“City to boost its extra tutoring program by $10M” plus 1 more

---

City to boost its extra tutoring program by $10M Posted: 18 Jan 2011 04:14 PM PST The city cut a deal to spend $10 million on a program for extra tutoring after months of pressure from parents and advocacy groups, sources told the Daily News. Facing mounting opposition over his controversial pick for chancellor in the fall, the city reluctantly agreed to spend the money, the sources said. For several months last fall, city Education Department officials said principals were responsible for providing services for the 100,000 more students who failed state tests last year - with no additional resources. Mayor Bloomberg yesterday, though, announced the city would fund extra tutoring at the 532 schools where two-thirds of kids failed the exams last year. Bloomberg attributed the change in policy to the "new chancellor." "We're constantly trying to come up with new things," he added, declining to identify where the money was coming from out of the city budget. The mayor's decision earned praise from Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who along with the advocacy group Coalition for Educational Justice championed the issue. "When we raise the bar on student performance we cannot let kids who need extra help slip through the cracks. Today the City is living up to that responsibility," de Blasio said. rmonahan@nydailynews.com 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 Five Filters featured site: So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?.

Students can now get help from home–Free online tutoring now available to UMSL students Posted: 18 Jan 2011 02:20 PM PST Starting this semester, University of Missouri-St. Louis students will have free access to tutoring from anywhere an Internet connection can be found. The online tutoring service NetTutor is now available to all students and can be accessed via Blackboard. The NetTutor icon is located under the "Tools" tab on the sidebar of any course homepage on MyGateway. Once in the NetTutor system, a student chooses between four areas of tutoring: tutoring for the Business College, math tutoring, science tutoring or world languages tutoring. There is also writing center tutoring through which a student can submit a paper for editing. Within the four specific areas of tutoring, a NetTutor user can submit a question in the Q&A section of the site and receive a response no more than 24 hours later. Or a student can join a live tutorial and have an instant messaging dialogue with an online tutor. The instant messaging interface tries to be as much like a dry erase board as possible. Text can be written anywhere and copying and pasting a chart or equation from another document or site is relatively hassle-free. For instance, a student can access the NetTutor's math live tutorial section and ask for help solving an equation with two unknowns. Afterwards, a tutor named Robert with a bachelor of science in computer science and math minor from Radford University was immediately available to demonstrate and explain how to do so. The instant messaging portion of NetTutor is available seven days a week until 10pm. Questions for the Q&A section can be submitted anytime. Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Teresa Thiel is the individual responsible for identifying NetTutor and bringing it to UM-St. Louis students. "We wanted to try online tutoring because we are offering more online courses, so online tutoring makes sense," said Thiel. "Also, NetTutor covers many subjects for tutoring, more than we currently offer in formal tutoring labs on campus." As online counterparts to areas of academia become more and more common, tutoring has proven to be no different. Many companies in the education business, such as Kaplan, Inc. and Sylvan Learning, offer similar types of online tutoring. Thiel says UM-St. Louis chose NetTutor because, "NetTutor tutors all work from a central tutoring facility where they have access to textbooks and help if they need it. They offer a wide range of subjects and have good hours. Also, their system works seamlessly with the Blackboard course management system we use. We also got a good price from them, so all those factors went into the decision." Although Thiel was the one behind bringing NetTutor to UM-St. Louis, she is currently on a Fullbright Fellowship at the University of Leeds in England. Ronald Bieniek is the acting Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences, and is the one responsible for the implementation of NetTutor this semester. Bieniek is usually as physics professor at Missouri Science and Technology and that school's Director of New Faculty Programs. "[NetTutor's] purpose is to increase student success," Bieniek said. "It's not just help. The idea is to take control of your success. Sometimes you need guidance or validation and this is the source of it." Bieniek said that the decision to keep NetTutor available to students in the future will depend largely on how much it is utilized this semester. 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 Five Filters featured site: So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?.

You are subscribed to email updates from Tutoring - Yahoo! News Search Results To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610