Italki

[Paige]

I'm planning on having my DDs do some language practice with italki. There doesn't seem to be a way to create student accounts- I guess it's not set up like that. How do you all do it? I hate having them use my account and email (looking at Outschool here!) and would like to set them up their own accounts. Has anyone had any trouble setting up accounts for minors? Would it even be possible to use one account (mine) for two people? 

How do you set it up for your students?

[crazyforlatin]

We’ve been with them for years, but it’s always been under DD’s name, though I do all the communication and tell the teacher I’m the parent. I don’t use italki for myself though, just Dd, so I can see why having a student account would make sense if the parent is also practicing a language. Sorry no help here. May I ask which languages?

[Paige]

I don't want to take any classes myself, but I had hoped the kids could share an account (and credits) but still have reminder emails sent to their own accounts for their own lessons. I dislike being the full time schedule keeper/email forwarding person. 

We are looking at Japanese and Spanish; maybe Italian next year if my Latin student wants to bail for a modern language. 

[Farrar]

My kids have both used it and used my account. Typically what happens is you arrange to try a tutor. I always choose one whose profile says they do kids/teens. Then I tell them it’s for my ds and his age. After the trial lesson, if we’re going to continue, all the tutors we’ve used use Skype. I just ask them to use the ds’s Skype, not mine. No one has had an issue with that. The only key thing is that we both confirm the lesson on the system. That way the payment goes through, etc. and everything is kosher for iTalki.

[Farrar]

I just realized you asked about sharing the credits... It doesn’t work that way because each teacher has their own rate for time. You could make them each their own accounts too - the way I manage it might not make sense for you. But also... I think that is more like the system LanguageConvo uses... though I have less experience with them. But maybe look into that too?

[RootAnn]

If you use one main account so they pull from a central $$ pot, I don't know how reminders could go out to different emails. 

When my dd#1 used it, I think we set it up under my email, her name, and her Skype address. I only had the one kid use it, though.

I'd email them and make a suggestion about having a way to set up accounts for your minor children that would pull from the  $$ in your account but they can have their own email & contact info. From my experience (several years ago) they were very open to listening to suggestions for improvement. (DD & I were asked to sit for a Skype question session to give feedback in exchange for a substantial Amazon gift card. But this was when they were just getting started.)

She used them primarily for Spanish, but also had a regular German tutor for a bit.

[crazyforlatin]

Just to add on to what RootAnn wrote, I do know that they are super responsive via email. 
 

italki system changed (was it recent?). The student verifies which platform to meet and seems like for that lesson you can’t go back to italki platform if Skype is not working. 

[Roadrunner]

I have always used my account and had no problem.