Sell your teaching skills online

Many things can be sold online now and I just come across BrightStorm (see ads above) that allows teachers to sell their lessons!

Re-considering my first job - as a tutor

I have found my backup income! Quoting from the report, Singapore emerging as 'tuition nation'

Physics tutor Phang Yu Hon has nearly 90 students and earns nearly 20,000 Singapore dollars (15,000 US dollars) a month, the report said. The 41-year-old gave up his research engineering job in 1994.

Probably without word of mouth, I imagine can get ~20 students and monthly ~S$ ... 4000 is quite nice. All thanks to the high pressure by teachers, who unshamefully asking parents to get tutors for their kids. Anyone interested for a mathematics tutor may check out my answers at Yahoo!Answers.

It isn't just the money. 20 students/week at 1.33 students/session, 5 days/week and 2 hours/session means about 3 sessions/day for 5 days/week, or about only 30 hour work-week.

Standing in Yahoo!Answers

I am recently given the "Top Contributor" title after having 30% of my answers voted or selected as the best answer, and earned enough points to Level 4!Too bad no $ attached :(

I should consider solving maths problems as my hobby :)

Will teachers like me?

It has been coming to attention by more parents that students are working harder than adults. Although my son is still very young or small, I have this idea years before I was promoted to father.

I plan to teach my child that an important aspect of studying in school is to learn. Thus, doing homework ... not about answering to the "boss" aka the teacher. is towards this goal too. I don't consider cannot finish homework as a direct problem of the child. I will focus on whether he has learned what is being taught.

If no, then the problem is not he not able to finish all the homework, but he hasn't learned the concepts yet. Thus, he should stop doing the homework without understanding rather than just try to finish the homework.

If yes, then he doesn't really need to finish the homework. When the amount of homework is too much, I suggest be smart to browse through and select those that can give you the necessary and sufficient practices to learn and apply knowledge learned.

So, future teachers of my child please take note :)

You can't hear it, but ultrasound is calling for you.

This site, Medical Career Training reminds of the drama series Heroes, where the lead character, Peter Petrelli is a nurse. It is getting more common to find male nurse. Indeed, it is not only in the nursing profession, but the in the field of medical careers, which is one of the fastest growing areas of employment today.

Medical career is not restricted only to physicians and nurses, but also consists of many other roles since a number of sophisticated medical instruments, such as Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), require a team of qualified people to operate them. Of these, one interesting career is to be a Sonographer, by getting trained in an ultrasound technician school.

Sonographers use special equipment to direct sound waves into areas of a patient's body. Ultrasonographers properly operate the ultrasound equipment, which forms an image that may be videotaped, transmitted, or photographed for diagnosis and/or interpretation by a physician. Sonography is becoming increasingly attractive as patients seek safer treatment options, and sonography provides an alternative to radiology procedures.

I am also in the medical industry, as a technical researcher, mainly dealing with CT and MRI images. Ultrasound is a much easier, safer and faster way of medical imaging than CT and MRI.

You can check out where are these ultrasound tech schools from the site and other details. They categorize them according to which state there are in, and also a list of online schools.

An example of a flat world

I read this interesting report about a school boy putting up an angry message from the wife of his Dean after he called their home phone to ask a question regarding snow day.

In Chinese, there is a common phrase "有话好好说" usually said to some angry fellow to suggest him to calm down and talk about the issue at hand constructively. In this era where anybody can publish and broadcast, this has become very important. The Dean's wife should have politely responded to the student in a voice mail, even if she has to be assertive or use an accusative tone, since she has the right to be angry. With Internet, she is now made famous where virtually everyone can listen to her voice mail.

Actually, similar incidents have happened here in Singapore and Malaysia a couple of times already. Seems like the US is a bit lacking in this aspect :)

Easy = Difficult

Recently weeks there are discussions on a difficult mathematics examination paper in this year PSLE.
It seems that some questions in it were difficult.

To me, there is not much different if an easy or a difficult question is set. If it is easy, then most will probably score. If it is difficult, then most will probably not score. Overall, it doesn't really affect my score/grade. Rather, I dislike easy question because I must make the efforts to do and get it right, whereas for a difficult question, I may choose to skip it but my score for it may be the same with many who spent time doing it yet didn't get it right.

Furthermore, I am one of those [selfish ones] who when spotted a faulty question will keep quiet and move on, since eventually the teachers have to void that question. I hate it when at later times, especially near to the end of the given time, someone raise the issue and the teacher announce an correction to the question. I think that is being unfair by making correction half way through an examination.

What matters is when a question is easy or difficult only to you or a small group of students. Otherwise, no problem.

Thinking further, I suspect it was the nice but unrealistic pictures that parents/teachers have given to students that causes some of them to be annoyed by not being able to score 100% due to some out of scope difficult question. I think this is an issue that should be addressed. The over ideal system in school is harmful in terms of getting students ready for the world. People who grew up in system-less environment probably have much higher ability to adapt and excel in the real world.

Argue or discuss

Person A wrote something. Person B disagrees, and conclude that A is trying to do something bad. A is curious to know why would B think that way. There are two ways, one way is to ask or question B directly how did he come to his conclusion; another is to put forth the reasons of A to see whether B still have the same conclusion and think that A is trying to do something bad. A uses second way, but B see it as trying to argue and refuse to respond.

I think argue is personal and destructive. If it is not personal, but objective, I think the above is call discussion. Discussion is a good way for learning and communication.

Why do we need 0-100 scores in marking test? Why not just a pass and fail grade? Better and accurate feedbacks help people to learn.

Is science stream better?

During my school days, 20 over years ago, the common understanding is that of the three streams, science/arts/commerce, science is somehow considered more prestigious.

However, looking at the money earning potential or the serving mankind potential, we can't say science stream is the best.

I guess that probably this is a self serving bias. The people in the educational industry seem to be bias with such view. Thus, the better performing students choose the illusionarily better science stream. Naturally, students in the other streams seem to be poor in science stream related skills. However, I suspect, that similarly, many of those who chose science stream have no other better choice because they are poor in arts/commerce related skills.

I wonder... may be it is indeed better, only as a result of this bias perception.