Lions and Tigers and Elephants, (&) Oh Deer!

I’m in India – Two flights, 8500 miles and twenty-two plus hours and here I am. It’s my third trip. I feel I’m a pretty seasoned India traveler. For example, I know to put mosquito repellent on before I step off the plane. It’s past midnight so the repellant is designed to keep away the malaria-carrying night-time mosquitoes vs. the mosquitoes during the day that carry dengue fever.

One can take anti-malaria medicine in case some of the night-time mosquitoes find their mark despite the repellent. There isn’t an anti-dengue medicine as far as I know. I do know something about dengue fever, though. My father was an army doctor stationed near Pearl Harbor in Hawaii during WWII and was tasked with figuring out where and how soldiers were contracting an awful hemorrhagic fever (now known as dengue). He got out a map of Oahu and charted the route of soldiers who came down with dengue. He figured out most of them waited at one of the bus stops on the island near standing water. My father surmised mosquitoes were to blame and ordered all standing water drained out from flower pots, puddles on the ground, etc. The army was able to stave off the dengue-carrying daytime mosquitoes and hence the disease.

With mosquito repellant applied, I exit the plane and my India adventure resumes.

After a week of meetings and tutor-business stuff, I had the pleasure to travel with TutorVista CEO Ganesh and his family to the mountains of Coonoor, around 300 km from Bangalore. To get there we drove through Bannerghatta National Park that has lions, tigers, monkeys, deer, elephant, and panthers.

http://www.indiantigers.com/bannerghata-national-park.html

Thirty-six hairpin turns up the mountain (each numbered and labeled), we visit a wonderful town with a temple elephant decorated trunk to tail and flower-covered float.

http://www.hindu.com/2007/12/16/stories/2007121653390300.htm

Finally we end up in Conoor. It’s a nice hill stations in the mountains at an elevation of 1,800 meters known for its tea plantations.

http://www.coonoor.com/about.htm

It’s remarkable but even in this quaint town in the mountains past the lions, tigers, elephants and monkeys we have a TutorVista tutor! He tutors students who live 8,500 miles and 300 km away from the comfort and convenience of his home. This truly is a flat world!

John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com

Safe Tutoring

Child safety is a serious matter. The news frequently reports about teachers and others in authority who violate trust and act inappropriately with the children they are supposed to shepherd. Parents rely on coaches, teachers, tutors, and others to help guide and develop their kids.

But in today’s computer and internet world, how safe is your child if he or she works with an online tutor? We all know that on-line tutoring is very convenient. Mom and dad don’t have to drive the student to a tutor’s home or a business location. Students can go home after school and log in for their on-line tutoring session and no tutor physically comes to the house. But despite its convenience, is it safe? How do we ensure students are safe and secure while doing on-line tutoring?

There are ways to ensure child safety in an on-line tutoring environment:

1. On-line tutoring means your child is not physically with the tutor. Student and tutor are separated by distances as much as half-a-world away. For a tutor in India, it could cost a year’s salary for the tutor to fly where the student is or for the student to make the trip to India. And tourist visa’s and passports are required. This physical separation is a benefit for child safety.
2. Use steadily employed tutors rather than a tutor exchange or independent contractors. Avoid situations where predators can be connected with kids online under the guise of tutoring the way some predators hang out in chat rooms. Don’t use a tutoring exchange that lets anyone off the street post an ad and connect with kids.
3. Ensure your online tutor has passed a certification course that includes child protection.
4. Verify your online tutor’s qualifications and ensure he or she has had a professional, educational and personal background check.
5. Monitor student-tutor exchanges. Forbid your child from engaging in any student-tutor communications outside a tutoring session and monitor that communication in real time or through recordings. At TutorVista, students and tutors are required to interact with one another only during tutoring sessions and using our service delivery platform. Tutors understand this policy (it’s part of our certification process) and know too that violation of this policy will result in immediate dismissal.
6. Be involved in your child’s education – in school and online

Students using online tutoring can get safe, secure and protected educational help in a way face-to-face tutoring may not even support.

John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com

Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want

Last week I attended the SIIA Ed Tech Business Forum with hundreds of education technology & services providers, funders, marketers, biz-dev people and press. In a keynote speech, Dr. Thomas Houlihan from the Institute for Breakthrough Performance described problems in education as “systems” problems that can’t be solved with a band-aid or one-dimensional change. He also invoked the attendees to take a leadership role.

In another session a panelist remarked that education products and services providers need to ask school administrators and teachers for direction – what do they want? He suggested we build what people ask for…that they know best.

Like “It takes a village to raise a child,” I believe it takes a system to teach a child. Problems with school program implementation are often systems problems. This system includes teachers, books, assessments, policy, administration – all pieces working in concert together. Changing one part of the mix almost never significantly changes the system.

So back to the panelist’s recommendation – should we defer and ask teachers and administrators what they want? Do they know best?

I don’t think so. If you look at all the money that is spent on education, the value ascribed to it, and the tremendous number of vendors who are all too happy to create the products people have asked for, we would certainly by now have the products and services the industry really need if customers could describe what they wanted.

But innovation and major system change hasn’t happened yet. Not even from listening to what administrators and teachers want. We need to be guided by their dreams and the realities of today’s classroom and school and all the components that make up that system, but then we need to be leaders and invent something -- something exciting, fresh and better than what we have been using to date…what we “really, really want.” That’s the job for true industry leaders.
John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com