I recently presented at the Education Industry Investment Forum in Phoenix on the challenges and opportunities of online tutoring. An audience member asked if online tutoring is as effective as face-to-face tutoring. Jim Hermens, president of Educate Online (formerly eSylvan/Sylvan Online), said that Educate had determine that online tutoring was as effective as face-to-face as measured by post- vs. pre-test gains on standardized tests. I can vouch for that as I conducted the three year effectiveness study 1999-2002 at Sylvan Learning Centers (now Educate) which looked at the gains of over 500,000 students who took Sylvan center-based (face-to-face) tutoring in reading and math vs. online tutoring.
The good news is that online tutoring is as effective as face-to-face and the better news is that online tutoring is more convenient, flexible and affordable than face-to-face tutoring. It’s not surprising that online tutoring should be equally as effective when both face-to-face and online tutoring are conducted using the same instructional model.
Our goal now is to push the online environment further to go beyond what was possible in a face-to-face world. Rather than be tethered to books, worksheets and static problems, online tutoring makes it possible for students to use engaging electronic/eLearning tools such as simulations, animations, videos and virtual experiments. Soon we hope to demonstrate conclusively that online tutoring with its rich resources and tools is more effective than face-to-face tutoring.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Fix the Blame or Fix the Problem?
Elissa Gootmany in her NY Times article Passing Eighth Grade Gets a Little Harder describes how the Bloomberg administration won approval for a new policy that will not permit eighth graders to move to the next grade if they don’t have minimum basic skills in math and English. Parents were opposed to this new policy.
Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein defended the policy – “In the end, passing kids through the system without making sure they’re ready for the next grade level is not a formula for success,” he said. “Our job is not to move a kid out of middle school; our job is to move a kid from middle school to high school, prepared for high school.”
Four years ago the Mayor announced tougher new promotion criteria for the third grade to end social promotion (moving a child from grade to grade with his or her peers regardless of their mastery of the current grade’s material or readiness for the next). That and subsequent policies for fifth and seventh graders resulted in fewer students being held back than before. Some students took and passed summer school.
Opponents of tougher policies claim that tougher hold-back policies is can frustrate and embarrass students so they more likely to drop out. Some parents believe this might be especially true for eighth graders who are not allowed to advance to high school. Others suggest that some students need the extra year to master the appropriate material.
We’re all into blame these days, aren’t we? The kids don’t know their stuff so who should we blame…the teachers? The administrators? How about we fix the problem and not the blame. Educators believe all kids can learn. What this policy rightfully proposes is that it can take some students longer to learn things than other students and they should be given that chance before moving on to the next grade where they are unprepared and start off the year behind and frustrated.
Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com
Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein defended the policy – “In the end, passing kids through the system without making sure they’re ready for the next grade level is not a formula for success,” he said. “Our job is not to move a kid out of middle school; our job is to move a kid from middle school to high school, prepared for high school.”
Four years ago the Mayor announced tougher new promotion criteria for the third grade to end social promotion (moving a child from grade to grade with his or her peers regardless of their mastery of the current grade’s material or readiness for the next). That and subsequent policies for fifth and seventh graders resulted in fewer students being held back than before. Some students took and passed summer school.
Opponents of tougher policies claim that tougher hold-back policies is can frustrate and embarrass students so they more likely to drop out. Some parents believe this might be especially true for eighth graders who are not allowed to advance to high school. Others suggest that some students need the extra year to master the appropriate material.
We’re all into blame these days, aren’t we? The kids don’t know their stuff so who should we blame…the teachers? The administrators? How about we fix the problem and not the blame. Educators believe all kids can learn. What this policy rightfully proposes is that it can take some students longer to learn things than other students and they should be given that chance before moving on to the next grade where they are unprepared and start off the year behind and frustrated.
Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Neither Rain, Nor Snow, Nor Ship Anchor…
You know the tale. A butterfly flaps its wings in China and it affects political events in the USA. We are definitely part of a global economy. Events there affect us here. In the article “Internet outage in Mideast, Asia felt in NJ” by Kelly Heyboer inThe Star-Ledger (http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/01/internet_outage_in_mideast_asi.html) it describes how a ship’s anchor dragging across the sea floor damaged two underwater cables carrying vital internet traffic to parts of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain.
The Internet disruption affected the Dubai stock exchange and posed a challenge for companies in India that rely on internet connectivity. At TutorVista we noticed it right away. On any given day, a particular tutor’s internet, power or computer can be down. You know how it is when you have a power failure or your cable TV connection is down because of a storm. These things can happen.
If we don’t see a tutor in place and ready to go shortly before they are scheduled to do a tutoring session, we automatically activate an alternate tutor so the session goes off without a hitch. It’s part of the redundancies we build into our business. What else do we do? Our tutors come from 23 major cities across India and a half dozen other countries so a storm or other problem affecting one city or a group doesn’t affect all our tutors. We can easily transfer traffic from tutors in Mumbai, for example, to ones in the Philippines.
We’re definitely part of a connected, global supply chain. Things that happen in one part of the world do affect people in another. But this isn’t a new concept. We know that freezing weather in Florida can affect orange juice prices and availability across the US. I remember years ago when there was a peanut butter shortage for some reason.
We are one week into this internet disruption from the anchor. We continue to reassign tutoring sessions to tutors with good connectivity out of our vast workforce. But that’s consistent really with the power and design of the internet in the first place. There’s a zillion paths an internet packet or message can take. Disruptions and roadblocks along the way are a fact of life and the beauty of the internet is it’s designed to deal with that.
Today it’s a boat anchor. Tomorrow it might be a storm, a strike…who knows. But just like the mailman’s creed, “Neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night shall keep me from my appointed rounds” the tutoring will happen!
Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com
The Internet disruption affected the Dubai stock exchange and posed a challenge for companies in India that rely on internet connectivity. At TutorVista we noticed it right away. On any given day, a particular tutor’s internet, power or computer can be down. You know how it is when you have a power failure or your cable TV connection is down because of a storm. These things can happen.
If we don’t see a tutor in place and ready to go shortly before they are scheduled to do a tutoring session, we automatically activate an alternate tutor so the session goes off without a hitch. It’s part of the redundancies we build into our business. What else do we do? Our tutors come from 23 major cities across India and a half dozen other countries so a storm or other problem affecting one city or a group doesn’t affect all our tutors. We can easily transfer traffic from tutors in Mumbai, for example, to ones in the Philippines.
We’re definitely part of a connected, global supply chain. Things that happen in one part of the world do affect people in another. But this isn’t a new concept. We know that freezing weather in Florida can affect orange juice prices and availability across the US. I remember years ago when there was a peanut butter shortage for some reason.
We are one week into this internet disruption from the anchor. We continue to reassign tutoring sessions to tutors with good connectivity out of our vast workforce. But that’s consistent really with the power and design of the internet in the first place. There’s a zillion paths an internet packet or message can take. Disruptions and roadblocks along the way are a fact of life and the beauty of the internet is it’s designed to deal with that.
Today it’s a boat anchor. Tomorrow it might be a storm, a strike…who knows. But just like the mailman’s creed, “Neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night shall keep me from my appointed rounds” the tutoring will happen!
Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Doing Something Different
In her article “The Call for Epochal Leadership” in Business Week, Shoshana Zuboff, retired professor of the Harvard Business School, describes how it takes new, industry-shifting leaders to enlighten and inspire us to adopt new beliefs and ways of looking at and doing things. Those new ways open up incredible possibilities. She mentioned that education is an area where consumers want to experience – need to experience – a new kind of renaissance or redefinition of how things are done, what they should cost, and where you get them.
To set the stage for this kind of transformation, Zuboff cites the example of the iPod and iTunes and the impact they had on the mass consumption of music….how they redefined a new model that completely shifts the relationship each of us has with music as a result.
In education, we at TutorVista.com have embarked on a journey to redefine where and how education services are delivered, and how much they should cost. Just like the Model T challenged notions of how vehicles should be made and that in turn led to a radical fractioning of the price resulting in affordable transportation for the masses, TutorVista believes that if you use technology to connect experienced, passionate tutors from around the world with students who need them, we can deliver better quality education, personalized service and convenience at a mass market price. Students talk naturally to a tutor a half-a-world away and write, draw and work on a shared virtual whiteboard – a kind of electronic piece of paper student and tutor share. We can provide unlimited tutoring, homework help, remediation and quiz preparation for a low, fixed price. This fundamentally changes education. It’s now more personal, available, accessible, convenient, affordable and timely.
