times of india

TIMES CITYTHE TIMES OF INDIA, CHENNAI | MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2012

COUNTRY HAS RESOURCES FOR SAFE COMPUTINGPLATFORM, SAYS FREE SOFTWARE EXPONENT | 4

CRPF TOP COP TALKS TOUGH ON CLEARING ‘RED CORRIDOR’, 70K TROOPS TO BE TRAINED | 8

China, Vietnam students learn from

E-TUTORS IN CITYSharanya Gautam | TNN

fter she gets back from college every evening, Maria Rodrigues, 23, stays up late training an Italian student in Milan for a qualifying English exam. Rodrigues is a doctorate stu-dent at the University of Madras and has been taking e-tuitions in English and biology for foreign stu-dents since the last one year.

“These students can speak a bit of English, but need help with grammar or vocabulary. Some sign up to learn specific topics like genet-ics,” says Rodrigues. Teachers like her are signing up with online tui-tion portals to teach students abroad over the internet.

There is a huge demand for spo-ken English classes from countries like China and Vietnam, says Sujai G Pillai, founder of online coach-ing portal www.2tion.com. It’s not just foreign students; NRIs too hire tutors from India. “Older Indians who have moved to countries like Australia and New Zealand and are not fluent in English also enroll in classes,” he says.

Maths is another subject for which tuitions are in demand, es-pecially in Europe, the US, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. “Indians are considered academically ad-

vanced and even ‘nerdy’ aboard,” says Ganesh Krishnan, founder and CEO at TutorVista, a Banga-lore-based online coaching com-pany which was started six years ago. Online coaching makes tu-tors available at a convenient time. The use of smart phones and tablets has also made online coaching easier, says Krishnan.

Indian teachers provide cheap-er options to foreign students who have to pay as much as $40 a ses-sion in countries like the US. “We charge around $10-$15 a session,” says Rodrigues. “The rates are low for them, but it is still a lot of money for us,” she says.

“I have heard of teachers who do this full-time and earn as much as a lakh a month,” says Geetha V K, who started taking online tui-tion classes a few years ago after having taught in an international school for seven years.

Indian teachers are also pre-ferred because of the Indian school-ing system, which is known to be theory intensive compared to the US, where the syllabus is largely application-based. Geetha says many of her foreign students join e-classes as they need help finishing their homework and assignments.

Since most e-classes do not in-volve eye-to-eye contact between the teacher and the student, tutors say teaching over the internet is chal-lenging. “Understanding accents is a problem initially,” says Geetha.

Teachers use audio, and many use powerpoint presenta-tions or white boards to teach. Portals like Tutorvista also pro-vide training to teachers for the foreign syllabi and provide ma-terials to keep them updated.

sharanya.gautam@timesgroup.com

Low Fees A Big Advantage For English, Math Teachers From India

A

AID FROM AN APP

M obile applications to help students prepare for examinations are gaining

popularity. Edserve, an educational services company, has launched a free mobile application called Edsmart to help students clear doubts. Students type in their queries, which are answered by an online tutor, and the response is sent to them as an email.

Demand for coaching grows from students of int’l schools

Kamini Mathai | TNN

With more international schools crop-ping up in the city, tuition and coaching centres have begun branching out to cater to the needs

of these students. And, tutors say, it’s a whole new ball game. “The kind of exams and the grading system in international boards — American, British (which comprises Cam-bridge and Edexcel) and International Bacca-

laureate — is completely different from the state, matriculation and

central boards,” says educa-tional consultant K R Malaati.

The questions are from outside the book, challenging a student on concepts. The answers have to be concise, not more than two lines, and the end result, not the proc-ess, has to be presented. In the

Indian boards, the process or the steps of getting to an an-swer are given importance while grading, and students have to answer in detail.

The first international school came up in Chennai

in 2004; today there are nine. Malaati, who used to run an international

board coaching cen-tre, says there were only a couple of tu-tors earlier. Now,

more than a dozen have cropped up.

“ T h e r e has been a

spurt in tutor-ing centres be-

cause schools are still coming to grips with the new cur ricu-lum,” she says.

Patricia Para-meswaran, who

has a teenaged daughter, agrees

with her. As her daughter was scoring

Bs, she enrolled the girl in private tuition. “My daugh-

ter needs good scores to get into

the neuroscience course she wants to do in the UK,” she says. “Many of her classmates were also doing badly. The schools call themselves international, but the standard of teaching is not good. I am paying as much for private tui-tions as I do as fees to the school,” says Para-meswaran, who sends her daughter for 12 hours of tuition a week for three subjects.

Fees at international schools run to a couple of lakhs a year compared to a central or state board school where fees is around `40,000. Fees for international curriculum at tuition centres are also higher.

