“Library offers free online tutoring” plus 1 more |
| Library offers free online tutoring Posted: 23 Aug 2010 07:58 AM PDT By David Vitrano L'Observateur LAPLACE – One of the time-tested methods of aiding a child who is struggling in school is through tutoring. The intensive, one-on-one sessions can be very effective, but unfortunately, they can be very expensive as well. A new offering of the St. John the Baptist Parish Public Library System offers all the benefits of a personal tutor without any of the cost usually associated. Area residents will have the opportunity to get help with their classes through Tutor. com, an online tutoring tool.Offered through the state library system, the free service provides a live — via computer — one-on-one tutor in a wide variety of subjects. "It's a live tutor," said Roberta August, library supervisor. "The tutors help them walk through the process." To take advantage of the service, students can access the site either at the library or remotely, provided they have a St. John library card. To access the site remotely, users can visit www.stjohn.lib.la.us. There they can click the link to the state library site. Another link will take them to Tutor.com. Tutors are available in math, science, social studies and English for fourth- through 12th-grade students. They can also help with many standardized tests and lower level college courses. Students can access tutors 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the tutor will remain in the session as long as help is needed. Free demonstrations are available at all parish branches. Tutor.com took the place of Brainfuse's HelpNow!, which was only accessible for a few hours in the evening. It joined other online academic help sites available through the library such as Learning Express, which offers practice tests for everything from the ACT to the U.S. Citizenship Test. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Chinese after-school tutoring doubles as child care Posted: 22 Aug 2010 09:44 PM PDT Editor's note: Fifteen Penn State journalism students spent their spring break in Shanghai, participating in the second international reporting class offered by the College of Communications.  MCT photo/Tamara Conrad, Penn State Chen Hong, right, helps students with homework at her tutoring program. After the semester, their reports were sent to McClatchy's Washington Bureau for distribution to newspapers around the country. The Centre Daily Times will run a story and photos each Monday providing insight into everything from education to fashion in China. SHANGHAI — Conventional wisdom has it that education-obsessed Chinese parents send their children to years of arduous after-school tutoring to give them a leg up on the country's brutal college admissions tests. There may be more to it than that, however. Those after-school classes — whether they focus on academics, the arts or sports — are in some cases the most convenient day care available to families with two working parents. "In the city," said Du Yongmei, a Shanghai mother who works outside the home, "the living rhythm is quite fast, so that (parents) have no time to take care of the children. As the living conditions and income increases, more and more people will love to send children to tutors after school." In China, it's common for grandparents to care for children after school. However, if the grandparents are dead, too old or live too far away, that's not an option. Other families may have the opposite problem: They think that four grandparents and two parents will spoil the child. "The grandparents take care of the children very, very much, so that it usually harms the children's development, as well as their learning," Du said. While these are a few of the reasons some parents give for enrolling children in after-school programs, most people, including Hoi Suen, an educational psychology professor at Penn State, still think that parents enroll children in tutoring programs only to get them into good colleges. "China is a test-driven culture," Suen said. "This is the reason parents enroll their children in after-school programs. If they don't, they'll be looked at as irresponsible." This is typical in other Asian countries, as well, especially Japan and South Korea, where rigorous afterschool programs in so-called "cram schools" are typically part of a child's primary education. There's a practical reason for the cramming: College admissions tests determine which college a student may enter, and the choice of college often determines a child's life course. However, Chen Hong, a retired primary school teacher who runs an afterschool program, agreed that Chinese parents have different motives for sending their children to after-school programs. While many are trying to give their children a better future, she said, there also are many hard-working parents who don't have time or family members to watch their children. After-school programs in Shanghai vary from formal, with timed class sessions, to informal, similar to day care centers in the United States. Some children attend immediately after school each weekday; others go a few days a week. Some programs charge by the month, while others charge per class. Chen runs her afterschool program, which Du's child attends, from her home. It has about 20 children in the first through fifth grades, and she charges parents 1,000 yuan — $150 — a month, which is average for after-school programs. In Shanghai, the 2008 average monthly wage was 3,292 yuan, or $485, and the minimum monthly wage was 1,120 yuan, $164, according to the Shanghai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau. Children aren't the only ones who face intense competition. Xu Anqi, a sociologist at the Center for Family Research at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the work force in China is very competitive, and that pressures parents to work long hours. In America and Japan, it's common for one parent to quit his or her job to raise children, but Chinese parents can't afford to quit, Xu said. In these cases, parents either can send their children to after-school tutors or hire baby sitters, and they'd rather leave their children with tutors because of the competition to perform well academically. "Parents are very busy, so they worry about their children," Xu said. "They want their children to be taken care of and want them to be well-educated." At Chen's program, children arrive after school at around 4 p.m. The students do their homework, and then around 5 p.m. Chen serves dinner. The children start their homework again at 6 p.m. Parents come to pick up their children at around 8:30 p.m. Parents come knocking on her door to beg her to watch their children, Chen said. "Chinese children are like the sun," Chen said. "Everything revolves around them."
We ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments, spam, and other remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of CentreDaily.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Yahoo! News Search Results for Tutoring To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment