FemTech: The gift of education
Although this was not the technology that my group in class came up with, I would like to present it here. Over the past few years, studies are showing that standardized tests such as the SAT are biassed. People who are able to afford tutors do considerably and statistically better than those who can't afford such expenses. Getting tutors cost money. This seems to be true everywhere, even on the internet. But this makes the SAT and other such important standardized tests biassed.
Maybe one day people can come together and fix the SAT and other such tests, but for the time being - the bias gap seems to be because tutors cost money. The solution? Free tutoring!
How? You might ask. How would we get tutors to be willing to tutor people for free when they could just as easily get money for their services? The answer? We don't have to. - Websites like yahoo answers teem with all sorts of tutors from students themselves to certified professionals, and yet yahoo answers is a free service. Of course, the last thing we need is another cheating site.
My proposal is a platform where live tutoring sessions can be opened by anyone for free where any interested tutors can volunteer their time to. It would be a platform where students would be encouraged to tutor their peers, because teaching a topic is the most thorough way to learn it. It would be a platform where explanations and guiding is encouraged in order to make sure the students in need of help get the understanding that they need, and where just supplying answers is discouraged. Tutors don't have to be professionals. New tutors can be born. And sometimes the most effective tutors are those in the same age group as you, since their vocabulary and syntax would be more understandable. This platform would give those who can't afford tutoring to be able to get the tutoring that they need. This platform would have the potential to even the playing ground for the biases the standardized tests have constructed.
And this platform exists.
It is not perfect and is it not popular, but as I described above - it has the potential to even the playing ground of education. www.OpenStudy.com is a platform where anyone can ask for help and anyone can give that help. A majority of their tutors are student who came to the site to get help and have since found enjoyment in giving help back to the community. Professors, retired professors, parents, and teachers also volunteer their time to tutoring the students. All of it completely free, none of those tutoring get paid and the site runs its servers off of the money from the few ads that it has.
www.OpenStudy.com helped me to get 5s on both my AP Calculus AB and BC standardized tests. It helped me to realize my love for passing on my knowledge to others. And I don't believe that enough people are using this amazing tool!
For you college students, networking is also possible on there! The CEO of the site, Preetha Ram makes herself available to all of the users of the site. She has earned degrees from Yale and IIT, and is a Dean at Emory University. A moderator, who goes by mathmale, is a retired professor from Rochester University New Jersey. And there are many many more such people!
It is resource I believe we can all utilize. It has the potential to even the playing ground in current education and provide the tutoring that students need at no cost.
Why Study Alone? www.OpenStudy.com