Not too long ago, the full extent of back to school must-haves were all available at your local office supplies shop. You could head to the store and pick up a bundle of pens or pencils and a few stacks of loose leaf paper and your student was good to go for the year.  However, as schools begin to utilize technology in the classroom and create blended and online learning programs, school shopping lists are beginning to change.

Below, we took a quick look at some items that may be new to your back-to-school shopping list this year and how they can help contribute to your child’s school day.

•  USB drives (aka flash drives, junk drives, jump drives, thumb drives…) Computers are becoming a classroom staple. Whether they are for individual use or shared between students, the amount of work done on the computer is quickly growing. This shift has students moving away from saving work on loose leaf and towards saving work on hard drives, which is why USB drives are key. Quite affordable and offered in a variety of storage sizes, USB drives allow students to easily transport a document from one computer to another.
• Earphones Remember a few lines above when we said how computers are becoming a classroom staple? Well, that same reasoning belongs in this section as well. Computer programs that aid in blended/digital/online learning approaches are often interactive and require sound. These programs allow students to move at their own pace and earphones help to keep lessons engaging and keep kids focused on their work as opposed to their neighbors.
• Printer paper & ink cartridges Long gone are the days of handing in hand-written cursive essays – most schools now require papers to be typed up in a specific font and size. In order to keep up with essay assignments, some schools recommend families stock up on printer paper and ink at home for students to utilize throughout the school year. 

What new items are showing up on your BTS shopping list this year?

And for some exciting and innovative back to school items, check out Mario Armstrong on the Today Show here! They have great tips for your tech-savvy kid!

Our RSS feeds are chock-full of articles about how to change the public education system. It’s a vigorous and often passionate debate. Yet students, the people who are most affected by these discussions, are not part of the conversation. That’s why “Five things students say they want from education,” published by eSchool News last week caught our attention. Here’s the five points educators shared that they hear from students: 

• Interactive Technology
• Teacher Mentors
• Innovation
• Choice
• Real-world application and relevancy

In our world, which includes an interactive and innovative online classroom technology, we hear from thousands of students daily. Every time a student connects to a tutor in our online classroom, they have the opportunity to rate their session and leave a comment. Thousands do just that. We hear what they liked about the tutor and the technology. This feedback helps set the direction for product innovation. Over the past year we’ve developed several new features specifically because students tell us what they want; we listen and then deliver it. Here’s a few of those recent features and the student feedback that drove it. 

• Tutor.com To Go™:  Everything is getting smaller. Students want to take their education on the go on their favorite devices, and more schools are embracing the BYOT model. Our mobile app lets them connect to a tutor from an iPod Touch (the device almost every teen owns),  iPhone or iPad and soon on Android devices too. One student even told us they were working with a tutor from the dentist office waiting room–now that’s a committed student. 
• Favorite Tutors: We have about 2,500 tutors now and while they are all “awesome” ( most-used adjective by students in their comments),  students have their favorites and want to connect to them as much as possible. Favorite tutors keep the sessions private and anonymous, but empowers a student to select and save a list of their favorites and even seen when they’ll be online next. 
• Personal Accounts:  Around the clock access to resources and past sessions is important to students who may be studying late into the evening. Students who have a personal account can easily access their past sessions for review, and our system automatically suggests specific resources based on the types of questions students have asked. Now when a student logs in, they’ll see our top rated resources on quadratic equations if that’s what they’ve been working on.

Asking students what they want from their own education makes a lot of sense. Let’s do more of it.

Each month our team of mentors nominates a “Tutor.com Tutor of the Month”. We are pleased to introduce June’s Tutor of the Month, Andranik A!

In addition to tutoring with Tutor.com, Andranik is also one of our very own success stories. First hearing about our service when he was in high school, Andranik sought help from us for clarification in some of his science classes. After high school, he went on to graduate from the University of California Irvine in June 2010, with degrees in Neurobiology and Psychology (Cognitive Science). Andranik is currently working as a full-time staff research associate for the Alzheimer’s disease laboratory and applying to medical school. His knowledge of chemistry, biology, and algebra are helping to educate a new generation at Tutor.com

How did you find out about Tutor.com?

I actually saw a flyer for Tutor.com (offered by my local library) posted in a hallway bulletin board of my high school and decided to give it a shot. Back then I wanted clarification on some chemistry concepts and the tutors did a great job explaining them to me. So much so that I excelled in college general and organic chemistry and decided to become a tutor myself.

What is your favorite part of tutoring?

I just like the feeling of knowing that somewhere out there, an anonymous person just figured something out and it hopefully stuck with them. Being helped myself before I joined, I appreciated how the knowledgeable tutors were able to clarify concepts for me so I’m glad to be giving back in my own way.

What’s one thing you think every student should do in order to become a better student?

