Once you receive word via the email that you have been approved to teach by the Glotsalot Admin team, additional tabs will appear when you login to Glotsalot that were not visible to you prior to your approval. Once these tabs are made visible, you can upload the information for classes you plan to offer students of the language(s) you’ll be teaching. To get to these recently revealed tabs and create your classes, after logging in, go to the top right of any site page where you see your Profile Name. Clicking on your name will reveal a dropdown menu. From this dropdown menu, click on either My Profile which will open your public profile, (other site members can see this profile, but not alter it), or click on My Desktop (this one is private, only you can see the contents). In either case the page that loads will have a green action button in the top-center of the page titled Edit Profile. Click on this button to open your profile for editing.
The page that appears should have the title: Update Your User Profile . Just above these words are the tabs that are now available to you. Originally there were only two: User Profile, and Teacher Profile . Now, however, what should be different are that two additional tabs should be available to you: Lesson Setup and Teaching Availability . It should look like this:
The first two you have already completed. Now click on the third tab, Lesson Setup . When you click on Lesson Setup Another, new tab list with three more tabs will appear just below the first tab list, like this:
Professional Lessons
Start with the Professional Lessons Tab, which should already be highlighted, with the title color black instead of blue like the others. This is where you will add the class information for each of the classes you wish to advertise as available to prospective language learners around the world. When you are on the tab titled Professional Lessons , you should see a block instructional title that says; Add or update classes you will offer Below this title are a number of data boxes to complete.
Language To the extreme left, the first is a language dropdown menu box that says “Select Language.” Choose the first language you plan to teach. This list comes from your profile, and only lists those languages where you have reported yourself as being fluent. If the language you plan to teach is not listed, go back to your profile and add it there first, then come back to add the language as one you plan to teach.
Class Title Next list your Lesson Title, or what you plan to call the lesson. The title could be as dry as “ Basic English ,” or as Specific as “ English Vocabulary for Travel Agents.” It’s your class, give it the name you think will attract the type of students you are looking for. If you don’t feel like being creative, take a look at what other teachers have named their lessons, and choose something similar. The whole idea is to name your class something that will at once describe the class , and attract students.
Description In the next block to the right of the Lesson Title block, is where you describe your lesson. Write a brief description of what a language learner can expect from this particular class. Is it for anyone, or for a level in particular, such as: beginners, intermediates, or (already) fluent speakers? Will there be a certain text or other material referenced during the class? Is there specific subject matter and vocabulary targeted during the class, like “Business,” “Travel,” or “Test Prep.” Most importantly, what can the learner expect to get out of this class over time?
If your teaching method is to simply converse for 60 minutes about whatever comes up, that’s just fine as well. Many language experts argue that this in fact is the best method available Today. You could describe such a class as “A relaxed, informal conversation around a topic of interest chosen by the student.” Keep in mind that for a language student, this is scary stuff. You don’t want to scare any prospective learners away, so don’t describe your lesson in terms that might sound very difficult or over-demanding.
Time and Rates In the last block to the right is where you will list the length of each class as well as the amount you plan to charge for each class. In the Time and Rates Block, Click on “ Options. ” A small block window will appear. The Lesson Title should be listed at the top left of the block to indicate which class you are filling in the options for. Choose the first class length you will offer. The choices are 30, 45, or 60 minutes. Then list the number of classes (just pick “1 classes” here) To the right of that, in the last column where it says “Rate,” list the total charge for that particular class. If the class is 30 minutes, and the cost for the class is $10.00, then put “$10.00.” When your satisfied with the entry, click on the blue disk icon to save the information for that class. If you want to add another class, or another class length to the same class like this one, click on the red plus icon to add another class. Now just follow the same directions to add your next class, or another time and rate for the same class. Once you have entered the class name, information, time, and rate for each class you plan to offer, save all of the information by clicking on the “Update” button and then close the block by clicking on the “Close” button.
Trial Classes
Now that you have completed the professional lessons portion, you can move on to the tab just to the right of it at the top of the screen titled “ Trial Classes ” Trial classes give a new student the opportunity to try you, the teacher out in an inexpensive manner to see if they feel you provide the right fit for their learning objectives. Toward that end, the charge for a trial class is usually cheaper than the rest of your classes, and has a maximum length of 30 minutes. There are no mandatory classes, so it is not necessary to offer a Trial Class. If you are not interested in offering a Trial Class, just leave the Trial Class section empty and no Trial Class listing will show in your profile. If you change your mind later you can always go back and add or edit any of these classes.
