Some interesting websites have come out recently which allow people to collaborate in real time over the internet.

This obviously has some potential for online tutoring, but are they really ready?

Online tutoring has been “just around the corner” for a long time now, but the technology always seemed to get in the way:

• Writing math formulas and diagrams was always much faster by hand than over a computer screen
• Internet connections can get dropped or have delays
• Some solutions required custom software to be installed or for the user to be tech savvy in other ways

Here are some potential solutions I’ve seen come out recently.  These are all “web based” solutions which in my opinion is the only way this type of software will be successful.  By making it web based it eliminates the need for users to install any software, to both be on a certain type of operating system (Windows, Mac, etc), or to configure internet connection ports - problems which plague many screen sharing apps.  It also allows you to use any computer with an internet connection, so you can work at home, school, or wherever is convenient.

Adding an online tutoring option to CollegeStudentTutors.com is something I’d love to do given the right solution.

1. Thinkature.com

This nifty little app looks like it came out a few years ago.  It has a clean and simple interface and it’s free.  The only problem is that developmet on this app appears to have stopped.  After creating a new account I couldn’t get a new meeting set up (it just said “loading” forever).  There are a number of posts on their forum from users suggesting that the project and site have been abandoned by the original creators.

It’s a shame because this app has great potential.  Thinkature owners: if you are reading this and don’t have time to pursue the project, do the world a favor and release it as open source code!  Please let the world take the next step with this excellent project you’ve started.

2. Twiddla.com

Of all the sites I’ve tested so far, this one seems to have the most potential.  It has a ton of neat features, is easy to use, and even has support for some math formulas that would make it ideal for online tutoring.

While it appears to still be under active development (unlike Thinkature) I unfortunately still ran into some reliability issues.  I consistently got a message in the chat window about the network connection being broken and the voice chat feature didn’t appear to work at all.  While you could potentially get around the voice chat problem with a separate Skype connection or regular phone call, it further complicates the process and makes it less likely to work for a non-tech savvy user.

I do like how they made it drop dead simple to start a new online session (no account required) and of course it’s free.  It really is amazing that this product is released for free at all, given that it surely required thousands of man hours to produce.  I can also greatly sympathize with the issues I saw, since they are among the most difficult problems in computer science to solve (synchronization, latency, etc).  Twiddla is truely a grand effort that is dangerously close to becoming the perfect solution.  If the reliability can be improved I could see this becoming a staple of online tutoring.

3. Google Docs

Google’s growing online office suite offers some real time collaboration tools which may work.  Their Excel knockoff “Spreadsheets” offers the most promising solution for math or business type tutoring.

As you can see, two (or more) people can edit a spreadsheet at the same time.  Each user has a different color cell border so you can see what the other person is doing.  While one person is editing a particular cell, it is greyed out so you don’t both try to edit it at the same time.  This article has a great overview of the Google Docs online collaboration tools.

Their documents tool (similar to Microsoft Word) also has some potential for online tutoring of writing, essays, etc.  Unfortunately it’s not very easy to see exactly what the other person is editing in real time, which limits it’s usefulness.

Conclusion

Overall I haven’t found the perfect tool (yet) for online tutoring.  Cisco has a commercial app called WebEx which I’d like to review but their demo is down.  Tutor.com also apears to use their own desktop-based proprietary software, but I don’t have any way to test it out or use it.  As stated before, I don’t think a desktop solution is the way to go.

Currently, the technology available still feels like its getting in the way more than it is facilitating the process of online tutoring.

What other online collaboration tools did I miss?  Would you like to see more online tutoring offered in the future?  Let me know in the comments below.

There are 3 primary types of learners.  Do you know which one you are?

It’s worth identifying your own type and also the type of anyone you are trying to teach.  For example, you may make little progress with an auditory learner by forcing them to write words over and over again, while quizzing them out loud is a breeze.

This also helps explain why one particular learning technique can be very effective for one student and not another.  We all learn differently.

Types of Learners:

VISUAL LEARNERS

• Visual learners learn primarily through the written word and sight.
• They learn well on their own.
• They tend to be readers who diligently take down every word.
• Provide them with written materials and exercises
• Have them write key words and take notes while reading
• Use visuals or graphics
• They will do best reviewing topics in a text book or reviewing their own written notes

AUDITORY LEARNERS

• Auditory learners learn primarily through listening and talking with others.
• They learn well in groups.
• They focus their ears and attention on your words, listening carefully to everything you say.
• They like to talk rather than write and relish the opportunity to discuss what they’ve heard.
• They will do best reviewing topics in a group by discussing them and quizzing each other out loud.