But it isn’t enough that the light has been shined on a powerfully enabling global system of new possibilities. There are old, entrenched systems in place that are out to assert the status quo at every turn and undermine innovation and a more efficient new order. Look at supplemental education services. Instead of encouraging new models that will bring more and better help to students where and when they need it most, rules designed to ensure the same people are the only ones in the game doing the same things they always have serve to stifle innovation and lash us to the mast of the past, long after that ship has sunk.
It’s essential we break the molds that doom us to the ways of the past. Repeating that past isn’t going to do us any good. We need to do something different!
Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com
To set the stage for this kind of transformation, Zuboff cites the example of the iPod and iTunes and the impact they had on the mass consumption of music….how they redefined a new model that completely shifts the relationship each of us has with music as a result.
In education, we at TutorVista.com have embarked on a journey to redefine where and how education services are delivered, and how much they should cost. Just like the Model T challenged notions of how vehicles should be made and that in turn led to a radical fractioning of the price resulting in affordable transportation for the masses, TutorVista believes that if you use technology to connect experienced, passionate tutors from around the world with students who need them, we can deliver better quality education, personalized service and convenience at a mass market price. Students talk naturally to a tutor a half-a-world away and write, draw and work on a shared virtual whiteboard – a kind of electronic piece of paper student and tutor share. We can provide unlimited tutoring, homework help, remediation and quiz preparation for a low, fixed price. This fundamentally changes education. It’s now more personal, available, accessible, convenient, affordable and timely.
But it isn’t enough that the light has been shined on a powerfully enabling global system of new possibilities. There are old, entrenched systems in place that are out to assert the status quo at every turn and undermine innovation and a more efficient new order. Look at supplemental education services. Instead of encouraging new models that will bring more and better help to students where and when they need it most, rules designed to ensure the same people are the only ones in the game doing the same things they always have serve to stifle innovation and lash us to the mast of the past, long after that ship has sunk.
It’s essential we break the molds that doom us to the ways of the past. Repeating that past isn’t going to do us any good. We need to do something different!
Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Selling Into The Future
When the transistor was first invented, it enabled television makers to replace vacuum tubes with devices that were a fraction of the size, many times less power-hungry, more reliable & durable. Did these new transistors get adopted right away? Did TV makers rush to incorporate the new technology into their products?
No, they didn’t. As described by Kevin Kelly in his book New Rules for the New Economy, one particular transistor made by Robert Noyce and his partner Jerry Sanders was all these good things. Problem was, the transistor was significantly more expensive to make ($100 each) than the vacuum tube that was being sold to TV makers for $1.08 each. The partners wanted to sell the devices to UHF tuner makers but they couldn’t sell a part that was nearly 100 times as expensive regardless of how small and efficient it was. They knew that as utilization and production rose, the cost to product the new part would drop to the point it would be more economical than a vacuum tube (not to mention the size, power and other advantages). But they also knews they couldn’t build traction for the adoption of the new part at the higher price.
What did the partners do to motivate people to use the new device and help it take off? They dropped the price to $1.05 each – a few pennies less than the vacuum tube! They dropped the sell price on the part despite the fact they had at the time no sales volume and hadn’t even built the factory to churn them out! As Sanders said, “We were selling into the future.”
How well did this work? UHF tuner manufacturers indeed bought transistors at $1.05 each. Within two years, the cost to manufacturer a transistor dropped so much, the partners could sell them for 50 cents each and still made a profit!
Can this apply to education? I think it can. Take the idea of doing tutoring over the internet. At first this is very costly to set up – hardware; software; technology infrastructure; recruit, train, certify & moderate tutors; build scheduling systems; design customer communication and relationship management tools; curriculum and education resources – this takes a huge investment. But instead of charging what it costs you come up with a price that you think makes sense in the long term. You hope they come and you anticipate the cost efficiency you expect to realize when the volume is there. You sell into the future! That’s what we’re doing at TutorVista.com with unlimited tutoring for a fixed price each month. Make the tutoring budget predictable and part of a simple subscription fee so a student doesn’t need one eye on the tutor and the other eye on the clock.
“If you build it, they will come!” It’s built! Time will tell, but the goal is to revolutionize and redefine what education services should cost and make quality, convenient and effective tutoring available to everyone. …And education for all!
Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com
No, they didn’t. As described by Kevin Kelly in his book New Rules for the New Economy, one particular transistor made by Robert Noyce and his partner Jerry Sanders was all these good things. Problem was, the transistor was significantly more expensive to make ($100 each) than the vacuum tube that was being sold to TV makers for $1.08 each. The partners wanted to sell the devices to UHF tuner makers but they couldn’t sell a part that was nearly 100 times as expensive regardless of how small and efficient it was. They knew that as utilization and production rose, the cost to product the new part would drop to the point it would be more economical than a vacuum tube (not to mention the size, power and other advantages). But they also knews they couldn’t build traction for the adoption of the new part at the higher price.
What did the partners do to motivate people to use the new device and help it take off? They dropped the price to $1.05 each – a few pennies less than the vacuum tube! They dropped the sell price on the part despite the fact they had at the time no sales volume and hadn’t even built the factory to churn them out! As Sanders said, “We were selling into the future.”
How well did this work? UHF tuner manufacturers indeed bought transistors at $1.05 each. Within two years, the cost to manufacturer a transistor dropped so much, the partners could sell them for 50 cents each and still made a profit!
Can this apply to education? I think it can. Take the idea of doing tutoring over the internet. At first this is very costly to set up – hardware; software; technology infrastructure; recruit, train, certify & moderate tutors; build scheduling systems; design customer communication and relationship management tools; curriculum and education resources – this takes a huge investment. But instead of charging what it costs you come up with a price that you think makes sense in the long term. You hope they come and you anticipate the cost efficiency you expect to realize when the volume is there. You sell into the future! That’s what we’re doing at TutorVista.com with unlimited tutoring for a fixed price each month. Make the tutoring budget predictable and part of a simple subscription fee so a student doesn’t need one eye on the tutor and the other eye on the clock.
“If you build it, they will come!” It’s built! Time will tell, but the goal is to revolutionize and redefine what education services should cost and make quality, convenient and effective tutoring available to everyone. …And education for all!
Dr. John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
"The Check’s In The Mail" or "Smart Money?"
A buddy called me – quite excited. “I don’t know how I won, but I won!” he exclaimed. Then he let out a “Whoo hoo!”
“Won what?” I asked.
“Some lottery or sweepstakes!” he replied.
I came right over to his house. He showed me a glossy, nicely printed letter that explained he had won $58,750 in unclaimed prize money and the enclosed check for $3,319 to assist with his “international clearance fee.”
Sounded a little weird to me, but then he handed me his check. It was everything a check should be and then some – a work of art – colorful, watermarked, MICR encoded account number, and was drawn on a company in Dallas Texas. There was quite a bit of very small writing on the back side. I thought, “Heh! That’s where they get you! You cash the $3,319 check and by endorsing it, you have agreed to buy swampland or you’ve taken out a loan at 25% interest or whatever. But the fine print (very very fine for my old eyes) simply said that the check had many features to ensure that its authenticity could be easily determined. It had a watermark, it had patented features like a place for fingerprints with the endorsement, and the real delight was it had special red ink with the patent numbers for this feature and if you blow on or rub the red ink, it disappears. Well I blew and where I did, the red ink disappeared!
“Looks very real, very authentic indeed” I thought.
So I read the letter again. He had won some unclaimed prize money from Readers Digest, Publishers Clearing House, Online gaming, or…” – it wasn’t specific on how or where he had been bestowed with this windfall but here it was. All he had to do is call the US Transfer Agent so-and-so at a particular phone number and take care of paperwork. There was a customer number printed on the letter and bar-coded (presumably) in the margin. My friend was to tell the Transfer Agent his special customer number to claim his prize. And he should definitely NOT reveal this number to anyone else before he collects his winnings lest they jump in line ahead of him and get what’s supposed to be rightfully coming to him.
I suggested we Google-around and see what we could find.
The name of the prize sweepstakes award company on the letterhead and check was “Henry S. Miller Interests.” Google found all kinds of entries for “Henry S. Miller” but nothing for “Interests.” It seems HSM is a long-standing, respected real estate company in Texas.
The bank listed on the check? Yes. It exists. They definitely have a branch office on Preston.
