Issue 16

Tuesday Edition

David Skaife
April 16, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

⭐️⭐️In this issue⭐️⭐️

Koala Go Whiteboard: hidden image library?
Wordwall games
Seeking content for Dunk The Teacher!!
Editorial: Preply Pros and Cons

Facebook

😑📘Koala Teachers Family recap

WeChat group for those with students in China

Poll to decide what topics will be in future webinars

Link to a webinar about teaching kids with dyslexia in the Playground, link in the comments.

Koala Go

⬜️🛹Koala Go Whiteboard: hidden image library?

The easiest images to use on the Whiteboard, your students can also use them!

Click the see the presentation

Wordwall

👾🧩Wordwall games

A new student asked me specifically for practice with phrasal verbs, so I spent a little time creating this. For those that know how I operate, I naturally had an AI do most of the work😎. This time it was Claude.

That prompt produced this table,

I pasted that into a Wordwall quiz template, edited a couple sentences, deleted some, and I was done. The student really appreciated it, and I am sending it to all my other students as well. Time well spent.

Click to play

Playground

💧👩🏻‍🏫Seeking content for Dunk The Teacher!!

Do you like the concept behind Dunk The Teacher but it doesn’t have the right content for you? Send me an email about it.

My original plan was to offer many different versions with the content that teachers like yourself wanted (each version at $3), but since I cannot read minds I need you to tell me what you need.😆

Editorial

✍️🃏Preply: Pros and Cons

Some Pros and Cons about teaching on Preply:

Pros:

Set my own schedule.
Set my own price.
Easy to set more time off.
Relatively easy to change your profile, with approval.
Preply calendar links with my other calendars.
Preply mobile app notifies me of activity on my profile.
Make my own lessons.
Free Educational webinars.
Students from all time zones.
Can use Koala Go for regular classes.

Cons:

Students pay for Demo classes.
100% commission on Demo classes.
Commission percentage high to start.
Make my own lessons.
Cannot use Koala Go for Demo classes.
Strict rules.
Over 27000 English teachers.
Race to the bottom pricing.

I realize that make my own lessons is in both columns, and that’s the way I feel about it. I get to make the lessons the way I like, but I do have to actually make them, so it takes a bit of time. I’m still not completely caught up with lesson building.

So far for me, Preply has been a good experience, I am starting to get a few new students at my new rate. I’m not going to get rich at these rates but I am working and learning and even earning. The students have been great, fun to get to know and they have been enjoying the classes.

Yesterday I decided to cash out the amount I had earned and it was pretty smooth. I needed to update the info in my old Wise account and then the transfer happened overnight.

With the way this industry is, the horror stories I have heard, my own experiences and just common sense, I’m trying not to put all my eggs in one basket by seeking other ways to earn online.

Submissions

🙋🏽‍♂️🤷🏻‍♀️How do I submit my Playground to be featured in Koala Bites?

If you have a Playground you would like to have in this newsletter, or for that matter, anything the readers might find useful. Just click that button that says “Submissions”. That will open an email for you to describe what you would like to submit.

I like to schedule a time where I can come to your classroom and tour the Playground. Then I will do a short write-up. There is no cost for this.