KINESTHETIC LEARNERS

• Kinesthetic learners learn best by doing and moving their body.
• This group learns best when they can physically practice what they’re learning.
• They want to have their hands on the keyboard, the hammer, or the test tube because they think in terms of physical action.
• Encourage underlining and highlighting.
• Provide real-life simulations and examples
• Offer hands-on activities 

To conclude, here is a first hand story from Kathryn Lay on the power of understanding “learning types”…

Michelle stared at her math homework with tears in her eyes. “I just can’t memorize this stuff,” she said.

It irritated me and frustrated her. I couldn’t understand why memorizing the multiplication tables was so hard. It wasn’t until I understood that my daughter is a kinesthetic, or hands-on, learner that I realized it really was difficult, and the difficulty wasn’t from lack of trying.

It may not be what your child is learning that is frustrating her, but how she is learning–using visual, auditory, or kinesthetic strengths.

According to Cheri Fuller, author of Unlocking Your Child’s Learning Potential, “Learning style entails how a person best takes in, understands, and remembers information.” She concludes that, “while most of us learn in all three ways…in most children, one sense is usually more finely tuned and influential for learning than the others.”

Is it the math, or the manner of learning the math that causes your child problems? The science, or the approach to science? Do you know your child’s learning style? How could you use this knowledge to help in the learning process, both at home and at school?

Once you find your child’s learning style, you can also find ways to help difficult subjects become easier.

Quizlet is a very cool little website that allows you to quickly create flashcards and quiz yourself on them.

You can also test yourself in other ways such as true/false, multiple choice, matching, and written answers. 

What makes it particularly useful also is that there are already over 300,000 “sets” of flashcards made for common test questions.  For example, here is one on the state capitals.

The site was created by a 15 year old, Andrew Sutherland.  Congrats Andrew you are going places!

Take a look at the video demo here or sign up for free.

A must-see for every parent and teacher. Education guru Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. Sir Ken Robinson is author of “Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative,” and a leading expert on innovation in education and business. 

Do schools today kill creativity? (Ken Robinson, TEDTalks)

By Carol S. Dweck - reprinted from Scientific American.

Hint: Don’t tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life.

A brilliant student, Jonathan sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As. Jonathan puzzled over why some of his classmates struggled, and his parents told him he had a special gift. In the seventh grade, however, Jonathan suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests. As a consequence, his grades plummeted. His parents tried to boost their son’s confidence by assuring him that he was very smart. But their attempts failed to motivate Jonathan (who is a composite drawn from several children). Schoolwork, their son maintained, was boring and pointless.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the absolute best resources on the internet that not very many people know about is the MIT OpenCourseWare project.

The OCW is an online repository of all courses offered at MIT in both their graduate and undergraduate departments.

It doesn’t allow you to get an MIT degree, but you can work through material at you own pace. This is the exact same material that many people pay over $120,000 to learn….for FREE to everyone in the world.

Here are some of the subjects you get learn:

* Aeronautics and Astronautics
* Anthropology
* Architecture
* Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation
* Biological Engineering
* Biology
* Brain and Cognitive Sciences
* Chemical Engineering
* Chemistry
* Civil and Environmental Engineering
* Comparative Media Studies
* Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
* Economics
* Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
* Engineering Systems Division
* Experimental Study Group
* Foreign Languages and Literatures
* Health Sciences and Technology
* History
* Linguistics and Philosophy
* Literature
* Materials Science and Engineering
* Mathematics
* Mechanical Engineering
* Media Arts and Sciences
* Music and Theater Arts
* Nuclear Science and Engineering
* Physics
* Political Science
* Science, Technology, and Society
* Sloan School of Management
* Special Programs
* Urban Studies and Planning
* Women’s and Gender Studies
* Writing and Humanistic Studies

The content is translated into many different languages and is accessed by people in every country in the world, with over 1 million visitors to the site per month.

Check it out. I suggest subscribing to their RSS feed or newsletter so that you can see new courses as they come out. Instead of watching TV, take an hour or half hour and watch a lecture each night. It just might change your life…

Ever wonder how “smart” people seem to memorize everything the night before an exam?

Sure there are a few rare people who are born with a natural gift for memory (for example, the 2004 World Memory Champion Ben Pridmore memorized the order of cards in a randomly shuffled 52-card deck in 31 seconds). But for the rest of us, using the simple technique of mnemonics is more than enough to prep for an exam.

