US homework outsourced as “e-tutoring” grows — This is close but my favorite outsourcing idea is to have order takers at the McDonalds windows actually be voices from India.
PRIVATE tutors are a luxury many American families cannot afford, costing anywhere between $25(£13) to $100(£53) an hour.
But California mother Denise Robison found one online for $2.50(£1) an hour – in India.
‘It`s made the biggest difference. My daughter is literally at the top of every single one of her classes and she has never done that before,’ said Robison, a single mother from Modesto.
Her 13-year-old daughter, Taylor, is one of 1,100 Americans enrolled in Bangalore-based TutorVista, which launched US services last November with a staff of 150 “e-tutors” mostly in India with a fee of $100(£53) a month for unlimited hours.
found by Sergio Gasparrini
Hey John… Is that you on the picture? 😉
This seems to be a good service for parents who don’t have the ability and/or time to help their child.. Having it online and from India will make it affordable for more than just the rich.
Mark my word… you will soon see schools using this internally, planting students either in a classroom with a video system or on computers with bulk accounts. Not a bad thing… It it would probably be better than having the football coach teach history.
A great aid for home-schooling.
I see nothing wrong with it… resources like this, even if they are from some other country, should be readily available to students that really care to learn and want to excel. They might not have anyone else to go to if they are interested in advancing beyond what their school offers.
For example, there might be a small number of students in a high school that could easily handle a Calculus class, but they are stuck with Algebra II because there is nobody to teach something at that level. A virtual classroom with a good teacher, working directly with a limited number of students throughout the country would be an excellent educational resource. It would actually benefit the country.
“…my favorite outsourcing idea is to have order takers at the McDonalds windows actually be voices from India”
Well, it’s already happened:
Fourteen McDonalds in Oregon and southeastern Washington have been linked to the call center operated by SEI-CCS Inc, a Fargo, N.D.-based company that works closely with McDonald’s. The call taker in Grand Forks enters your order into a computer and relays it back to the home restaurant, where it pops up on a screen in the kitchen.
On the McDonald’s idea.
If this works, good-bye Fargo, hello Bangalore and “Welcome to McDonald’s, I’m am loving it all very much at this time, how may I please to be of helpful?”
I would like to be on-site with sound gear the time this goes live out in Larry-the-Cable-Guyville, and the first order into the “International” call center is, “uhhh gimmeuh fur uh, feeash ferlays, withuh lurg orung, and er uh naner split an uh sundi thang wit uh chocklut surp, oh and uh old the turder sauce on them ferlays”
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/38901
Anyways, on topic…instead of automatically outsourcing to India why not get the world’s leading teachers on various subjects to record daily lectures and plug them into each classroom? It would turn our kids into the automatons the government seems to want and it would only put hudreds of thousands of teachers out of work. Better education for the kids? I think not.
Ballenger, thats funny from one who grew up in the south.
Bangalore would have to be better than just having an Hispanic who had no clue what you said, give you anything just to move the line.
I guess they can always say these jobs are going to Indians because American illegals won’t do them anymore.
I agree with #8 – having a indian voice come on the line to take my “drive through” order at fat-burger would be a HELLUVA improvement over the hispanics.
They even get the orders wrong at TACO BELL… jebus, dont these people know tacos better than burgrers?!?!?? (at least it was my assumption that they would) – i’d much rather have Abu taking the order than Maria.
Off topic, I know, but I’m really disappointed about the TWiT thing as well. To be honest, I only listen to the episodes with John on them (otherwise it gets a bit boring). Please don’t let it die!
Mark, I can’t explain it. I’m just a partially bad Southerner, other than drinking my weight in iced tea every month. I nearly cried a few weeks ago when McDonald’s started selling real sweetened iced tea. God Bless them. But I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to get all sentimental about the dictionary phobic from any region. I know many people are disadvantaged from childhood. But damn it, even in the most underprivileged hollows of Appalachia there are people who bootstrap themselves up and beyond their circumstances. My closest friend’s Dad is a retired NASA testing scientist who lived in a three room house in the mountains of eastern TN as a child. He still speaks with an accent, but I wouldn’t bet a nickel against him in a spelling or grammar contest. I wouldn’t even mind if these Cable-guy types retained their hick-speak and organized annual Trailer Tribe Heritage Festivals, if they would just learn English as a second language. And believe me, nobody would appreciate this more than a lot of dictionary thumping Southerners.
Hey it is a way to make some extra cash, just tutor people, I mean its not like it is big bussiness here or anything, I worry more about the manufacturing jobs being outsourced then this, The world could use more tutors.
But on a different topic, what do you guys think about youtube?
Do you think that now that it has become a coorporate entity, that they will become the whipping boy of the RIAA. And lose everything it stood for.
Is this what the world is coming to quantity and not quality. It appears they are outsourcing TWIT as well. Instead of the usual panel of pundits we will have a bunch of Middle Eastern guys talking in an accent to thick to possibly understand.
We need to put a stop to all this outsourcing. For starters, people need to stop outsourcing their phone service to companies in Luxembourg, and keep the telephone jobs in America, by buying from Sprint, ATT, SBC, MCI, Verizon, and Comcast. Let’s also p[ut a tariff on all those Skype calls.