I am a long-time user of Skype and for many years used Skype-out credit to call friends and relations back in the UK. On the Skype website one day I came across a case study for toniks.com, a UK-based company providing online language lessons using Skype. Some further searching revealed that many schools, companies and even individuals are offering language tuition over the net. However, I couldn’t find anybody offering Thai.
Owning a language school and employing around 15 Thai teachers, I saw an opportunity and knew I had all the necessary resources in place already. The difficulties, I believed, would be in two areas; 1. making it work technically, and 2. marketing the product.
With no experience or idea of how others were providing the service, I decided to find my own route. Any kind of proprietary software could be ruled out as too complicated and expensive. What I needed was some form of on-line meeting room. Searching the net turned up many good solutions, and after much testing one was settled on (no, I’m not going to tell you which one – sign up for a class.
Owning a language school and employing around 15 Thai teachers, I saw an opportunity and knew I had all the necessary resources in place already. The difficulties, I believed, would be in two areas; 1. making it work technically, and 2. marketing the product.
With no experience or idea of how others were providing the service, I decided to find my own route. Any kind of proprietary software could be ruled out as too complicated and expensive. What I needed was some form of on-line meeting room. Searching the net turned up many good solutions, and after much testing one was settled on (no, I’m not going to tell you which one – sign up for a class.
The entire system needs to be robust and reliable, so we brought about some serious changes to the operating systems we use in our school. We ditched Microsoft Windows and installed LinuxMint on all school PC’s from the manager on down. This is a free, open-source operating system based on Ubuntu which provides virus-free, bug-free, reliable use every day. Since switching we have never had a PC hang or crash!
Being an internet-based service, we knew we couldn’t rely on a single ISP (internet service provider). Internet in Thailand is too unpredictable for commercial use, so we had a second ADSL line installed and connected our 2 ISP’s through a load balancer. This clever little device takes care of managing the two lines and using them both to the fullest extent possible.
Being an internet-based service, we knew we couldn’t rely on a single ISP (internet service provider). Internet in Thailand is too unpredictable for commercial use, so we had a second ADSL line installed and connected our 2 ISP’s through a load balancer. This clever little device takes care of managing the two lines and using them both to the fullest extent possible.
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