How We Start Our Private German Class (and Set Up the Tech)

A Small Start
My wife and I recently teamed up to offer private German lessons. She’s in charge of teaching, and I take care of the learning materials and the tech stuff. Good news: first impressions were nice, and we got four students right away.

Even though it’s still early, I’ve been thinking about scalability. What if more students join? How do we manage everything without chaos? That’s why I started looking into Learning Management Systems (LMS).
Why We Need an LMS
Right now, during lessons, we’re juggling between multiple tabs: Google Slides for presentations, Google Docs for exercises, plus a few other tools. It works, but it’s not ideal. Switching back and forth feels messy and distracts from the flow of teaching.

That’s when it hit me: we need a single place to contain everything. A clean, organized space where lessons, exercises, and extra materials live together. That’s why an LMS made perfect sense.
Choosing the Right LMS
I checked out a lot of options: Moodle, Mayar, Udemy, some fully open-source platforms, and WordPress-based plugins. Moodle looked powerful, but honestly, way too heavy for where we are now. We’re still figuring out if this really fits the market, so I didn’t want to spend weeks setting things up. In the end, I picked LearnPress (a WordPress plugin). Simple. Fast to set up. Easy to manage.
The Only Catch
LearnPress free version has some limits, i.e. they do not offer many kinds of student activities. But that’s okay for now. I can just embed quizzes, videos, or worksheets from other platforms using iframes. Quick and flexible.
Keeping It Simple
At this stage, the goal is to stay light and flexible. No need to overbuild. We’re focusing on delivering good lessons and real value to students first. If things go well, we can always upgrade later.