TutorNow
The last class type to set up if you want to offer it is TutorNow. As the title suggests, this class provides real time connection between the learner and the teacher without prior notice. When the teacher has available time, they turn on their red TutorNow indicator button, which makes them show up in any TutorNow teacher/tutor search made by a student for their language. The lesson length for all TutorNow sessions is 30 minutes, and the description is general tutoring, so you only need to determine which language(s) you will offer TutorNow in, and what the cost will be for one TutorNow, 30 minute class in the language in question.
Set Up Your Availability Calendar
Your Availability Calendar is a public calendar that allows prospective students to see when you are available to teach, as well as when you are busy teaching others, or perhaps taking a class yourself, or just plain not available. If the person viewing your calendar is in another time zone, or perhaps on the other side of the world, the system automatically converts so that they see your availability converted into their time zone. For example, if a teacher in New York (UTC-4) lists in their Availability Calendar that they are available at 9AM New York Time, a student in Shanghai, China (UTC+8) will see that same availability on the student’s calendar listed as 9PM Shanghai Time. This way neither party has to do any math when it comes time to schedule a lesson.
Setting your Availability Calendar is easy. First you need to get to the Availability Calendar. If you have just finished setting up classes, then the easiest way is to just click on the green action button at the bottom of the page that says “ Continue to Teacher Availability. ” Later on when you want to access and adjust this calendar, there are two ways: from either My Profile or My Desktop, you will see a green button that says “ Update Profile ” Clicking on this will bring up a page with some familiar tabs: Learner Profile, Teaching Profile, Lesson Setup, and:
Teaching Availability Clicking on this tab will bring up the full calendar for the Teacher, allowing them to see and alter the current availability they have chosen along with any future classes they have coming, either as a teacher or a learner. At the top and center of this page is the TutorNow Availability Button. Clicking on this button will list your name as an available Teacher for immediate TutorNow lessons. If a student looks for a TutorNow teacher of a language you offer, your profile will come up in the student’s search results until you click on the button again to change it from on (Red) to off (Grey).
Focusing on the Calendar, at the top and in the middle, you can read which date span is displayed below. You can view your calendar of availability and upcoming lessons in the following formats: Day, Week, Month, or list. The default format and the most useful is the standard full month format. You can change the format from Monthly to Day, Week, or List just by clicking on the blue button of the same name to the upper right of the calendar. The following description and instructions are based on the Monthly view.
You will notice that this is a forward looking calendar, you can make no adjustments to the past. Past dates are listed in white. Beginning with Today’s date, you will see a green button with a white plus sign that says “” +Add Time ” clicking on this will allow you to choose an availability window for this day by choosing a start time and an end time. The Availability Window is the time during the day when you are available to teach classes. For example, some people are only available for a four hour block of time in the Evenings, from Monday through Friday. Others may be available every day, but only during their nighttime. You can duplicate the time window you choose for other future days by choosing “Everyday,” “Weekend Days,” or “Weekdays.”
In the +Add Time block, pick a start time, and end time. Then pick if it will be for one day, week days, weekend days, or everyday (all seven days of the week). Time spans that you add are limited to one month at a time. If you want to add availability in the following months, just click forward to the time period in question and add your availability there. The end result will be a slate blue block with white letters listing the start and end time of when you are available on that given day. If there is more than one block of time when you are available, there will be more than one block in the date window, one for each span of time.
When a prospective student wants to take a lesson from you, this is the place they will look to see when you are available. Add as much availability as you are comfortable with, keeping in mind that people from all over the world run on vastly different schedules. There may be a great need for a language you teach in the late evening hours, when Asians are off work for the night. Or there maybe a subset of students that only have time for classes on the weekend.
You may see several colors on your full calendar. Purple means you are the teacher and grey means you are the student during the lesson in question. Today’s date is shown in light blue, and on today’s date you can’t preschedule any classes. Classes need to be scheduled at least 12 hours in advance unless they are TutorNow. The other cool thing about your full calendar, is that you are able to click on a lesson listed in the calendar, and it will open that lesson’s full detail page, where you can review the upcoming lesson, make comments about a recent lesson, or complete the lesson if it has not yet been completed.
If you want to take time available off of your Availability Calendar, that’s easy, just use the button at the upper right, titled “Delete Date Span” this one is what is used to remove availability from your calendar. When you click on this button, a self-explanatory box will pop up. In this box put the date range you want to erase. Then click on delete. One more message will pop asking if you are sure you want to do this, click on yes, and the availability will be deleted.