Posted September 29th, 2008 by tetyana Categories:Team, Technology
Last Friday we celebrated the farewell of Andres, with tons of warm words for his contribution to Myngle, symbolic gifts and later drinks on the bank of Amstel river.
It’s sad to see Andres leaving, as he really clicked well with the Myngle team and our community in all corners of the world. It was a terrific one year of myngling together and enjoying the unstoppable stream of jokes and great mood shining from Andres!
We will miss you a lot! And when Marina gets to writing the book ‘The Perfect School’, you’ll definitely be there! We can start negotiating the title of the chapter already now
Good luck in your further pursuits and am sure you will remain a Myngler in your heart!
All the best,
Your Myngle team
P.S. Don’t forget to make use of your life-long Myngle coupon for lessons!
Posted September 24th, 2008 by tetyana Categories:Team
Hello!
Yesterday Mynglers had lots of fun in the Amsterdam airport, meeting Danilo and his wife Lidia arriving from Brazil to the Netherlands! Apart from having our branded presence with a huge Myngle parrot poster, it was a joyful evening for all of us as we’ve been waiting for this for quite a few months!
(Marina, Elisa, Egbert, Andres and Myngle parrot above)
Danilo started working with Marina from the very early days of Myngle (even before THE idea got the name of Myngle.com), almost two years ago. All this time he was working on distance from the lovely Fortaleza taking care of the Education department in Myngle. Now he is happy to arrive to Holland, although the local weather could be slightly better than in Brazil
Posted September 22nd, 2008 by egbert Categories:Uncategorized
Hi,
Ok, so you have a great profile on Myngle, you have your courses and lessons all shipshape in order, your calendar is up-to-date, and you are all ready to get bookings. All what we need now is students finding your profile. Yes, not only Myngle, but they have to find YOUR PROFILE. So what are the best and easiest (free) tricks to do that?
Of course Myngle’s marketing department attracks students by Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Paid search (i.e. we pay search engines to display Myngle advertisements) and Social media Optimization (SMO). If you come back soon you will see a great feature being introduced for SEO.
Next to what Myngle can do, the quality of your lessons will enhance word of mouth and bring new students to you as well. So, a great product and quality teaching are also drivers of traffic.
Laoshijeff is a new teacher on Myngle but immediately making the max of internet possibilities, making use of the free Myngle banners as well. It is easy to do but very effective and targeted.
You can do this too if you want, just decide to do it.
a few days ago I was reading an interesting article about internet and broadband penetration and it appears that Myngle’s home country, Holland, is N.3 worldwide in quality of broadband penetration after Japan and Sweden!
I already knew that Holland had a very good infrastructure, with the Amsterdam Internet Exchange - AMS-IX, which has the highest volume of peering parties for a single Exchange in the world (over 290 connected parties coming from all around the world).
But I did not know that Holland was also in the top 3 for the best quality broadband internet. This is the result of a research done by the universities of Oxford en Oviedo. This research took into consideration not only the broadband penetration but also the speed of the connection and its quality.
To calculate the speed of the broadband, the research used the website Speedtest.net.
In total were conducted 8 Million tests!
The top 10 Countries with the best quality broadband internet are:
1. Japan
2. Sweden
3. Holland
4. Letland
5. Korea
6. Zwitzerland
7. Litouwen
8. Denmark
9. Germany
10. Slovenie
I hate typing url’s, and I can imagine you do too. As of today we have simplified the url of your profile. Until now, if you wanted to communicate the url of your profile on a blog or forum, this took a lot of space. As of today, we have made it easy for you. From now on it is just : http://www.myngle.com/users/yourusername
Not only does this make it simpler for you to remember and communicate your Myngle profile, it also increases your findability on search engines. So, try it out and spread your profile!
2. New teacher registration
Creating a course is not as difficult as it was in the past.
For newly registered users, selecting which language you will be teaching and the level will automatically create a basic course with a lesson, that you can still modify in the future, changing the name, adding lessons and material, etc.
For old users, you just need to click on “my profile”, then on “change my profile”, and you will see the languages you will be teaching. Just select the level in the checkbox to have a course created (if you already have a course on that level, it is better to leave it empty so that you will not create too many courses on your profile, or else students will be confused on what to book!). This is how it looks like:
Posted September 15th, 2008 by elisa Categories:Uncategorized
Hello!
Today our famous teacher Hamlet is in the spotlight: he is already a celebrity in Myngle ;-), let’s see if he confesses something we don’t know yet…
“Hello mynglers! (we do not just teach languages, we invent words as well ;-)),
it seems to be my turn on this page!!! I want to celebrate my 100th lesson with you all, and I also want to spend a few words about the special team who made a dream come true. This is not just a web site, this is a community where some people with a lot of dedication are doing a wonderful job. We all are part of this community. Mynglers from Amsterdam: you are great! Every time I have a problem you find the solution, grazie mille ragazzi!
I started teaching a few years ago, and I could have never imagined that one day I would have lessons with students from all over the world… I feel connected to the world, and I think this is the true spirit of every myngler. I love teaching and I love this job!
I graduated in Naples, where I live, but my career as a teacher started in England, in the beautiful Lake District. If you have been there I am sure you will agree with me that it’s a wonderful place. I lived on a small island, Walney Island. When I had to go to the school on my first day I got out of my house, crossed the road, and…got lost! And the school was just opposite my house… Since then I seem to have found the right way: after teaching Italian in primary and secondary schools, I left England and got back to Italy because I wanted to become a qualified teacher.