Strange though -- The area code for the phone numbers for the Dallas Texas bank and the US Transfer Agent wasn’t one I recognized. 705. It purported to be a Dallas phone number but I looked that up and it is an area code for Ontario Canada.
I called the number for fun. Got a recording that said their message box was full and to leave a message. More Googling. The phone number for the US Transfer Agent is a cell phone.
Well, by then we figured out (as you no doubt have by now too) that this was a scam. It was clever and different enough though it made a couple people who have been offered and failed to pursue hundreds of millions of dollars in variations of the Nigerian Scam really wonder if this is legit.
Later that afternoon I was at a meeting and mentioned this to a banker. She said it was an active, vigorously pursued scam these days. You call the US Transfer Agent and they tell you they overestimated the cost of the International Transfer Fee and would you please cash the check in your account and wire the difference to them. Of course you HAVE their $3,319 and you can cash the check first and are completely protected.
Trick is the US bank you deposit it into must, by law, give you access to the money you have deposited in a few days. But by the time this pretty, watermarked, special red ink that disappears check makes it’s way to the branch on Preston in Dallas and is discovered to be bogus (no firm of that name, no real account behind it) and back to your bank, you will have already wired the “difference” to the US Transfer Agent and maybe treated yourself to some goodies with what’s left.
Then – days later – your bank tells you the check is no good, charges you $6 for depositing a bad check, and by the way, please pay the bank back the $3,319 you have spent already. You won’t get back your wire transfer and well, you might as well enjoy the goodies you bought because, well, you did buy them and will have to pay for them when you make your bank whole for the money you took out. And the $58,750? Not a chance.
If you search for scams involving “International Transfer Fees” you will see lots of web sites with the always unfortunate tales of people who were bit by this variation of the Nigerian Scam. “I thought I would cash it and even if I didn’t call the guy up and arrange for the international transfer fee, at least I would have the first bit of money” and “I was so sure it was real I made my husband deposit it and then go straight to the travel agent so we could book our Caribbean cruise! He did and then…” Each story was sad and demonstrated how people who would never fall for the “Help me get my dead husband’s millions out of the country” fell victim to this one.
Why did they go along with it? It seems a real check in your hands for money you didn’t know was coming was a big inducement for checking reality at the door. One twenty year old on the web site describing similar scams said, “I understand all this discussion about how this works but I don’t get it…how can they afford to send out all these $3,000-4,000 checks?”
You want to believe the check is good and want to believe you can’t get stung if you deposit it and the bank tells you it’s good before you spend it.
Have you seen similar scams? Why is it the scams by mail have a particularly fresh appeal to people who are otherwise sufficiently hardened to the email scams? Or what’s the uptake on those email scams? I see so many in my inbox in any given week I can’t believe people fall for them, but they must. But this emailed check scam was costing the scammers some money – 90c Canadian in postage (the letter came from Canada and not from the purported Dallas bank), the cost of glossy paper and color printing, and that check was definitely an expensive bit of tom-foolery with its heat sensitive ink.
How do we stay ahead of these guys? And how do we educate people about these scams? Is self-education through web searches the order of the day? Or is this a case not of "Buyer Beware!" but "Casher Beware!"?
John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com
“Won what?” I asked.
“Some lottery or sweepstakes!” he replied.
I came right over to his house. He showed me a glossy, nicely printed letter that explained he had won $58,750 in unclaimed prize money and the enclosed check for $3,319 to assist with his “international clearance fee.”
Sounded a little weird to me, but then he handed me his check. It was everything a check should be and then some – a work of art – colorful, watermarked, MICR encoded account number, and was drawn on a company in Dallas Texas. There was quite a bit of very small writing on the back side. I thought, “Heh! That’s where they get you! You cash the $3,319 check and by endorsing it, you have agreed to buy swampland or you’ve taken out a loan at 25% interest or whatever. But the fine print (very very fine for my old eyes) simply said that the check had many features to ensure that its authenticity could be easily determined. It had a watermark, it had patented features like a place for fingerprints with the endorsement, and the real delight was it had special red ink with the patent numbers for this feature and if you blow on or rub the red ink, it disappears. Well I blew and where I did, the red ink disappeared!
“Looks very real, very authentic indeed” I thought.
