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Read full storyOff2Class ESL Content Turns Two Years Old!
Off2Class ESL Content has turned two years old and our dream is closer to reality.
Many of you have been with us since Off2Class was in its testing phase, and we want to thank you for sticking around as we have grown.
It’s a great journey. We are a true online company, serving teachers and students, wherever you are. The three of us manage to work together (and separately) on three continents and in three very different time zones. When we recently had the rare opportunity of being together in Sydney, Australia, I made sure that we took advantage, to grab a group shot of us with Rupert, Carla, Felix, Mei Ling, and Maria.
Off2Class founders Serdar Cevher, James Heywood and Kris Jagasia. A rare opportunity to take a photo when the three of us were in the same location!
Did we achieve our 2016 goals?
Last year, we promised that we would focus on personalization. At the end of 2016, we released Off2Class Live Mode, allowing you and the student to interact with our lesson content. You and your students can now draw on the screen, edit the text, which makes the lesson exercises more hands-on. We also introduced a chat function and helped integrate url-based video-conferencing.
Our PRO feature has given independent teachers and businesses the possibility to brand Off2Class with their logo. We want to make you look good. And we want to make you look professional.
We’ve also released a number of tools for you to create your own beautiful ESL lesson content. In October 2016 we released the ESL PPT Lesson Template that we used to build our library. Last month we released a full ESL Lesson Plan and Teacher Notes set. Download them now and start creating!
What’s in store for this year?
We also know that that there’s more to do. Our plan this year is to allow users to upload their own content, while giving you the Off2Class tools that will make your own lessons come to life in a digital environment.
And while our Placement Test has been extremely well received, we’re about to release a version that will also allow you to test listening, reading, writing and speaking skills too. We think you are going to find it very useful to attract new students!
Our IELTS lessons have been a great addition to the Off2Class ESL Content base. More than 40 lessons take your student through the structure and format of the text, covering all question types used to test language skills. And coming up… TOEFL.
Naturally… we still struggle with a few things. A team of three is a small company. However, it’s both a strength and a weakness. It means that we can reply personally to each and every piece of feedback, though it also means the Internet runs through our veins 24 hours a day. Being small means we react quickly, improvise and take up great ideas from users, yet it also means that we sometimes stretch our resources a little too thin. We’re small, but we’re nimble and agile. And we like working with each other.
Some parting words…
Like every two-year-old, we are walking, if not running about. We have boundless energy but we still stumble here and there. Best of all, we know that Off2Class has a great future ahead of it.
We love that we have teachers who have been with us since before Day 1! We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support and feedback. You mean a lot to us.
And of course, now’s the time to ask for what you want and need for the 2017 edition of Off2Class ESL Content. We’re about to go into a planning session…
James, Kris and Serdar.
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31 Comments
Fernando says:
March 13, 2017 at 10:19 am
Congrats guys!
James Heywood (Off2Class) says:
March 14, 2017 at 3:36 am
Thanks Fernando!
Ricardo Bock says:
March 13, 2017 at 10:36 am
Hey! Congratulations on your 2nd anniversary! You guys are awesome, always ready to help and extremely efficient. Off2class has changed the way I teach. It added quality, flexibility, and practicality to my lessons.
I’m looking forward to the TOEFL content and the lesson upload tool, it’ll be fantastic! Keep up the good work!
James Heywood (Off2Class) says:
March 14, 2017 at 3:37 am
And thank you for all of your feedback Ricardo. We appreciate that you’ve always been ready to help us improve.
Best wishes,
James
Lynne says:
March 13, 2017 at 1:20 pm
Happy Birthday.
Kris Jagasia says:
March 13, 2017 at 5:45 pm
Thanks Lynne! Means a lot to us,
Kris
Abby says:
March 13, 2017 at 2:05 pm
Thank you and happy birthday! I think this is a beautifully written letter! 😀
Kris Jagasia says:
March 13, 2017 at 5:45 pm
Thanks for stopping by Abby!
David Valle says:
March 13, 2017 at 2:12 pm
Happy 2nd birthday guys! I haven’t been there with you since the beginning but it’s been a great experience so far. I’ve jumped from basic user to heavy in just a short while. My students enjoy the lessons and its helped grow my own teaching business. I’m looking forward to all the upcoming features.
Kris Jagasia says:
March 13, 2017 at 5:47 pm
Thanks David. Watching independent tutors grow their businesses is one of the fantastic perks of working here. Keep on growing.
Kris
Helen says:
March 13, 2017 at 5:00 pm
Happy Birthday! I am so impressed with your website and I am impatient in trying to build an online business. But, with your help, my dream will also become a reality. Keep going with your visionary work. You guys rock!
Kris Jagasia says:
March 13, 2017 at 5:49 pm
Fantastic Helen. Sometimes when we’re starting out we can get bogged down with all sorts of different priorities. Growth (i.e. finding students) is the single biggest detriment of success. Find students and everything else will fall into place.
Kris
Robert says:
March 13, 2017 at 6:16 pm
Blessings and congratulations on your second Year!
I am so happy we have Off2class as our ESL platform!
It is great and a great sales tool as well.
Keep up the good work and:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Kris Jagasia says:
March 13, 2017 at 6:30 pm
Thanks Robert! Great feedback and we really appreciate it. Here’s to another year!
Rupert says:
March 13, 2017 at 10:56 pm
Keep up the good work. The on-line lesson library saves me a tremendous amount of time and means I don’t need to worry about lesson planning.