Patricia’s tuition package costs around `7,200 a week. Another Chennai mom, Sridevi S, spends `2,500 per subject per month for her son’s ICSE syllabus tuition. Her sister, mean-while, pays just ̀ 500 a month per subject for her son’s matriculation syllabus coaching.

“The extra cost for international cur-riculum coaching is justified as prepara-tion for the international curriculum boards is similar to an IIT exam. Results are not possible with rote-learning. Tutors need sound technical background on the subject and must understand the question-ing and evaluation pattern. We conduct extensive technical interviews before hir-ing tutors,” says Vidhya Sriram, who founded Topperz@work in 2009.

Raji Srikanth, who runs Phoenix Coaching Centre, which tutors for Indian and interna-tional boards, says tutoring a candidate for an international board exam requires more effort.

kamini.mathai@timesgroup.com

NEED OF THE HOUR

(*All costs for classes 11 & 12)

EXERCISE

BOOK

Imaging: Kannan sundar

BIG BUCKSExtra help doesn’t come cheap. Tuition fees cost a bomb today

State board

Class-type tuition `8,000

Personal coaching `70,000

CBSE/ICSE

Class-type tuition `15,000

Personal coaching `80,000

International boards

Personal coaching | `70,000 to Rs 2 lakh (there is no mass tuition, only one-on-one coaching)

For Some, Teaching Is A $10 Session Over The Internet, For Others It Is An Income Source Generating Lakhs A Year

Chennai: The website ofChennai Corporation has anoption, Vehicle Monitoring,which is supposed to let anyonekeep a track of garbage trucksand waste collected from all thezones of the civic body.

The facility had been de-vised so that all garbagetrucks, fitted with GPS track-ing systems, could be moni-tored online. The corporation’ssolid waste management andthe vehicle maintenance de-partments were supposed tomonitor the system.

But two years after the sys-tem was introduced as a pilotproject, it has proved to be of lit-tle use like many of the civicbody’s other technology-dri-ven initiatives.

“It does not tell us anythingworthwhile, except that a cer-tain amount of garbage is be-ing cleared from our zone. Wedo not know where the garbageis being collected from,” saidRaji Suresh, the secretary of anapartment residents’ associ-ation in Mandaveli.

In many parts of the city in-cluding Royapettah, Kodam-bakkam, Chetpet, Tiruvanmi-yur and Mylapore, wheremany of the city’s educationalinstitutions are located, peoplesay there is no way to makesure that waste is collected ontime or hold corporation offi-cials accountable for disposalof garbage.

There are two large garbagebins on Sundareshwarar Road,on which three schools are lo-cated. They always appear to beoverflowing with waste, say

residents.“The bins are often over-

turned and waste collects onthe road. The garbage truckcomes in the morning when

students are coming to schooland it causes chaos by blockingthe entire road. The corpora-tion men can move faster andcollect more garbage if the ve-hicle comes a little later. Weneed an effective monitoringsystem for garbage disposal,”said R Aruna, principal of Si-vasami Kalalaya School.

Experts said several citiesin the country use the GPStracking system and it hasbeen a success in Hyderabad.“The system can be used togood effect by residents and thecorporation. It can provide de-tails like how much waste vari-ous roads or areas produce, andgarbage vans can be routed ac-cordingly,” said B Nirmal ofExnora.

But officials of the vehiclemaintenance department, whoare in charge of truck coordi-nation, said the system neverreally took off. “We started it asa pilot project on trial and errorbasis, but it was never official-ly adopted,” said a corporationofficial.

pratiksha.ramkumar@timesgroup.com

Pratiksha Ramkumar TNN

Online GPStruck-trackingsystem crashes

Chennai: Dr G BalakrishnanNair, executive director ofTranslation Health Science andTechnology Institute, was pre-sented with the fourth Dr Mo-han’s Diabetes Research Foun-dation gold medal orationaward at a ceremony in NewDelhi on Sunday.

The award was presented by

the president of the Madras Sci-ence Foundation and former di-rector of CLRI Dr G Thyagara-jan.

Dr Balakrishnan’s researchhas led to important publica-tions, vast teaching experienceand extensive research in mi-crobiology, pathogenesis of dis-eases, molecular epidemiologyand 5 patents, said Thyagarajan

during the function.

4th Dr Mohan award presented

TECHNOLOGY FAILS

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WE CONGRATULATETHE COMPETITIONFOR FINALLYYWAKING UPTOTHE TIMES OF INDIA.Four years ago, Chennal woke up to the Times of of India. Finally, ourcompetition has, too. We ’ve enjoyed their new campaign reacting toour success in Chennal. We now look fo rwa rd to them emulating ourapproach to connecting with readers, led bya new editorand CEO who ’ve cut their teeth at the Times of India.We wish them good morning and good luck.

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