How to become an online classical tutor
Escondido Tutorial Service (ETS) uses the industry standard in online meeting software- www.webex.com. Using this service, ETS offers home-schooled students around the globe professional instruction in their own homes. Homeschool students using us and our affiliates are working with a growing network of tutors who offer their services in a variety of subjects: math, science, literature, language, logic and rhetoric. Being listed at classicalhomeschooling.org gives you the opportunity to reach the families who come to the educational food court that classicalhomeschooling.org offers the homeschool community.
Most educators devote a great deal of their efforts to managing educational bureaucracy rather than teaching their students. Online video-conferencing allows teachers to work directly with students to meet their particular educational needs. Eliminating educational bureaucracy has enabled ETS to offer private education at a substantial savings over traditional delivery methods. A typical ETS tutorial is only $600 per year.
In the past, students were taken out of the home to meet with their instructor; now through online instruction, the professional educator is able to electronically join the student in his own home and provide teaching in a context that in many ways is even more conducive to learning than the conventional classroom. This new venue is not only more effective than the typical crowded classroom but it is also more convenient for the student's family.
ETS has delivered tutorials to students since 1993. The ability to continue with the same students over a number of years has allowed a close relationship with many students and their families to develop. Often students plan vacations around ETS student get-togethers to meet their online friends face to face.
Using Webex's audio abilities and its whiteboard, the audio and visual components necessary to run an effective online learning environment are in place. The whiteboard is an electronic surface that is used to display pictures, overheads or diagrams. Further, a typical ETS tutorial has 15-25 students and meets once a week for two hours. Students are required to have a microphone so that they can participate orally in the class discussions.
In a day when conventional schools seem to be increasingly riddled by insurmountable problems, home-schooling is attracting a rapidly growing number of parents. The difficulty with home-schooling in the past has been the lack of professional instruction to supplement the work of the parent when needed. Online instruction has provided a means for bringing together the professional educator and the student in a manner that provides cost savings, less inconvenience for families and more time away from the bureaucracy of education for both student and teacher.
Would you like to leave the world of conventional education and become an online educator? Thanks to the increasing power and decreasing complexity of computers, it is now easier than ever. Most any multimedia computer will work just fine, along with a broadband connection and Webex.
No matter what your age or location being an online educator will provide you with the opportunity to educate the finest home-school students. As we saw with the printing press, there are times in history when God provides technologies that can improve our lives. ETS offers you the opportunity to join the growing ranks of online educators.
Periodically classicalhomeschooling.org hosts conferences and lectures for the general classical Christian community.
ETS or classicalhomeschooling.org does not directly hire tutors. Each tutor must form his or her own tutorial service. Tutors teaching are welcome to make use of any of the curriculum resources or guides in the ETS website for advertising their own tutorials.
If you are interested in teaching, please contact me with your resume, website address and class descriptions and I will consider adding your link to classicalhomeschooling.org.
To register for a webex account, please contact Alex Akoubian at aakoubia@cisco.com
Fritz
Hinrichs
www.gbt.org