James Heywood (Off2Class) says:
March 14, 2017 at 3:34 am
Thanks Rupert. It’s our goal to save you time, so that’s great to hear.
Best wishes,
James
Sergey Rachev says:
March 14, 2017 at 2:46 am
Happy 2nd birthday, Off2Class!!! I wish you lots of happiness, joy and successful professional development!
Greetings from Bulgaria!
James Heywood (Off2Class) says:
March 14, 2017 at 3:35 am
Hi Sergey,
Thank you for stopping by. You’ve been with us for a while now – and hopefully for many more years too.
Regards,
James
Janet says:
March 14, 2017 at 5:22 am
Congrats! Your small but great team has achieved important improvements within a very short time. As a past and successful start-up school owner I really appreciate your efforts. Keep on with your commendable customer oriented quality improvements and your great personal attention. This is making you outstanding in a purely profit-oriented cyberworld. Well done!
Janet
Kris Jagasia says:
March 14, 2017 at 5:20 pm
Thanks for the kind words Janet. It’s been lots of fun getting to work with you!
Kris
James Heywood (Off2Class) says:
March 14, 2017 at 5:26 pm
Hi Janet,
Thank you for taking to time to send such positive feedback. It keeps us motivated and always wanting to build a better product!
Best wishes,
James
Karl Schmack says:
March 14, 2017 at 11:41 am
Best wishes Kris for these two years!!! I wish you many years of success. Off2Class has been a great tool for our Tutor Doctor business in Costa Rica. We have been able to have a very good diagnostics with the online placement test, its a great tool for both our tutors and students and its very user friendly. Hope to see new features in the near future!!!
Kris Jagasia says:
March 14, 2017 at 5:21 pm
Thanks for the kind words Karl, it’s been a pleasure working with the Tutor Doctor teams down in San Jose!
Kate Weinman Fisher says:
March 14, 2017 at 9:25 pm
Congratulations on your two year anniversary, guys!
I had no idea that you have only been doing this for 2 years. Very impressive!
Your placement test is a great gift to those of us who TEFL. Even though I only have 2 learners working your curriculum at the moment, it is working well for them.
Thanks for all of the good energy you put into your business.
I wish you much lasting success!
Kris Jagasia says:
March 14, 2017 at 9:38 pm
Thanks for the love Kate! We’ve got very exciting upgrades to the placement test coming. Can’t wait to share them with you.
Kris
Gavin Williams says:
March 14, 2017 at 9:57 pm
Happy Birthday OFF2CLASS
Oh, WoW !!! Congrads Kris to you and the Team, you have done a fantastic Job. You guys will always get my recommendations to others, and it’s been a great pleasure working with you.
I want to share with you the beginning of my teaching career, which began only a couple of years back when I knew I was heading to China to live.
I enrolled in an online Teaching course through TESOL, a great course by the way and I think I enrolled for the 200 hours’ program. This was made up of about 8 modules, and 1 of which we were required to submit a lesson plan.
Well, talk about time consuming!! But I did notice on the chat board for the class, everyone else had so much difficulty as well with this part of the course. Needless to say, I did pass
Anyways, after arriving in China I spent a whole month preparing lesson plans! Thinking Really ???. It was during my researching for lesson material I came across you program; Off2class. That was the end of my manual lesson-plan preparation. Your program had every possible lesson required for making English learning easy. Even I learnt so much more about grammar myself! And just the other day my wife and I meet a young South African couple teaching here in Nanning, telling us how many hours they have to spend in lesson preparation!!
Well what did I do? I pulled out the Holy Grail of English teaching; ‘OFF2CLASS’ I can tell you, they could not believe what I told them about your program! Even the fact that each lesson provides a homework plan and once submitted the program even marks it off! So, the last I heard they were busy googling …so I hope you have 2 new clients.
All the best guys for the next 12 months and beyond
Kind Regards
Gavin Williams
Kris Jagasia says:
March 15, 2017 at 6:51 am
Hi Gavin!
Thanks so much for your feedback and story. It’s fascinating to hear how we’re fitting into your teaching career. I wish you all the best in your future endeavours. Kind Regards,
Kris
Pedro Julião do Nascimento says:
March 16, 2017 at 10:33 am
Hello, babies, cause, y’know, you’re 2 years old.
Well, anyway, i want to thank you guys for making my life easier. Thank you for organizing what I want to explain to my students in such a neat way.
I really can’t recall how i found you guys, but this journey has been wonderful. I have improved my teaching skills and most importantly, my students have enjoyed doing homework. What? Come again! Yeah, they actualy do, now.
And beware, some of them have, believe me, asked me for homework. Yay!
I wish you Masters of my unnierse, a long life.
God save the OFF2CLass dude.
Pedro
Hey, my whatsapp is +55 47 984067247 If anyone wants to share, let me know.
Kris Jagasia says:
March 16, 2017 at 6:28 pm
Cheers Pedro, students wanting more homework is the best compliment you could ever give us!
Kind Regards,
Kris
John L. Brewer says:
March 27, 2017 at 1:53 am
I would like to say congratulations on your success of 2 years and counting!
From the first moment I discovered Off2class I knew I had found an outstanding teaching tool. The best thing about it is that it keeps getting better and better!
I look forward to seeing what the future will bring.
Kris Jagasia says:
March 27, 2017 at 2:27 am
Hi John!
Thanks for stopping by. I believe you’ve been with us since before our testing commercial release when we were still in our testing phase. Absolutely fantastic that we’re able to keep you and your students engaged with new content and teaching tools! All the best for the next year,
Kris