uploading files or helping to improve the wiki.

These are just a few of our favorite tools that we are recommending teachers use.  If you have other suggestions for useful teaching tools that have helped you teach or learn, please leave a  comment here to let us know.  There are so many excellent free web-based tools that are being developed for teachers and students, that it is hard to keep up!

The italki Team

Through looking at our marketplace, we’ve also learned a lot about paying students. It’s not a surprise that English is the most popular language to study. Over 50% of the sessions taught have been for learning English. Given that most non-native speakers have a general desire to learn English, we think this is a sign of how much unmet demand there is for English language teachers. Interestingly, learning Chinese Mandarin is the second most popular choice, followed by learning Spanish. As Chinese Mandarin grows in importance, we believe more and more people will look online to find a teacher. In many areas around the world, Chinese teachers may not be available, and online teaching rates seem very reasonable.

We’ve also found that many students are using the Free Trial feature to find the right teacher for them. This is a great way for students to test out a couple of teachers and find the one that has the most compatible learning style. It’s also a good opportunity for teachers to get a better understanding of how the system works, and a student’s particular needs and ability level.

Overall, we think the growth in the number of students purchasing italki credits and bookings sessions with language teachers is a sign that people are getting more comfortable with the idea of learning online. This should be good news for all the internet startups in this space (Edufire, WizIQ, ForteMall, Sclipo, and Moontoast) who have a similar vision that education will eventually come from many sources.

Keep telling us what you think about the site and our Language Marketplace. And keep following the blog — we’ll keep you updated as we put up new features. The italki team