On Monday eduFire launched its new Tech Channel. Topics include for example Java, PhotoShop, php, SEO and WordPress. This is their contribution to fight structural unemployment. One can say that after teaching people how to found their own business with the Business Channel, eduFire now want to serve those businesses with well trained employees. If you want to read more about this interesting topic, I suggest the article on BitchBuzz.com because I would like to focus on something else in this post.
How did this came about? Why did eduFire change from a pure language learning marketplace into a platform focusing more and more on business related topics?
The answer is very simple. It’s all about a hyperlink with four little words that changed the eduFire Business Model.
Back in 2008 eduFire started as language learning marketplace / platform similar to Myngle. You can see this in an article and interview from April 2008 on CBS2 where Jon Bischke and a French teacher explain the concept of eduFire.
As you can see in the video, in the beginning there was not even a virtual classroom or group lessons available. Just a one-to-one online meeting with a webcam and text chat. But only two months after this video Jon did an elevator pitch video for TechCrunch and there you can already see a slight change.
Teachers are empowered to teach how, what and when they teach.
How did this came about? Contrary to the other language learning platforms, eduFire enabled its users, students and teachers, to add aditional topics to the eduFire database. All with a simple question and a link.
Not listed? Add it to eduFire
This feature still exists and I think it is the number 1 reason for the success story of eduFire.
Soon Jon saw that the audience obviously was also interested in classes about politics, music, literature. In my first EDUKWEST interview I had him as guest and we talked about this evolution.
Listening to our community and being very responsive to what they want.
If you compare this to another company that is quite successful these days, Twitter, you see a similar pattern. Like Twitter eduFire does not want to “own” the platform. They want the users to play around with it. All the features we use everyday on Twitter are invented by its users. Retweet, Direct Message, Hashtag were all born in the community and were then implemented into the system. Same is true for most of the topics you can learn on eduFire. They were “invented” by the students and teachers.
The eduFire team is very close to the users. They listen, they scan and they react. I think this philosophy of openess, embracing change that comes from the community is the key factor to the growth of eduFire. Instead of guessing or assuming what may be right they let their users decide and build new products and ideas on those streams.
Hence the two recent Channels for Business and Tech are basically built on the needs of the users mixed with the personal goal of Jon Bischke to change the educational system to the better.
And we should also not forget the eduFire videos page. Koichi, the Social Media Manager at eduFire is a huge fan of the Edutainment principle. He loves the TED channel, Fora.tv and all the other educational video networks. So if you count one (first class lessons with top teachers) and one (lessons are recorded in HD) together you end up with an awesome educational video portal that is pumped with new high quality content on a regular basis.
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