Two years course at the postgraduate school and I got my certification, so I started to teach Spanish in secondary schools. Now I am very happy of teaching in Myngle, I arrived second at the Myngle Teacher Contest, congratulations Livent, you did a terrific job! Agneta, I hope we will be luckier next time…
Now I have another goal: I want to have 1000 lessons in Myngle!!!
Myngle is finally releasing its new virtual classroom environment! We’ve listened to the community requests to add a whiteboard, a faster and smoother slide sharing process, and all of that (plus more!) are present in this new build. Let’s go through the details of our new feature:
Minimum requirements:
Windows, MacOS, or Linux!
Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari.
Adobe Flash Player 9.
So, let me present to you the parts and features of the new virtual classroom:
1) Main collaboration space: this area will display to everyone in the classroom the content the teacher chooses to share (whiteboard, slides, or desktop view).
2) Sharing control options: with 1-click the teacher will have the option to
share a whiteboard (to write or draw with the students),
share a PPT or PDF file that is uploaded in the teacher’s Myngle profile,
or, share the teacher’s desktop view, so anything you open on your computer will be visible for students as well to see (this function is Windows-only with Firefox or Internet Explorer).
Please note, all of the teacher’s material will be displayed in this window. So, you may switch to a different material in the middle of the lesson if needed.
You can click on the “Expand” button to read the full title of your lesson material inside the virtual classroom.
3) Participants: you’ll see here those present inside the virtual classroom session. So, now it is very easy to see when the student arrives to the lesson. By clicking on the student’s username here, you’ll also be able to allow the student to share his/her video.
4) Skype buttons: 1-click buttons to contact your students on Skype.
5) Video windows: this area will display the video feed of students and teachers (if chosen to share video). If you hover your mouse over the video you can see some extra control options.
6) Chat box: use text chat inside your virtual classroom!
7) More options: on the top-right corner of your window you’ll see a session timer, and when your lesson is finished the “End Meeting” link.
*Whiteboard: teachers and students will have various tools to work collaboratively inside this complete whiteboard, such as: a pencil tool for drawing, write text, stamp tool, draw lines, squares, circles, and triangles. These annotation tools will also be available when you’re sharing slides!
Testing your new virtual classroom: teachers can test their virtual classroom environment at any time by doing the following:
Click on the title of any lesson inside that course;
Click on “Test Enter Classroom”.
We strongly encourage you to test everything and get familiarized with the new tools!
Here is a screencast video tour of the new whiteboard as well for you to see everything in action:
Until Monday, September 15th, you’ll only see the new virtual classroom on the “Test Enter Classroom” feature so you’ll have time to get used to everything before your first live lesson.
Posted September 11th, 2008 by egbert Categories:Uncategorized
Hi all,
We are proud to tell you that your platform Myngle is nominated for the Accenture Innovation Awards 2008. Out of 200 companies who participated in the contest, Myngle is one of the 5 companies nominated. Even better, Myngle is asked to present the company during the award ceremony in October.
Accenture is now organizing the Innovation Awards for the second time. Next to the Media and Entertainment industry, the Benelux Communication industry will now also be invited to participate.
The winning concept has the privilege to name itself the ‘best’ innovative concept in the Benelux M&C industry for one year. Besides that, various PR activities will be undertaken to enhance the brand awareness of the concept.
By organizing the Innovation Awards 2008, Accenture wants to give companies in the Media and Communication industry the recognition they deserve. Besides recognition, Accenture also wants to create awareness for the innovative nature of companies in this sector. In the subsequent section you can find the research framework and criteria used to evaluate the concepts.
But…….next to the award we can also win a public price, for which we we need your vote. Thank you for voting for Myngle here.
UPDATE: Since voting is in dutch here’s what you need to know:
Uw naam= Your name
Verzenden= Send
Just opt out for the two tickboxes, they ask if you want to keep receiving information.
Many times teachers and their stories are in the spotlight on Myngle, so this time we asked one of the students of our summer and back to school promotions to tell us his experience. Is Micros learning well, what progress has he made in the last month? Find it out here
“When I first heard about Myngle’s summer immersion promotion, I really liked the idea of having dozens of private lessons for such a low price. Especially when I realized that it would be great for MY Italian, too! So I quickly registered and found an enthousiastic teacher from Napoli, Hamlet.
Ever since then we have been doing a 30 minute lesson every morning before I go to work. Since Italian is now the first language I speak after waking up, the new words and grammar keep repeating in my head
the rest of the day. I am surprised how much my Italian has improved with just this little effort of getting up a bit earlier! Besides, with 30-minutes lessons I never get too tired, I really feel they are much more effective than a longer one, and fun at the same time.
What is even nicer is that now I have a friend in Napoli, who not only teaches me grammar, expressions and pronunciation, but also talks about Italian cinema, music and culture. ‘La dolce vita,’ the music from Lucio Battisti, I can even sing some Italian songs now ;-). As soon as I knew there was a promotion for the month of September, too, I was happy that I could continue our lessons on a daily basis. Three colleagues of mine have also started to learn foreing languages through Myngle.
I’m really looking forward to my next trip to Italy, I think my Italian friends are going to be amazed!”
Hello Mynglers!
