Quick Pitch: Udemy is a website that enables anyone to conduct or participate in online courses.
Genius Idea: The web is a perfect platform for education, and Udemy's online alternative to the real-world academy highlights exactly why that's the case.
Udemy provides teachers and instructors with a place to create and manage their own online courses. Course creators can upload their presentations and videos, pen blog posts and pull in content from a host of other online services like YouTube, Vimeo and Slideshare.
There're also discussion boards, but the service's best feature is the Live Virtual Classroom. Here, instructors can host live class sessions with up to 10 video participants and thousands of viewers. The classroom space also includes a virtual whiteboard, chatroom and supports file-sharing. This classroom functionality helps mitigate the limitations typically associated with digital educational tools.
Udemy also includes a video presentation mashup tool that gives teachers the ability to modify presentation slides and sync them with video footage.
Students -- or anyone with a predilection for learning -- can use the site to find and subscribe to courses. Course pages are intelligently organized around class content so that students can catch up with previous lectures and participate in discussions.
From what we've seen, Udemy offers an experience that rivals the real classroom, and should prove to be a useful utility for teachers and students of all subject matters.
[img credit: uniinnsbruck]
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