umesh sharma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
A Tutor Half a World Away, but as Close as a Keyboard
COCHIN, India - A few minutes before 7 on a recent morning, Greeshma Salin swiveled her chair to face the computer, slipped on her headset and said in faintly accented English, "Hello, Daniela." Seconds later she heard the response, "Hello, Greeshma."
That same morning in Cochin, an English teacher, Anya Tharakan, 24, directed her student away from the subject of video games to concentrate on a passage from "Alice in Wonderland," enlivening the lessons with puzzles and picture games.Ms. Tharakan, who tutors Serena Marinaro among others, said a bit of the cultural gulf was being bridged when students asked her "How big is your home?" or "Do you have friends at work?" or "Can you send me your photo?" For her part, Ms. Tharakan is learning about soccer and rap music from her students.
Thomas Marinaro, a chiropractor in Los Angeles and the father of Daniela and Serena, had been unhappy with the face-to-face tutoring he had previously arranged for his daughters at home. After three months with Growing Stars, however, Dr. Marinaro said the girls' math skills were already much improved. As a bonus, it cost a third of what he paid the home tutor.
Dr. Marinaro said that he had misgivings when he first considered enrolling his daughters for English tutoring. "I thought, how could somebody from India teach them English?" But after a few weeks of monitoring, he said he relaxed. "I want my girls to develop a good vocabulary and write better, and I believe they are learning to do that."
Biju Mathew, an Indian-born software engineer, set up Growing Stars after moving to the Silicon Valley five years ago to work for a technology start-up company. In India, he had been paying $10 a month for twice-a-week tutoring sessions for his children.
In the United States, he found, a similar service could cost $50 or more per hour. The idea of homework outsourcing was born, and the company began offering its services in January 2004.
Growing Stars has been cautious, offering its students a choice of United States- or India-based tutors for English. It charges a $10 premium above its normal $20 rate for students who choose a tutor in the United States. When parents have expressed concern over a tutor's accent, the firm has offered a change of instructor.
Other online tutoring firms in the United States adopt varied approaches. Tutor.com, for instance, uses only tutors based in North America. SmarThinking of Washington, D.C., has tutors in the United States but also has instructors in South Africa, the Philippines, India and Chile. However, only those in the United States provide English lessons.
"We haven't found any cultural divide," said SmarThinking's chief executive and co-founder, Burck Smith. Eliminating factors such as skin color, appearance, gender and accent made the Internet "more egalitarian than most classrooms," he said.
The demand for online tutoring is reflected in the firm's 50 percent growth rate in the last few years. Twenty new clients - including high schools and colleges - have signed on for tutoring beginning this fall.
Firms like Growing Stars are aggressively looking to expand their online tutoring under federal programs. This summer, for instance, Growing Stars' tutors ran a successful pilot for the Upward Bound program at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
The program, financed by the federal Department of Education, helps children of high school age get into college. With the start of the academic year this fall, Growing Stars expects to provide online tutoring in math to 80 students from Marist's Upward Bound program.
Also, the firm has just been approved as a licensed tutoring provider in California under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Currently, Growing Stars is trying to find a way for its teachers to be fingerprinted by the Department of Justice to meet legal requirements of the program.
Mr. Philip, the chairman, said his company's work would help make Americans more competitive.
"Offshore tutoring," he said, "is a step toward ensuring that we are not always beaten in competition against Japanese carmakers, Indian software firms and Chinese manufacturers."
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