It’s tough to say one thing that will make someone a better student but if I had to, I would remind students to constantly keep their mind on the long term goals they have. Think about how much your future self will thank you for doing all the right things to make the rest of your life easier on yourself with what you do in the present.

Do you have any funny or touching Tutor.com stories?

I had one student who recognized me by my first name and actually thanked me personally for helping her out with all the questions she had been asking. She also mentioned that after she got introduced to the site, her grades have been getting better. That was enough to make my day, if not week.

Interested in becoming a tutor? Apply now!

Using iPads and BYOD is part of blended learning solutions. Here's the Tutor.com online classroom on an iPad.

We enjoyed reading two great posts from Tom Vander Ark over the past few days.  One article focused on extending the school day  in the Huffington Post and the other showed why teachers love blended learning in edReformer.   As an organization that has been delivering education technology solutions for a decade, we know how powerful and empowering integrating technology into day-to-day learning can really be for students and teachers.

Here’s some annotation to Tom’s edReformer post from our point of view which comes from delivering almost seven million online learning sessions.

You Teach Students Ready for Your Lesson

Imagine how great it is for a teacher to walk into a classroom knowing that his/her students have mastered the skills they need and are ready for that day’s lessons.  Vander Ark uses the inspiring School of One as an example.  We were thrilled to work with the folks and students at School of One this past school year to provide online tutoring to their students.  Our solution was one of the modules students could use to improve their math skills and stay on track. 

Motivate Hard to Reach Kids

We’ve heard from many of the students using our services that online tutoring solved some of their major motivational issues – embarrassment and pacing.   Many students who are struggling in a class don’t want to be embarrassed in front of their peers and ask “dumb” questions.  They don’t know how to or want to ask a teacher to slow down because they aren’t getting it.  This often leads to students just shutting down and becoming less and less motivated to learn the material.  And learning this way isn’t fun for them.

Connecting to an online tutor solves these issues and can be a major motivator for a reluctant student.  Our tutors live for “dumb” questions.  There’s no one around to judge the student since the experience is completely anonymous.  Tutors are happy to take it slow and work at the student’s pace until she understands the issue at hand.  The lesson is customized to the student and pacing really matters.  Students also tell us that learning is a little more fun when they’re using technology and “texting” with their tutor while learning in the online classroom.

Extend the Day

Blended learning with an online tutoring solution like Tutor.com empowers students to learn anywhere at any time.  Our services are 24/7 and while we don’t advocate for late night cramming, an 8:00 p.m. tutoring session after other extracurricular activities are over can make a big difference for students.  An 8^th grader in a challenging algebra course can spend another 30 minutes working one-to-one with a tutor until they “get” that tough concept from class.  No matter how dedicated a classroom teacher is, they simply can’t spend another 30 minutes of individual instruction time with every student that needs it.  But using technology and a distributed network of tutors, we can accomplish this task.  We also believe in the BYOD movement and launched Tutor.com To Go this past spring empowering students to connect to a tutor from their iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

Achievement Analytics

Every time a student has an online tutoring session, the session is saved, annotated by the tutor and mapped back to a standard.  Teachers have access to all this information and can see by individual student, class or grade where students struggle the most. The analytics are real-time and can be delivered as often as required, including the very next day.

Advanced Diagnostics

With all the data captured by Tutor.com from each learning session, it becomes much easier to track learning trends among students and deliver it to teachers and administrators.

Each year, we survey our tutors to find out how we’re doing.  Do tutors have the right resources?  Are the online classroom tools helping make sessions effective and efficient?   What else can Tutor.com do to support the folks who will deliver 1.1 million online tutoring and homework help sessions this year alone?

Well the results are in!  Approximately 77% of our 2,000+ tutors participated and more than 95% report they are satisfied or very satisfied with their experience at Tutor.com.   Tutors answered questions regarding the support, resources and software provided by Tutor.com. They are overwhelmingly satisfied in the areas described below:

• 93.1% with provided resources
• 94.0% with the feedback provided by their Tutor Mentor
• 94.9% with the level of communication from Tutor.com
• 90.6% with the online classroom software
• 93.5% with their interactions with Tutor Support
• 93.2% with the students’ overall educational experience

 Online tutoring is an ideal position for men and women who require flexibility and a remote work environment.    Tutors can work from anywhere and choose their own hours. Approximately 10% of the tutors are affiliated with the military in some way, most often as a spouse or retiree.  Military families move often and Tutor.com allows a spouse stationed in San Antonio, Texas to keep tutoring when she is  re-located to Ramstein, Germany.   Flexibility is also key for teachers and professionals on leave to care for young children, or current teachers who tutor in the evening hours.

If you’d like to become an online tutor in physics, chemistry, calculus or statistics, please visit www.tutor.com/apply.

