Help - Teaching

School of Everything offers everyone a personalised webspace to advertise their own teaching - absolutely free.

The site provides you with your own public web page to promote what you know, and a safe private messaging system that allows potential students to contact you while protecting your personal information from online spammers.

And, having your own page on School of Everything will help push you up the Google rankings. The Googlebot crawls our site roughly every 6 weeks so your search ranking may take a while to change, but your page here should give you a quick way to get search traffic and advertise yourself online.

We hope to become the biggest community for teaching and learning in the world, and we're working all the time to grow the number of visitors to the site. So by signing up you'll have access to thousands of potential new students all the time.

Absolutely! We believe that everyone has something to teach, and everyone has something to learn. We hope that teachers will use the site to find learning, and that people who start out learning will find something they can teach. It's up to you where you want to start, but everyone is welcome.

No – some subjects have no formal qualifications and we don't make any judgements about how qualified you are to teach your subject. But to help learners make an informed choice, please provide as much information as possible about your teaching experience, educational history, achievements, qualifications and safety checks.

Of course! You can teach as many different subjects as you like from your teaching profile. It's up to you to offer whatever you like, and up to the rest of the community to seek you out and decide whether to contact you.

The trick is to write your profile clearly enough to tie it all together and give your potential students a clear picture of what you're offering. Our teaching profiles are primarily designed for professional teachers to promote their main teaching business, so it can be tricky to write a really clear profile if you teach several radically dfferent subjects or if you're not used to selling your services. Later we might be able to let people create multiple teaching profiles, but right now we think that will get mightily confusing.

For example, say if you teach maths, but you also like to do a little poker coaching. The most important thing is to make sure 'maths' and 'poker' are both included in your "Subjects I teach", so people can find you for both subjects. Then, you can use your one-liner to describe yourself as a "maths and poker teacher" or the like, so people know to click on you from the search results. Then back that up with some background to your experience with maths AND poker in the about me section. You might also want to add some "private teaching" classes for maths and poker, and add a bit more information there.

Even if you only teach one main subject, it's still a good idea to tag yourself with lots of subjects related to that so that more people can find you.

Only if you want to. We want to help professional teachers get new business and teach more of what they enjoy. But if you want to swap your skills or help people for free, that's fine too. Just select the appropriate choices in the "What are you looking for?" field to tell people what you expect back for what you're offering.

School of Everything provides a free private messaging system that allows registered users to contact one another. When you receive a message through School of Everything, it is kept in your inbox until you next log in.

Normally the system will send an automatic email to the email address you entered when you registered, informing you that someone has sent you a message (although you can turn this off on your account settings page). All you have to do is click on the link in that email to be taken straight to the message.

Once you've created a teaching profile, there's lots you can do to make sure it stands out and attracts students. Here are some tips based on what's working for the most-read teaching profiles on School of Everything.

1) List lots of subjects in the 'subjects I teach' section. Make sure they're short, obvious and separated by commas, so the computer recognises them as separate subjects. Pick ones that you think learners will tag themselves with too, so more people can find you.
2) People like to see who they're talking to - even over the internet. Last time we counted, profiles with photos got four times as many clicks as those without. So upload a photo!
3) Tell me more. On many teacher profiles there's not much information apart from name and subject taught. But if I'm looking for a teacher, I want to know a bit about what kind of person they are. Do you welcome beginners? What do you love about your subject? What experience or qualifications do you have? The more you can tell a visitor to your page, the more likely they are to get in touch.

For examples of teachers with great in-depth profiles on the site, check out Debbie Fraser, Natalie Marie and Jill McKay.

Your teaching profile is where you tell other users what you can offer and why they might want to contact you.

First, enter the subjects you teach, where you're based, and a few words about yourself. After that you'll be able to add more details on what you teach, your qualifications and experience, and any courses or classes you run.

There are four sections: What you teach, where you teach, about you, teaching services. You can come back and edit your teaching profile at any time.

