Classnika: New App for Piano Teachers to Conduct Online Face-to-Face Lessons

[classnika]

Classnika, unlike general purpose video conferencing tools, is designed for remote learning and optimised for music. In particular:
(a) It provides the ability to link multiple views of the teacher's studio and the student's workspace using everyday devices (tablets and/or phones).
(b) It gives the teacher full control of the virtual class environment mimicking an in-person set up.
(c) Classnika's sound quality is optimised for music (unlike general purpose tools that are optimised for voice).
(d) It is designed to help you schedule, manage, and run your online classes all in the same place.
(e) It has an awards and point system to encourage younger children

Please see www.classnika.com for more information and examples of setting up your studio.

Our mission is to make remote learning more efficient and as effective as in-person lessons. If you share a similar view or would like to enhance the teaching experience online, download Classnika from Apple Store or Google Play.

For a limited time we are offering a 15-minute face-to-face training (using Classnika of course!) to teachers. If you are interested do the following

1. Install Classnika from Apple Store or Google Play on a tablet or phone (preferably a tablet).
2. Follow the instructions in the app to sign up with your preferred email as a teacher.
3. Suggest at least three time slots for your Classnika briefing and include the email you used to sign up by sending an email to martin@classnika.com
4. We will confirm the appointment.
5. Your appointment will appear in Classnika. Use Classnika at the scheduled time to join the briefing session.

[keypeg]

This appears to be for managing groups, i.e. classrooms, and not individual one-on-one lessons.  Is this correct?

[classnika]

It does both. You create a course and then schedule ad-hoc or regular classes within the course. You add students to your course (use the email address they have used to sign up with classnika).

For one-to-one classes, add only one student. For group classes you can add as many students you want. The class will appear in student's Classnika schedule and the student can join the class after you have started the class at the scheduled time.

A note about group classes: the quality will depend on your Internet bandwidth and those of the students. We recommend that you keep the enabled views to no more than 8 cameras at the same time (including those of the students). So if you are running a group Piano class and everyone is using two cameras (say one to show the face, and one to show the fingers from the top), then you should limit your class to 3 students (6 views) and two views for yourself. If you need more students in a class, when you add them select them as 'viewer only'. This will disable their video feed by default, but they can see you and other students that are enabled.

Classnika has many features to help manage a group class. We recommend that you start group classes in 'silent mode'. In 'silent mode', students cannot talk to each other. They need to 'raise hand' to talk to you. And when you need everyone to see them and hear them you put them 'on stage'. All students can hear you and see you at all times.

[classnika]

Here is more information on Classnika's set up. We are creating a series of videos and here are some to start with. We welcome feedback.

Piano Lessons with Classnika:

First Time Registration

Courses and Classes

[keypeg]

Man, this looks like a slick commercial! The "low latency, high frequency sampling, and high bitrate compression" certainly sounds scientific and all. Can anyone with expertise in this area tell us what they think about this in terms of music?  Also, how does this compare with Zoom and similar systems?