Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Day Two: Online Training & Best Practices

Was it just me, or was training today a ride on the Vortex?

Thankfully, Jenn Slone popped in and shared her vision in regards to the online tutoring she helped to create last Winter quarter. Although the piloting program wasn't, er, exactly successful, I guess we have identified some of the gut-plunges (to keep up with the roller-coaster metaphor). I do agree that our current route is simply too wordy in the instructions and potentially overwhelming for technologically-naive students--we may be back at the first rail, but we have more experience now to develop something more useful in the future . . .

I was so glad to have the sample papers from McClain's class--the explication of "Daddy" matched up very well with our student's "Snake" paper. I need to publicize more often how intellectually you folks approach your work--working with you on identifying "Best Practices" was a fantastic conversation. I especially liked Caleb's observation that we will be "doing less, just more intensely"--which is just what we need.

Finally, not to be the debbie-downer, but I wish we had not ended by twisting through the "corkscrew of imbalance" in regards to the writing/math challenges of balanced work n the Center . . . one thing to keep in mind, though, is that although we all tutor, we do have different approaches and philosophies to it. I'm sure we can learn from each other as we continue to work side-by-side this year.

So there! Here's our Blog for All today. Enjoy your evenings!

1 comment:

Brandi said...

I still think a hypertext link will be the best thing to get students to the right page as easily as possible. (I, personally, love hypertext links ^_^) I'm curious about online tutoring but I'm not a big fan of chat, so we'll see how that works out with me.

Ah, apparently I missed the "corkscrew of imbalance" bit of the conversation! Perhaps that was a good thing?