When you create your profile you will see a box titled 'Upload a photo'.
1) Click on the button titled 'Browse'. A navigator window will appear showing the files on your computer's hard drive.
2) Navigate through this to find the image file you wish to upload, and double-click it. The navigator window will disappear.
3) Return to the 'Edit' page, and click on the button titled 'Upload'. The image file will appear on your learner profile.

If you're still logged in, you can check the success of your image upload by going to your profile, which should then display the image.

If it still isn't showing, check that it is in the right format (JPG, PNG or GIF), small enough (max. 640x640 pixels) and no more than 1MB in size. To find the format and dimensions of your image, right-click on the image (or CTRL+click if you're using a Mac) and then select 'Properties' or 'Get Info' from the drop-down that appears to see this information about the file.

It's also worth checking that there are no unusual characters such as *, &, %, $ or @ in the filename, as this can interact negatively with browser software and prevent your image being displayed. To rename a file, right-click on it on your computer (or CTRL+Click on a Mac) and select Rename, then change the file name.

If the file is too large, you can use a programme such as Photoshop, MS Paint or Mac Preview to edit the size, quality and dimensions of the picture, or to change the format to one that the website will accept.

If you want to upload a picture at a later date, just edit your profile and scroll down until you see the 'upload a photo' box. Then follow the instructions above.

Yes, if you like. But if you just upload one photo to your learning profile it will automatically be used for your teaching profile too unless you upload another photo.

You have two names on School of Everything: your account username (such as 'jennym', and your actual first name and last name (eg. 'Jenny Morecombe').

You can't change your account username, but the name that appears at the top of your teaching and learning profiles is editable from your learning profile:

1) Sign in and go to your learning profile.
2) Click edit and at the top of the page you will see a box for first name and last name. The names you enter here will appear as your username.
3) Enter the appropriate names, click the submit button at the bottom of the page and your learning profile name will be updated.

There's a bit of bug here though - sorry. In order to make the new name show up on your teaching profile, you'll need to visit your teaching profile, then click on 'edit' and 'submit'. Your name will automatically be updated on your teaching profile to match your learning profile.

Your username also appears on your learning profile until the first time you edit it - then it will switch to first name/last name. (I'm afraid there's no good reason for this, it's just a quirk which we hope to fix one of these days.)

First, make sure you're logged in:

1) Click the Log in link.
2) Enter your username and password.
3) If you have forgotten your password click the request new password link on the login page. Enter your email or username and you will be sent a new password. Follow the instructions to validate your password, then return to step 2.

Once you have logged in, look at the links at the top of the page. You will see one that says Profile. Click on this, it will take you to your profile. Make sure you're on the tab that says 'Teaching'. Now you just need to edit it.

1) On the right of the page you will see a button that says 'Edit your teaching profile'. Click on this.
2) This will take you to a form where you can edit your profile.
3) When you have finished editing, click 'Submit'. This will take you back to your profile.
4) If you wish to re-edit, you can click again on the 'Edit' button and re-edit as above.

If you want to change your location or the name that displays on your profile, go to your learning profile, then click 'Edit' and change your personal details as you wish. (One slight quirk (that we're working on) is that for your change to show up on your teaching profile as well, you need to 'Edit' and then 'Submit' it - no need to make changes - so that the database updates. Sorry about that.)

On your teaching profile there is space to list public classes (eg group classes in a third-party location, such as yoga in a gym) and also one to list private tuition. You can list as many of each of these as you like - but concentrate on the most important, as people don't always scroll that far down the page.

At the moment classes are listed on your teaching profile in reverse order of posting - ie as you post more classes previous entries appear lower down. Unfortunately we can't change this right now for complicated technical reasons. But we know people want to do this and we are working out how to make it possible. In the meantime, it's probably best to post your top teaching subjects last, as they'll then appear first. If you see what we mean. Sorry.