The technique basically consists of making up a sentence or phrase where the first letter of each word has a special meaning. Because of how our brains work we can easily remember a single sentence word for word, but remembering a random list of unfamiliar material IN ORDER tends to cause us problems.

We’re much better at memorizing words in order; this comes naturally to us.

One thing thats interesting about mnemonics (besides that its a difficult word to spell!) is that even nonsensical arbitrary words or sentences can be easy to remember.

For example…

“Roy” is a legitimate first name, but there is no actual surname “Biv” and of course the middle initial “G” is arbitrary. Why is “Roy G. Biv” easier to remember than to memorize the seven colors of the rainbow? (ROYGBIV) The sentence “Richard of York gave battle in vain” is commonly used in the UK, an almost meaningless phrase.

You have heard “thirty days hath September, April, June and November”, to remember the number of days in the months. If you’ve taken music you will have heard “every good boy does fine” to remember the notes which appear on the lines of the treble clef. Your English teachers may have taught the rhyme “I before E except after C”.

Clearly mnemonics are used in many disciplines.

Furthermore, mnemonics don’t have to just be for memorizing words. They can also be used to memorize numbers. The most common type of mnemonic is the word-length mnemonic in which the number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit. This simple one gives pi to seven decimal places:

How I wish I could calculate pi.

And here is pi to 31 decimal places:

Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling
In mystic force, and magic spelling
Celestial sprites elucidate
All my own striving can’t relate
Or locate they who can cogitate
And so finally terminate.
Finis.

Sure…you might not have the time to make a fancy rhyming mnemonic that looks pretty, but in most cases you can quickly string together a sentence on paper that is memorable to you. Remember, it doesn’t have to be grammatically correct, use real words, or even make sense!

When you get your test, take a minute to write out your mnemonic at the top or back of the paper and decode each word into its actual meaning. Now sit back and relax, you’re taking an open book test!

As a little exercise, lets try memorizing the countries of South America and see what mnemonics people come up with.

Click the image to the right to enlarge it.

To keep the order straight I’m going to start on Brazil (the biggest) and go left in a circle around the outside toward the center. This seems easiest to me but you can do it in any order that works for you.

So my order will be…
Brazil => B
French Guinea => FG
Suriname => S
Guyana => G
Trinidad => T
Venezuela => V
Columbia => C
Ecuador => E
Peru => P
Chile => C
Argentina => A
Uruguay => U
Paraguay => P
Bolivia => B

Let’s see, the first thing that comes to mind is…

Brian fails golf so God takes vengeance. Come eat pineapple chips at ugly park bench.

It might look a little funny but I guarantee you I can memorize that in 30 seconds or so instead of 30 minutes

I bet you can create a better one! Post your own mnemonic in the comments below to memorize the South American countries.

Good and bad methods of disciplining inappropriate classsroom behavior. This was a very well made instructional movie for teachers. While there are new & different problems in the modern schools, the basic ideas of this film still holds. The opening messages are exactly what the best research on classroom behaviour tells us:

1. The vast majority of behaviour problems in the classrom involve minor breaches of discipline.
2. These incidents originate in the classroom situation itself and are within the control of the teacher.
3. Disciplinary problems in the classroom are symptoms of underlying weaknesses in total learning situation.

BY CONTRASTING METHODS OF HANDLING THE SAME CLASS, TECHNIQUES ARE SHOWN FOR SECURING CLASS DISCIPLINE and STIMULATING THE INTEREST OF STUDENTS.

One of my biggest gripes about the school system in the United States is that it teaches children to “do their own work”.  

Sure, I understand the reason behind it.  We don’t want kids copying off each other on the test and skipping out on learning!  But is it possible we’ve gone too far?

You see, in the real world (i.e. having a job, running your own business, being president of the U.S., or whatever you end up doing) successful people are masters of surrounding themselves with OTHER PEOPLE who complement their weaknesses.

A successful business owner doesn’t have to understand all the nuances of tax law.  He hires a qualified CPA to do that!  A doctor doesn’t have to understand how to put people to sleep during surgery, he has an anesthesiologist to do that.  And the president doesn’t have to understand the details of how interest rates affect home prices because he has the chairman of the federal reserve to advise him.

