Parenting Pointers: Online Tutoring

Back when I was in high school, I struggled a lot with Science. I could grasp atoms – but when it came time to understand how they made molecules, and cells, and living beings, I couldn’t quite grasp the connection. What added to my frustration was that everyone else in the class understood, and I couldn’t. However, I wanted enough to learn that I asked for help. I was fortunate to find a tutor that was able to help me look at it from a different direction, one I could understand. Suddenly, I understood the connections, and was able to get at least a B in the class. Today, there are a multitude of resources online that add to a personal tutoring experience to help kids learn better. If your kids are struggling with a subject in a class, consider checking out what the internet has to offer. Take luck out of the grades game and take a look at these sites that will turn “I don’t get it” into “Ohh!” in no time.

By far the best site that I found while looking into online learning resources is The Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org). Salman Khan was living in Chicago while remotely tutoring his two cousins in New Orleans when he created web videos to archive his instructions. He uploaded them to youtube. His cousins remarked that they learned more from his videos than they did from interacting with him in person, and other viewers who had stumbled across his channel made the same comment. His collection of videos grew and grew and now The Khan Academy has over 2,400 videos on everything from math and science to astronomy and finance. His videos are less than 15 minutes long, and students work on question-and-answer segments until they master a concept, and can review tricky material at their own pace. The part of these videos that was most revolutionizing is that they give anyone who is interested in a subject the ability to work as quickly or as slowly as they need and don’t feel the embarrassment from asking questions like they would in a traditional class. The best part of this entire service, however, is that it stays true to the ideal that all knowledge should be free. There is no charge for the website and they just released a free iPad App you can download.   You might even want to use it to add to your own learning once you get your children hooked on it!

If the tutors at your child’s school aren’t quite up to par, or if you’re considering alternative education and need a knowledgeable one-on-one tutoring experience, check out http://www.tutor.com/. Tutor.com has tutors available 24/7 that you can use your computer or smartphone to access. You can chat with a tutor, share screens online, and use a two-way web whiteboard to review whatever topics you or your child needs help with. They offer packages of one to three hours a month for $35 to $100. And on top of this, they guarantee your child improves their grade by at least half a letter, or they will give you your money back, as long as you sign up for two hours a month or more. If your student learns best by discussing a subject with someone, this site is the way to go.

Sometimes your kids are performing just fine – in fact, they’re performing so well they constantly want answers to every question that comes up – sometimes questions that you or their teacher doesn’t know. Google will often answer your question, but you don’t want to have to surf through pages of ad-supported sites to find the small detail you want to know. Check out http://www.wolframalpha.com/ when you have a question you need answered, but perhaps you threw out the encyclopedia set years ago. For instance, I asked Google, “What is the circumference of the sun?” and received millions of pages with the answer hiding away somewhere behind a link. When I asked Wolfram Alpha, it returned “2.715 million miles, or 4.37x10^6 (kilometers).” I could even see the source of the information, so I knew it wasn’t just a random Yahoo answers post that could only possibly be correct.

Andrea Eldridge is CEO of Nerds On Call, which offers onsite computer & laptop repair to homeowners and small businesses.  Based in Redding, Calif., it has locations in five states. Contact Eldridge at www.callnerds.com/andrea.