Your teaching profile lets you tag yourself with the subjects you want to teach, to help people find you. Add the subjects you want to teach by typing them into the 'subjects I teach' box on your profile, and we'll match you up with learners for that subject. Try to use short, obvious subject names like 'yoga', 'french literature', 'smiling' so you can be matched up to more people. You can also add things to this list from around the site using the 'teach this' buttons.

This varies according to subject area. But for the commonest subjects, here are some average prices according to people already using the site.

* Languages - 15-30
* Music - 10-30

School of Everything is currently designed to help people who teach independently find people who want to learn and vice versa. While it is possible to create a teaching profile for small schools such as driving schools, it is easier for individuals to create pages.

If for example you teach evening classes via a local authority, just add these to your teaching profile.

We're also currently testing a new 'Networks' service for learning associations. For more information on this contact dougald@schoolofeverything.com.

Some people have created teaching profiles for their organisations, and we're not against that in principle. But it's really important that everyone on the site is individually accountable for the services they provide, and when we get into reputation and recommendation systems individuals will have all the advantages.

In time we'll be building groups and networks functionality to help organisations advertise their services. For more information on these, e-mail dougald@schoolofeverything.com.

If you're just not happy with your teaching profile, you can re-edit it at any time.

If you want to delete your teaching profile and start it again from scratch, just click on the 'Edit' link, then click on the 'Delete' button at the bottom of the form. Then if you wish to create another teaching profile follow the links on the right-hand side to do so.

If you want to delete your whole account, a School of Everything admin will need to do this for you. Contact us if you need help with this.

Your School of Everything teaching profile is your unique public webpage and is accessible directly from the internet - meaning that there are many ways a potential student can find their way to it. There are lots of little tricks you can use to make sure your teaching profile has the best possible chance of getting found, whether via other websites or via search engines.

You'll get lots more students if you link to your page from other websites like MySpace, Facebook and social bookmarking websites like del.icio.us and Digg. Use the 'Share' widget on your teacher page to add it to these sites quickly.

You can also link to it from your blog or personal website, if you have one, or from the sites of the organisations you belong to. And of course, you can always e-mail your profile to friends and colleagues and ask them to pass it on.

As your teaching profile is in the public domain, it gets 'read' by search engines like Google. So if you want a better chance of being found when someone's searching for you, it pays to make your page easy for machines to read too.

1) List all the subjects you teach in the 'Subjects' space. Make sure they're separated by commas, so the computer recognises them as separate subjects.
2) Name your subjects again in your 'About' or 'Classes' text. This way you'll maximise your chances of getting found both through search and also by people browsing the 'Related subjects' links.
3) Make sure you include lots of words describing what you teach - for example, for a French teacher you might want to make sure your teacher page text included the words 'French', 'Language', 'teaching', 'teacher', 'A Levels', 'GCSEs', 'tutor' and so on. (If you're really dedicated, you can use Google's free keyword tool to suggest some popular words.)
4) Include all the major places you teach in the "where do you teach" field, so people searching for locations near you can find your profile. So if lots of people are searching for, say, "weaving teachers in Bristol", make sure you have "weaving" and "Bristol" mentioned in your profile. (Assuming you teach weaving in Bristol that is.)

We also work hard to make sure this website and all the profile pages get good listings on search engines, and we promote the site, and therefore your profile, through our blogging, press articles and marketing activities promoting School of Everything.

In addition to your teaching profile you also have a learning profile. You can edit it to add a photo and information about yourself as a learner, and select the subjects you want to learn by typing them into the 'I want to learn' box. You can also add things to this list from around the site using the 'I want to learn this' buttons.

It's not compulsory to have a learning profile, but it's good to show people more about who you are and what you're into when you're not teaching. And besides, everyone has something to learn...

Once you've listed the subjects you want to learn, you will receive a notification when someone new registers on School of Everything to teach this subject, or an existing user updates their teaching profile. When you open your School of Everything account you can set these to update daily, weekly, monthly or never.

Read more about notifications in the Communicating section.