online/inhome homeschool tutors

[john]

Curious to know how many homeschoolers would consider trying in-home tutors or online tutors to supplement their child's education. And, if any one could help... what are homeschool parents looking for when they hire a tutor whether online or in-home.

Thanks for your wisdom!

[ScottHughes]

It depends what you mean by "online tutor."

I would never pay for anything online, because you can find any information online that you want for free.

Google is the best tutor, in my opinion. Of course, there are plenty of places where children can find answers to their questions for free, in addition to Google. Also, there are websites that have learning programs and such to help a child learn.

[bbaron312]

Things like google and wikipedia tend to not produce quality, accredited information that a online-school database does provide. On-line tutoring is the same as having a tutor, only direct correspondence is done via a computer and not face to face.

[fastturtle]

besides offering static educational information, one of the important factors of tutoring is to help student with live questions. unless the student has a really high self-learning skills, a tutor online or offline should be very helpful.

[Theodore]

There are some subjects better learned with a teacher helping, whether that's a parent, a professor at the local community college, or a tutor. Personally, I enjoyed my community college courses, you get to interact with other students and it's a better option than tutoring imho unless health or transportation issues prevent you from taking outside courses.

Regarding Wikipedia, it's generally quite accurate except in the areas of politics, morality, or commercial products. I've used it a fair bit and found its academic entries to be accurate and certainly comprehensive, I'm not sure why some people rate it so low. College textbooks often contain inaccuracies as well, but you're stuck with the given text - people can't post updates in real time to fix things.

[SimpleSchooling]

Things like google and wikipedia tend to not produce quality, accredited information that a online-school database does provide. On-line tutoring is the same as having a tutor, only direct correspondence is done via a computer and not face to face.

I disagree, well sometimes. I'm finishing my Masters degree in toxicology (actually taking exams next week) and I've written several dozen scientific papers over the years. So here's what I've found out about Wikipedia: generally speaking it is pretty darn accurate when it comes to science. We are not allowed, of course, to cite Wikipedia for papers, but I always check there first for the big picture of whatever it is I'm writing about, and then go look it up in NCBI and the journals for references.

I love Wikipedia, you do have to double check everything, but that is true with any research. You can't just take one opinion.

Just curious about this tutoring stuff - I find that for me myself, I prefer to stay within the homeschool community for ALL resources unless they are absolutely unavailable. So if this tutoring program was an outside source I personally wouldn't be interested. There are so many smart hoemschool moms out there who culd tutor my kid, why look elsewhere? Even our guitar teacher is a former homeschool kid.

[ploppenheimer.mcgee]

How old is your homeschooler? If you're teaching at the high-school level, another fantastic and *free* online resource is www.shmoop.com . It has carefully-researched and incredibly thorough resources on literature, history and poetry, but it's written by recent Masters and PhD grads who have a great sense of humor. I'm actually done with college, but I find myself browsing it for fun! It's also interactive, which means it can help you organize multiple arguments into a rough draft for an essay. I only wish I'd had something this engaging to help me out when I was still a teenager.

[D WALL]

If you can find an online tutor who offers a first consultation free, you can judge the kind of instruction your kids will get before you buy anything. I think they are available.

[rebecca7]

If I really felt that my child needed it, I'd probably consider it. But it would ultimately depend on the cost.

[ruby.mein]

of course, if you want your child have a home tutor then the tutor must have all the qualification.. the ability to teach your child...

[MelissaM]

An online tutor could be very useful, especially if you are physically isolated from other homeschoolers. I'm sure most homeschool teachers do a great job but you can't be an expert in everything.

I would definitely check their credentials though, and there may be the possibility of just doing particular modules with them to supplement your own studies.

For instance, you might be an okay writer, but want to give your children a chance to be a better one. How can you teach someone to be better than you without utilising other resources? Utilising someone who can elevate your child's sentence structure and inspire them to look at things more critically and make links in subtext that they wouldn't otherwise make, can be a Godsend.

Of course it depends on the topic, the level that you child is at, and the resources you have at your disposal.

Good luck!

[romanwrigley]

John,

IMO a tutor can be seen as just another resource for homeschooling parents to use. And the most important quality for a tutor to have is effectiveness!

[Buggzz]

Tutors are for many different reasons in education. The primary being to find and fill in the blanks of one's understanding of subject matter. Another is to put ideas into proper context, so those ideas can be used to analyse correctly in digging deeper into subject matter.
The concept of having another POV is also useful.

[LloydBurrell]

I guess they are a good option as long as he or she keeps track-together with parents-of the child's education. Essential qualities are, from my point of view, flexibility, style and empathy. Quite the same with the ones needed in regular teaching.

LloydBurrell

[Buggzz]

I agree with flexibility, style, and empathy as long as, fexibility doesn't mean, flexible worldviews. You definately need one that shares your worldview.