Hello again. This is our first update since the summer, and we have been busy: you will find three changes below. But first, welcome back. Whether your term started two weeks ago or starts on Monday, we hope the first days have been kind to you.
Start the year with faces and voices
The most common first Topic in Vivipod, by a wide margin, is some version of "introduce yourself." It works because it is low stakes, it puts a face and a voice on every name in the roster before the first real assignment, and it gives you a reason to reply to each student once. A few versions we have seen work well:
- Class introductions. Name, one thing you are bringing to this course, and one thing you hope to get out of it. Sixty to ninety seconds.
- Say my name. Students record their full name the way they want it said, slowly and twice. Play it back before the first roll call, and again before graduation.
- Self-introduction in the target language. Language classes use the same prompt as a first fluency sample, so students can hear their own progress when they record it again in December.
- A weekly prompt that repeats. Pick one question from next week's discussion board, turn it into a Topic, and require one reply. That rhythm is where most of the good discussions in Vivipod live.
Ready-to-copy versions of these prompts, with recording limits and settings already chosen, are on the higher education, K-12, and language teachers pages.
Comments are on for everyone
Comments spent the summer in beta, and thank you to everyone who tried them
and told us what was missing. They are now out of beta and free on every plan,
including Free. There is nothing to request: open a Topic's settings, switch on
Enable comments for this topic, and members can reply beneath any post in
it, with @mentions and a timestamp that jumps back to the exact moment.
Each Topic keeps its own setting, so one Space can hold discussion Topics with comments on and private submission Topics with comments off. For an introduction Topic, comments are the easy way to reply to every student in one sitting. The comments and feedback tutorial walks through the panel, mentions, timestamps, and notification settings.
Introducing Vivipod Plus
Vivipod has been free for everyone since the day it launched, and it stays that way. The free plan is unchanged: no card, no time limit, no ads, and enough for a real course.
Plus is for the teacher who has outgrown it. It adds:
- recordings up to 5 minutes instead of 90 seconds, set per Topic, for presentations, demonstrations, and longer defenses
- up to 10 Spaces instead of 3, for teachers running several sections or a department
- captions and transcripts, per Topic, which we describe next
Only the account that owns the Space needs Plus. Everyone posting in your Topics gets the longer limit, everyone in the Space can watch with captions, and students never pay or see an upgrade prompt. If you cancel, you keep Plus until the end of the period you paid for, so time it for the end of term: after that, Topics return to the free limits and new videos are no longer captioned, though captions already generated keep playing.
Plus starts with a 30-day free trial. While spots last, the first 100 annual subscribers become founding supporters: 70% off for as long as they stay subscribed, early looks at what we are building, a say in what we build next, and priority support. Subscribing is also how we keep the product independent, with no ads and no selling of student data. The pricing page shows the plans and whichever offer is current, and you can subscribe from Settings → Subscription in the app.
Captions and transcripts
Every video discussion carries an accessibility question: what does a student who cannot hear the audio, or who simply follows better with text, get from a classmate's post? On Plus, captions answer it, and they arrive in time for the accommodation plans that land in your inbox during the first weeks of term.
Turn them on per Topic. Captions are a Topic setting, like moderation and comments. Switch on Enable captions for this topic and every video posted there, by you or by students, gets a CC button beside the player. The Add a Topic tutorial shows where the switch lives. Space admins can also press CC on any video in their Spaces, even in Topics where the switch is off, so you can check the captions on your own recording before turning them on for a class.
They are made when someone asks. Nothing is transcribed until a member of the Space presses CC. The first press starts generation, which takes about ten seconds for a five-minute recording, and everyone who opens the video after that gets the captions right away. Captions come out in the language spoken in the recording, not translated, and are timed to the video so a viewer can read along as it plays. Language teachers: this means a student can play back their own response and compare what they meant to say with what was recognized.
Student audio stays inside Vivipod. Speech recognition runs inside Vivipod's existing Cloudflare infrastructure. No new third-party service receives student recordings, and the captions and transcript are stored alongside the video and deleted with it. The privacy policy lists every provider, for the review your accessibility or IT office may ask for.
This week
If you do one thing, post an introduction Topic and reply to a few students in the comments. If you want longer recordings, more Spaces, or captions, start the Plus trial and switch captions on for the Topic where an accommodation plan already asks for them.
Thank you for spending part of your school year with us. Reply to support@vivipod.com with anything the release got wrong for your course, or anything you wish it had included. We read every one.
The Vivipod team