Title:
Kids in Britain + Online Tutors in India = Divided
Opinions
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
India was once a colony in the British Empire. But
now Indian tutors are helping to teach math to some
British children over high-speed Internet
connections. Early results suggest that online
tutoring may improve student performance. But not
everyone is happy at this so-called outsourcing of
tutors. Students at Raynham Primary School in London
gather at three-thirty for their after-school math
lessons. Five time zones and thousands of kilometers
away, their math tutors are also arriving for class.
Each pupil gets an individual online tutor. The
students work with activities on their computer
screen and wear a headset and microphone to talk to
their tutor. Their classroom teacher, Altus Basson,
says he has seen an improvement in results.
"Children who struggle to focus in class focus a lot
better on the laptops," he says. Nine-year-old Samia
Abdul-Kadir says she enjoys the online lessons. "It
helps me because sometimes when we're doing it in
class, I don't hear the teacher very much and I
don't understand, but online is better," she says.
Her friend, Abdul-Fadil Badori, agrees. He says,
"Online, you can hear it, it's not shared by
everyone, everyone has different topics they're
learning."Tom Hooper started the company that
provides the online tutoring. The company is called
BrightSpark Education. He says "Children today feel
very confident online, they feel very engaged, they
feel very in control. And that's half the battle
with education. Give them control, make them feel
confident and enjoy their learning and you'll see
them start to improve and embrace it."Online
tutoring costs between twenty and twenty-five
dollars an hour. An online tutor is about half the
cost of traditional face-to-face coaching. But some
people say an Internet connection is not enough of a
connection for teaching and learning. Kevin Courtney
is deputy general secretary of Britain's National
Union of Teachers. He says there's a "really
important emotional connection between a teacher and
a child, whether it's a whole class or whether it's
one-to-one. You need that immediacy of feedback, and
we're not convinced that that can happen across an
Internet connection. In one of the wealthiest
countries in the world, we think that we can afford
to have teachers with the genuine emotional
connection there with the children."BrightSpark
Education says the online tutoring is used only as
an addition to supplement regular teaching. The
company says its service does not represent a threat
to teachers' jobs in Britain.Some parents say they
are satisfied with the results. And what about the
children? Some say they love it. But at least one
declared: "I hate maths!" So math -- or maths, as
the British call it -- is still not everyone's
favorite subject even with the latest technology to
teach it. For VOA Special English, I'm Alex
Villareal. You can watch a video of the online
tutoring by going to voaspecialenglish.com. You can
also find English teaching activities plus MP3s,
podcasts and transcripts of our programs.
Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
To post a comment:
• Click "Comment using..." in
the window below
• Click your favorite service: Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail
• Login to the service
• Click "Add a comment..."
• Post your comment in the window
Students: Please post a
comment stating what you found interesting about this video. You are
welcome to include links to your English study blogs and any
other materials you think might be useful for learning
English.
Teachers: Please post your
thoughts about this video. You are welcome to include links to
your sites, blogs, and any other materials you think might
be useful for learning English.
Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
