Published on May 21st, 2017 | by Guest

What Internet & Hardware Specs Do I Need to Start Tutoring Online?

There are few novice tutors who are high-tech savvy enough to give a smooth online lesson. However, it shouldn’t stop you from taking your own niche. Each year technology becomes smarter and easier to handle. Each program has simple and stepwise guidelines on how to use its main features.

Hence, if you decide to teach online, you’ll need a little time to handle new tools. Besides, in this article, we’ll explain what Internet and hardware specs a tutor needs to become the most required and well-paid.

Decide on the online tutoring platform

Before you craft your first outline of the lesson, you should think of the place where you’ll find your learners. I do recommend you preply.com as a global platform with the big experience in the market.

It offers both in-class and online learning options. Hence, you can connect with a student in your own city or stay at home giving Skype lessons.

If you still can’t decide what’s better Skype or traditional in-class tutoring, try a new format. In case you can’t get used to teaching through the web camera, you can always return to the most comfortable way of tutoring.

However, if you only begin teaching, give your preference to the online education. The recent statistics shows that e-learning techniques will dominate in the nearest future.

Pump up your computer or smartphone

Today anyone can teach online but not everyone could be a tutor. What I mean is that you don’t need many appliances or complex technical skills to begin teaching something you know well.

So, to pump up your computer or smartphone, you’ll simply need high-quality internet or mobile 3G/4G connection, good web camera, and headphones with a microphone. To check the coverage in your location you can always use this US map entering your city name, state or a zip code.

Generally, today a tutor can carry lessons having only a smartphone. No other digital devices will be needed. For instance, if I had to explain my students the difference between few/a few, many/much, I would prepare a few links to free online exercises. Then I would work out simple explanation schemes, and examples so that a student could understand the topic better. Of course, I would have to create a stepwise set of exercises for practicing, retention, and revision of new information.

Thus, having a smartphone with the good internet connection you are already equipped for tutoring, but without a thorough preparation, your online lessons can become weak and ineffective.

Find your comfortable tools to prepare and give lessons

To schedule lessons

You can use this complete list of scheduling tools, though I simply use TutorPanel because it helps me deal with all the organization of lessons, scheduling of my appointments, and online payments.

To find materials for lessons

This is quite a risky path because you may find too controversial materials for practicing. And by controversial I mean they may not match to the main focus of your topic. Besides, you should always check all the downloaded materials from the web because they may contain mistakes. However, if you are ready to risk, you should visit these popular platforms like Khan Academy, TED-Ed, ESL-lounge, or BritishCouncil for tutors.

To organize lessons and make plans

It’s true that you spend more time on preparation for the lesson than you actually use to bring it. Sometimes it took me 2 hours to get ready for a 40-minute Skype lesson. If you are like me and you need to control the whole situation, then you’ll need PlanBoard to organize all the materials and make a step-by-step plan. It will help you reduce the prep time and manage your tutoring with ease. You can also try its alternative PlanbookEdu that offers more features for teaching students online.

To grade your students’ success

If you need a reliable digital gradebook, then you should check one of these apps in the list of top gradebooks. Choose the one that keeps all the evaluation data and also allows you to add and share assignments with the set due dates for your students. Again, you don’t need to have perfect tech skills to understand how such tools work because each is supplemented with an easy tutorial.

In conclusion

There are many special skills good tutors must acquire. They will have to devote all their free time and efforts to master the art of teaching someone. Yet, an evolving technology becomes almost a personal assistant for them and allows to simplify many processes like preparation and assessment. What’s more, you can also save your time and nerves getting to the required location of your student. Learn how to become more flexible and professional with the right Internet and hardware specs.

Tags: hardware, Internet, need, online, specs, start, tutoring