No responses yet for my tutoring services despite the ultra-low rate I set (on purpose). According to google analytics, I’ve only had about 50 visitors from Seattle in total to my website after the announcement so this is hardly surprising. Searching google for “seattle japanese private lessons” showed my site at #19 which means it might as well not even be there. You either want to be within the first 3 or #10 which is first on the second page.<\/p>\n
So I can either be patient or expand my audience. As I briefly mentioned, I really prefer live meetings over online for a variety of reasons. And by “live” I don’t mean some kind of lame marketing term (*cough* Microsoft *cough*) but the technology platform often referred to in layman terms as “real life”.<\/p>\n
Learning language is an interactive process. Personally, I think there’s a huge problem if the speaking ratio between the teacher and student is not near 50%. Unfortunately, almost all language classes consist of the teacher speaking 80%+ percent of the time depending on the class size which is partly the reason why they are so ineffective. So in order to interact with the student, I need a medium where communication can easily flow both ways.<\/p>\n
Let’s see if modern technology can work out something for me. I prefer meeting face-to-face because seeing a person’s face and body language is important in language and communication. This is especially important for teaching languages for obvious reasons and is very important to the learning process in conversation practice.<\/p>\n
Well, while I haven’t tried it yet, I’ve got a webcam on my monitor so I guess that’s a potentially reasonable solution. I look crazy when I see myself via the webcam but maybe that’s just how I always look. (A scary thought.) So I’ve significantly increased my audience to anybody in the world with a fast internet connection and a webcam of reasonable quality.<\/p>\n
Another advantage of real life is that it’s trivially easy to show and share information. All you need is a pen and paper and you could easily write things out, point at them as you explain, and have the other person interact with it in kind. You can even bring your laptop and easily share websites and all sorts of stuff with virtually no hassle.<\/p>\n
While I would prefer we write things by hand for kanji and kana writing exercise, I’m willing to compromise with the keyboard if I can share my computer screen somehow with the other person. I know Skype has built-in chat but I really need something where I can point to other stuff to show what I’m talking about and have the other person do the same while adding their own input. While I prefer my hands, I guess a mouse cursor can work. I don’t mind installing an app but would prefer the other person not have to do the same. Hopefully something integrated with the browser.<\/p>\n
If I can find such a solution, I’m willing to open up my services to anybody with a webcam and fast internet connection. I might have to beef up my internet connection as well. And I suppose I’ll need to figure something out with Paypal, Google Checkout, or some service of that nature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No responses yet for my tutoring services despite the ultra-low rate I set (on purpose). According to google analytics, I’ve only had about 50 visitors from Seattle in total to my website after the announcement so this is hardly surprising. … Continue reading