In just about a month, students have completed 1,000 one-to-one tutoring sessions using Tutor.com To Go™, our mobile app for iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad.  Students love this new way to get help and have given their sessions an average rating of 4.2 (on a scale of 1 – 5).  Here’s what a few students had to say about their experience with Tutor.com To Go:

“I cannot believe how much my math is improving just because of this app! Thank you tutor.com!   - Middle Grades Math Student

“I love how you can draw on the whiteboard –  Middle Grades Math Student

“this makes all my classes so much easier!  THANK YOU!  -  Biology Student

We’re not surprised to learn that 46% of the sessions are from students using their iPod Touch.  A big reason Tutor.com chose to develop first for iOS devices (aka Apple) is because they are what most people own.  According to an April 2011 Piper Jaffray report of high-school teens, 86% of digital music players purchased are iPods and over 80% of tablets purchased are iPads.  The majority of teens with a  mobile device can use our app today.

Of course we want all students to have the advantage of Tutor.com To Go and that’s why we plan on launching a version of our app for Android and other mobile operating systems later this year. 

To learn more about our development process and why we chose to create platform-native apps read Russell Greenspan, Vice President of Technology blog post  “Why We Went Native.”  Good stuff!

Have you tried Tutor.com To Go?  Let us know what you think by posting a review on iTunes!

There’s been quite a bit of discussion in the mobile development world regarding HTML5 websites which run in a mobile browser vs. platform-native apps which run directly in the native operating system. With the passing of our 1,000^th mobile session (woo hoo!), I thought it might be helpful to explain why we went the platform-native route in building Tutor.com To Go™ for Apple iOS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad), and in the near future, Android devices.

Without question,  HTML5 is a great technology that we use at Tutor.com every day on our websites. It definitely has a place in mobile development and many websites can be effectively implemented as mobile websites utilizing HTML5.

Like all technology tools, however, the trick is selecting the right tool for the right job, and the best choice for a high quality education app like Tutor.com To Go is platform-native. Platform-native applications offer these advantages over HTML5 websites:

Access to Features

Some key device features, such as the camera, are unavailable to HTML5 websites. This means a platform-native app is the only way to allow a user to take and share a picture with their tutor in real-time. This is a key feature of our app, since it allows students to easily share their assignments. Similarly, a platform-native app is the only way to allow users to add pictures already on their mobile device to their Tutor.com Locker.

Another key feature which is not supported on all mobile browsers is socket-level connections, which provide fast communication. This means platform-native apps provide the fastest communication speed between tutors and students.

Additionally, other mobile app features like fast application switching and common user interface controls do not exist for HTML5 websites.

Richer User Experience

Above all else, performance is the critical component of user experience, and platform-native apps can better take advantage of the device’s hardware, especially in graphics-heavy conditions like our collaborative whiteboard. This means users of our whiteboard will have a better, smoother experience from a platform-native app.

Furthermore, platform-native applications are inherently tailored to the device’s physical specifications (like screen size and resolution), and follow user-interface guidelines that are consistent across all apps on the platform.  This makes for a higher-quality and more unified experience.

Standards Compliance

HTML5 is still an emerging technology. This means that browser vendors (and on Android there are more than 5 of them) have some “flexibility” in how they adhere to certain standards (for example, local data storage, gradient fills, web sockets, etc.). This inevitably means different markup and different logic for different browsers, and it means you need to test the website in all mobile browsers and browser versions. This leads to fragmented code that is difficult to maintain for a consistent experience for all users.

Your Local App Store

Each OS vendor offers its own app store, and users are accustomed to finding and installing apps via their device’s app store. HTML5 websites cannot be added to an app store. Similarly, users are accustomed to launching installed apps from their device’s home screen, and there is no automatic way to add your website to the user’s home screen.

 I hope this brief dive into the platform-native vs. HTML5 website debate was helpful in understanding why we chose to build a platform-native app for iOS devices. We look forward to a similar Android version of Tutor.com To Go in the near future!

- Russell Greenspan, VP Technology

Finding a homework, test-prep, or career resource in our SkillsCenter™ Resource Library just got easier.  We’ve redesigned the interface to show you all the materials available for a given subject—from websites and videos to sample tests and worksheets—at a glance.

That means no more scrolling through page after page of search results, looking for the kind of resource that works best for you.  Just choose the subject you need help with and pick the resource type you want.

For example, let’s say you’re taking algebra and need help with factoring.  Here’s what you’ll see:

Only interested in videos?  No problem—we’ve got 13 of them, with a step-by-step explanation in each one.  Looking for a worksheet to practice your FOILing?  We have those too.

You can pick one of our top-rated resources from this summary page, or click the “See all” links to get more of the type of resource you want.

