Teachers give lessons over internet by video
A new start-up company is aiming to allow teachers to deliver grinds and other classes by video over the internet.
VidSchool.com will allow teachers to record lessons and upload them to its website, where they can be purchased by students. The company’s business model is based on commissions; it will take 20 per cent of all fees in exchange for hosting and marketing the service.
The business was founded in March this year by Paul Edwards, Sean Fee and Mohneesh Jindal. Edwards and Jindal had been working on the concept before approaching Fee, who is chief executive of the cookery video website Lookandtaste.com.
‘‘The original idea was to create all of the content internally, but that wasn’t really a stable business model. So we opened it up and are making it available to anyone who wants to put courses up online,” said Fee.
The company will screen the first lesson uploaded by any teacher to ensure that it is up to a sufficient professional standard, but after that, quality control is left to the market to decide. Students can rate individual teachers and, with payment coming on a per lesson basis, sub-par teachers can’t expect repeat business.
Fee said the company had raised almost €100,000 in seed funding to date, with the investment coming from friends and family. Once the business is up and running, the company aims to raise approximately €500,000 in an angel funding round.
Over 100 teachers have already signed up for the service; the website has over 50 video classes available in courses such as maths, guitar and chemistry.
While the main format of the lessons will be video instruction, interaction with teachers is facilitated through mini-tests attached to each video. Mini-tests are short multiplechoice tests, set by the teacher for each class.