So I read the letter again. He had won some unclaimed prize money from Readers Digest, Publishers Clearing House, Online gaming, or…” – it wasn’t specific on how or where he had been bestowed with this windfall but here it was. All he had to do is call the US Transfer Agent so-and-so at a particular phone number and take care of paperwork. There was a customer number printed on the letter and bar-coded (presumably) in the margin. My friend was to tell the Transfer Agent his special customer number to claim his prize. And he should definitely NOT reveal this number to anyone else before he collects his winnings lest they jump in line ahead of him and get what’s supposed to be rightfully coming to him.
I suggested we Google-around and see what we could find.
The name of the prize sweepstakes award company on the letterhead and check was “Henry S. Miller Interests.” Google found all kinds of entries for “Henry S. Miller” but nothing for “Interests.” It seems HSM is a long-standing, respected real estate company in Texas.
The bank listed on the check? Yes. It exists. They definitely have a branch office on Preston.
Strange though -- The area code for the phone numbers for the Dallas Texas bank and the US Transfer Agent wasn’t one I recognized. 705. It purported to be a Dallas phone number but I looked that up and it is an area code for Ontario Canada.
I called the number for fun. Got a recording that said their message box was full and to leave a message. More Googling. The phone number for the US Transfer Agent is a cell phone.
Well, by then we figured out (as you no doubt have by now too) that this was a scam. It was clever and different enough though it made a couple people who have been offered and failed to pursue hundreds of millions of dollars in variations of the Nigerian Scam really wonder if this is legit.
Later that afternoon I was at a meeting and mentioned this to a banker. She said it was an active, vigorously pursued scam these days. You call the US Transfer Agent and they tell you they overestimated the cost of the International Transfer Fee and would you please cash the check in your account and wire the difference to them. Of course you HAVE their $3,319 and you can cash the check first and are completely protected.
Trick is the US bank you deposit it into must, by law, give you access to the money you have deposited in a few days. But by the time this pretty, watermarked, special red ink that disappears check makes it’s way to the branch on Preston in Dallas and is discovered to be bogus (no firm of that name, no real account behind it) and back to your bank, you will have already wired the “difference” to the US Transfer Agent and maybe treated yourself to some goodies with what’s left.
Then – days later – your bank tells you the check is no good, charges you $6 for depositing a bad check, and by the way, please pay the bank back the $3,319 you have spent already. You won’t get back your wire transfer and well, you might as well enjoy the goodies you bought because, well, you did buy them and will have to pay for them when you make your bank whole for the money you took out. And the $58,750? Not a chance.
If you search for scams involving “International Transfer Fees” you will see lots of web sites with the always unfortunate tales of people who were bit by this variation of the Nigerian Scam. “I thought I would cash it and even if I didn’t call the guy up and arrange for the international transfer fee, at least I would have the first bit of money” and “I was so sure it was real I made my husband deposit it and then go straight to the travel agent so we could book our Caribbean cruise! He did and then…” Each story was sad and demonstrated how people who would never fall for the “Help me get my dead husband’s millions out of the country” fell victim to this one.
Why did they go along with it? It seems a real check in your hands for money you didn’t know was coming was a big inducement for checking reality at the door. One twenty year old on the web site describing similar scams said, “I understand all this discussion about how this works but I don’t get it…how can they afford to send out all these $3,000-4,000 checks?”
You want to believe the check is good and want to believe you can’t get stung if you deposit it and the bank tells you it’s good before you spend it.
Have you seen similar scams? Why is it the scams by mail have a particularly fresh appeal to people who are otherwise sufficiently hardened to the email scams? Or what’s the uptake on those email scams? I see so many in my inbox in any given week I can’t believe people fall for them, but they must. But this emailed check scam was costing the scammers some money – 90c Canadian in postage (the letter came from Canada and not from the purported Dallas bank), the cost of glossy paper and color printing, and that check was definitely an expensive bit of tom-foolery with its heat sensitive ink.
How do we stay ahead of these guys? And how do we educate people about these scams? Is self-education through web searches the order of the day? Or is this a case not of "Buyer Beware!" but "Casher Beware!"?
John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Happy New Year!
Wishing you a safe, prosperous, healthy and happy new year!
Check out my guest blog in Education Week today . . .
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/edbizbuzz/
John
Check out my guest blog in Education Week today . . .
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/edbizbuzz/
John
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