If your local public library or school has Tutor.com, you can check out the new and improved SkillsCenter anytime—just visit your library’s website to sign in with your library card number, or sign in at our homepage with your username and password.

Please let us know what you think, and check back at blog.tutor.com for more news about the SkillsCenter.

If you thought we were excited when we passed the six million online tutoring sessions mark , then you should see our office today! We’ve created some pretty cool education technology tools over the years, but nothing compares to our new mobile app, Tutor.com To Go. For the very first time, a student can connect to a tutor using their iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Our app is FREE to all Tutor.com account holders.

Tutor.com To Go lets students:

1. Connect to a live tutor for one-to-one help
2. Save and review past tutoring sessions
3. Store essays, homework problems, and other assignments in their mobile locker, and share items from their locker with a tutor
4. Take pictures of assignments, textbook pages etc.. from their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and store them in their locker
5. Access thousands of videos, sample tests, and other educational resources from the SkillsCenter™ Resource Library

It’s much cooler to use the app than to read about it. Go to www.tutor.com/togo to download the app.

You can also check out a demo on the iPad brought to you by our own Russ Greenspan, VP of Technology. Russ shows off our new online classroom optimized for the mobile environment. You’ll see how easy it is to take a picture of your assignment and work on it together with yourtutor.

We’d love to hear what you think about Tutor.com To Go. Email jkohn@tutor.com with your experience!

We love reading student’s comments after their sessions. They make us think, they offer improvements and suggestions, but mostly? They make us smile.

Today, we offer you a series of real quotes from kids who all think Tutor.com is pretty great.

• This is the best thing to ever happen to me since the George Foreman Grill!!!!!!!! I am smarter than a fifth grader!!!!!!!! –11th grade, Algebra
• I think April was very good i will be back every day and this was helping me alot this is better than Video Games!— 9th grade, Algebra
• alright this is definitely the best thing that has ever happened to me since the ipod came out. –Navy student
• “This is the best thing since sliced bread.” –Air Force member, Algebra
• “This is the best educational tool since the pencil!!” – Air Force Member – Essay Writing

What do you think Tutor.com is greater than?

What is the most rewarding part of tutoring?

The most rewarding part about tutoring is the moment when everything you are going over “clicks” for the student and they get really excited about learning.

What interests do you have outside of Tutor.com?

Recently, I have been experimenting in the kitchen in order to improve my cooking skills. I also enjoy brushing up on useless pop culture trivia, listening to podcasts such as Freakonomics Radio, as well as watching documentaries and reading books that describe different viewpoints to various topics.

Any big events or activities coming up?

I’m currently applying to dental schools and have been planning on backpacking in South America this spring.

What Students Say About Online Tutoring with Stein

But you don’t have to take our word about what a great tutor Stein is; read what the students have to say about him! These are actual, unedited quotes from students after having a session with this Tutor of the Month.

• Stein E. was a fantastic tutor!! He was super patient throughout the process and explained every step clearly so that I would not skip over it without fully understanding it. He was really good at explaining, too, so I wouldn’t not understand a part of a concept. Thank you so much for your help this evening, Stein E.!
• at first i didnt get anything that we were talking about but now that my tutor drew everything out i totally get what we are talking about!
• I love this program and the tutors i dont think i could live without it.
• Stein, you are my hero.
• My tutor was EXCELLENT!!! I learned alot & he was super quick. i liked it! thanks!

We look forward to hearing more about Stein’s travels and reading great comments from Tutor.com students. Interested in becoming a tutor? Apply now!

Join Our Teacher Advisory Board.

It’s my great pleasure to have joined Tutor.com several weeks ago to lead the team designing and implementing an exciting next generation service: MyPDLive – funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  An idea whose time has come, this service will use Tutor.com’s robust online platform to respond to the immediate learning needs of teachers.  Teachers will get the answers, ideas and instructional resource support they need when they need it by connecting online with master teacher/coaches.

We’re starting with a pilot at school districts around the country using Algebra I as the initial subject.  As part of the pilot, we’re assembling a cohort of current Algebra I teachers to share their classroom perspective  as we adapt the program to the needs of teachers.

This volunteer Teacher Advisory Board will meet together once a month for an hour or two, virtually, to review resources, ideas and approaches.  We think this will be an interesting collegial group and offer members the chance to share ideas and best approaches and give us their authentic classroom feedback on the new service.  Participants will be encouraged to add membership in this cohort group to their professional credentials and to view participation as a professional development opportunity.

If you are an 8^th or 9^th grade teacher currently teaching Algebra I in a school and would like to volunteer to be on the Teacher Advisory Board please email me at plivingston@tutor.com.  Thanks for your interest in Tutor.com.

Sincerely,

Pamela Livingston
Tutor.com