you’ll end up someplace else.” ― Yogi Berra
Lesson Objectives
1. Review the main sections of the italki page.
2. Explore the main menu.
3. Explore the upper right administrative menu.
4. Confirm you installed Skype.
Introduction
Today we are going to do an overview of the italki dashboard page, which is the main page where you can start anything on italki.
We’ll take a look at the main fuschia / pink menu, the upper right administrative menu as well as the options in the body of the dashboard page and then the footer.
There aren’t a lot of actions for you to take today. You should just understand each option so you know where to find it in the future and are familiar with the italki terms throughout the website.
Actions
1. Review the main sections of the italki page.
This is a quick section. All you want to do here is to identify the main sections of the italki page and where to find the important items.
A. The first section is the MAIN MENU:
B. The second section of the italki dashboard is the ADMINISTRATIVE MENU on the upper right of your screen:
C. After that comes the italki MAIN BODY which is everything below the fuschia menu scrolling down to the footer.
The main body of the italki dashboard is mostly a series of shortcuts for moving around the website. Most of these options are found in the two menus described above. Once you are familiar with italki, you will recognize many of these options and can use them instead of the menus, however, for the moment, let’s stick with the menus.
D. Finally, at the bottom is the FOOTER, which offers you more shortcuts on learning a specific language (LEARN A LANGUAGE), moving around the italki site (BROWSE) or finding more help and information about italki (GET HELP):
These are the four main sections on the italki website.
2. Explore the MAIN MENU.
Let’s head back to the MAIN MENU for a moment:
Here you can find the HOME option which allows you to head back to the home page at any time.
Then the next 3 options are related to finding paid teachers (we cover these three in more detail in Lesson 5): PROFESSIONAL LESSONS, INFORMAL TUTORING and INSTANT TUTORING. These options are one of the core functions of italki, namely to connect you with qualified professionals who can help you learn Spanish.
The ARTICLES option is the blog for italki where people write articles about language learning. The articles about Spanish are available here.
Finally, you have the COMMUNITY option, which we cover in detail in Lesson 3. This is where you will meet and interact with other language learners around the world.
3. Explore the upper right ADMINISTRATIVE MENU.
The next section of the italki dashboard is the upper right ADMINISTRATIVE MENU:
A. Going from left to right, the first option is a Search Box. option to find other people. If you know a friend is on italki you can search for them here. You may also just ask the person to send you their user name or italki URL.
B. The next option is Post represented by the box with the pencil here:
This icon gives you three different options to write and post your thoughts to italki. All three of these options also exist under the main menu COMMUNITY (covered in detail tomorrow), so the options here are just a shortcut.
C. The next option in the admin menu is the box with the person. It is called Sessions and includes 4 options:
These are also shortcut buttons and all these options are related to managing and signing up for paid classes with teachers, discussed in a coming lesson.
D. Following that is the Friends option and is represented by an icon of a person:
This option is where you can look at the lists of your friends, followers or teachers, and reach out to any person.
E. The envelope icon is where you can create and respond to any messages sent to you within italki. Messages in italki are just your private e-mails with other people.
F. After the envelope is the bell icon which is your notifications. If you have any responses to your posts, comments or other interactions on italki, they will appear here.
G. The next-to-last icon is two stacks of coins called Finance and is where you manage your account balance you use to pay teachers for your classes:
H. Finally, on the far right, is the area where you manage your profile and account. If you have uploaded a photo for your biography, it appears here, as do a couple options related to your profile and settings:
I suggest you fill out your full profile as it is a great tool to meet language partners. However, at a minimum I suggest you fill out the Quick User Introduction, your Local Time and the Languages you know and learn. These three items will help improve your italki experience significantly.
4. Confirm you installed Skype
This one should be easy, just make sure Skype is installed and working. If not, here is the video mentioned in the previous lesson on how to install Skype:
CONTINUE TO THE NEXT START SPANISH TODAY LESSON »