Everyone is good at different things, but our school system asks students to be a little bit of everything, and it can make school a very unpleasant place for many children.  Say we take a student who excels at math and science and ask him or her to write a 25 page essay on Hamlet.  They may be frustrated and bored.  Likewise, to ask an aspiring young playwright to take a test on calculus will simply make them feel inadequate and stupid.  

And then there are children who excel in something totally unrelated to school, such as making people laugh (the class clown), bringing groups together (people skills and natural leaders), or artists.  By traditional standards these students have “failed” in our school system.  Yet in reality, they are just very good at something our school system doesn’t reward.

Many great minds and successes have been utter failures in our school system.  Jay Leno, Albert Einstein, Woody Allen, and William Faulkner just to name a few.

In summary, never be afraid to word in groups when doing homework or preparing for a test, unless a teacher expressly forbids it.  When in doubt, don’t ask for permission to do it.  Just do it!  A well meaning teacher may say “no” if you ask when they are really just trying to discourage blatant copying.

Surround yourself with the best students in the class and work on assignments together.  They will compliment areas where you are weaker, and you’ll help them in areas where you are stronger.  You may find that you learn more in your study group than in class, and you will have discovered one of the great keys to success in life: surround yourself with great people.

What has been your experience in working with other students?  Do teachers in your area generally encourage or discourage this?

If you’re like most students, you’ve seen an add for a speed reading course at some point in your life and wondered if it was real.

Well, the short answer is a resounding YES.  But there is a longer answer as well:

The appeal of speed reading is that it will save you time on homework and give you more free time to do other things.  While this is true, the real benefit of speed reading compounds over the rest of your life.

If you are able to double your reading rate (which as we’ll see later is quite possible), then that means you could spend half as much time reading through homework material.  Or, looked at another way, you could read twice as much in the same amount of time!

Imagine how your life would be different if you were able to read an extra book every month for the rest of your life.  Thats an extra 600 books if you lived just another 50 years.  I’m sure you’ll agree that reading an extra 600 books could quite literally change your life.  It could give you a new idea, change your profession, help you make more money, have better relationships, keep up with world events, etc.

To top that off, many of the greatest minds historically seem to have been speed readers.  Presidents John F Kennedy and Jimmy Carter were famous speed readers, for example.

My Own Experience With Speed Reading

Several years ago I started investigating speed reading.  I was a bit skeptical, so instead of investing in a full course I purchased a book called Break Through Rapid Reading.  

The book takes you through a series of exercises, one per day for 30 days.  Let me be clear: the exercises are downright boring and repetitive at times, so it takes some real discipline to get through it without an actual class.  There were some days I skipped it and had to continue at a later date, so it took my a bit longer than a month.

However, at the end I was quite pleased to see that I had literally DOUBLED my reading rate, and this made it all worth it.  This meager investment of 15 minutes a day for a month will pay off for the rest of my life.  Although I haven’t measured it since I finished the book, I imagine my reading rate has continued to grow as I’ve used the same techniques learned in the book.

What about comprehension?

In case you are wondering (as I was), when speed reading you are NOT just skimming the material.  You are doing “speed comprehension” as well.  When your reading rate it measured in the book, your comprehension is tested along with it.  Therefore I can say with a fair degree of certainty that I literally doubled my reading rate without sacrificing comprehension.

How does it work?

The best way to describe it is with an analogy.

When you first started reading, you looked at each individual letter, right?  You probably had to sound out each one individually (”cuh….aahhh…..tuhhh…..CAT!”) just like every child does when first learning to read.

But after some time you were able to just take one glance at the word cat and you instantly recognized it.  Your eye was no longer focusing on each individual letter, it “just saw” all of them at once and read it.

Well in much the same way you were able to move from seeing individual letters to whole words, speed reading allows you to move from seeing individual words to whole phrases or sentences in one glance.

This doesn’t necessarily come naturally to most people, and you may think it sounds like something that only a few “genius” type people would be able to do.

But that is not really the case.  By doing the exercises diligently, and continuing to practice something that doesn’t quite seem natural, you can eventually retrain your brain on how it sees words and reads.

Very few people are physically or mentally unable to speed read, but I imagine a fairly large percentage are simply unwilling to invest the time it takes to see the results.

Given the benefits it will give you every day for the rest of your life, I feel that every student should learn to speed read at some point in your life.

There are many classes available which will certainly work and help keep you on track.  For a more inexpensive option you are welcome to try the book that I read called Break Through Rapid Reading by Peter Kump.

What has been your experience with speed reading (if any)?  What questions do you have about it?  Please leave us a comment below.