Technology blog The Next Web launched something called the TNW Academy last year, with the goal of offering online classes from leading Web professionals at reasonable prices. Being Web-based, the TNW Academy could of course help educate anyone, regardless of location, with the help of a number of top tech professionals, including: Ross Crooks, co-founder and COO of Column Five Media; John Saddington, co-founder of 8bit and the creator of Pressgram; and Clay Hebert, creator of KickstarterHacks.
Now, TNW Academy is getting an upgrade true to its spirit that will enable it to reach an even broader audience. Specifically, the online education service has implemented a new, custom-built webinar service created and powered by LiveNinja.
One of the major aspects of TNW Academy's new webinar platform is that is relies on WebRTC, making it entirely browser based, eliminating the need for any plug-ins or additional software. Considering WebRTC is slowly making its way to mobile devices — it now works in the latest Chrome beta for Android — this means that TNW Academy may soon be able to provide a mobile, browser-base webinar experience as well.
That aside, LiveNinja's webinar service offers an experience "unlike anything you've seen in online learning," according to The Next Web. Indeed, the TNW Academy now offers live, streaming video from instructors, in addition to seamless recorded video playback and presentation sharing in the same window.
Meanwhile, users are able to move elements of an Academy class as they see fit, while an improved backend helps make the payment, confirmation and invitation process much smoother. Best of all, with this update, TNW Academy classes are no longer limited to 100 attendees.
"We are incredibly proud to partner with a world class online publication like The Next Web," said Will Weinraub, CEO and co-founder of LiveNinja, in a statement. "TNW Academy is pushing forward on its mission to democratize education and connect people to world class experts throughout the world, and we at LiveNinja could not be more aligned with that ethos. We are extremely excited to be partnering up with them to help achieve those goals."
Edited by
Alisen Downey
