EachOneTeachOne -We Mix Maths with FUN

The primary and secondary education offered in many parts of the world is of poor quality because of limited resources and lack of good teachers, among other things. As a consequence, many students need additional assistance to keep up with their schoolwork. The only option available to most of the students is to seek private or home tutoring and the traditional way of getting those is to look for resources locally.

With the easy availability of internet, the limitation of looking for these tutoring resources is no longer defined by ones geographic location. The technology required for the remote tutoring can be as easy as a simple chat session.

There are very large number of internet users who are well qualified to provide tutoring. A large number of them spend significant amount of time on social networking sites like facebook, myspcae and orkut. Many of them maybe willing to provide free tutoring as a philanthropic contribution to the society, provided some simple, easy-to-use and secure mechanism is available. Our idea is to make a web-application ‘EachOneTeachOne’ attached to a social networking site (like Facebook, Myspace, Orkut) through which interested volunteers can offer free education to the students in need in an adhoc manner without spending additional time and money. It will not be limited to students only but will be extended for all the people who need guidance or knowledge in their field and for all those who are willing to share their expertise with others. All, who need guidance, will be logging to the application as “Students” and those who will guide others will login as “Tutors”.

The area of education we will be focussing at the first launch will be Mathematics.Mathematics has become a very important part of the educational curriculum in this information age. We are focussing on middle and high school level mathematics and want to change the traditional way Mathematics is learnt and taught.

According to an article in Washington Post, the US teens were ranked 24th in the PISA Mathematics assessment. (Program for International Student Assessment), (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120400730.html).There has also been a huge outcry on the state of American public schools. (http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338). We want to build a system adjunct to the current education system and help the students learn Mathematics with some extra help of our volunteers which will be available online on Facebook.

We want to invite you to join hands in this mission and work with us.If you think you can mentor some student with us, we welcome you.If you think, you can help us in spreading the word or in the development of the web application you are most welcome to do that too.
Please email at : neha@cs.umd.edu



b. Vision and Mission Statement
EachOneTeachOne is a free, voluntary tutoring application aimed at providing online education in Maths by the people and to the people over the Facebook Platform. Through EachOneTeachOne our goal is to break the geographic and financial barriers and provide quality education to all as well as to utilize the time people spend on Social Networking Sites.


c. Product and Value Proposition

In this system, the students as well as the tutors can register themselves indicating their needs and their capabilities. For now we are focussing just on Math Education. Every user (student or tutor) will be given a screen name to keep his identity anonymous. When a student needs a tutor he connects to “EachOneTeachOne” indicating his request, identified by the subject and level. ” EachOneTeachOne” then looks at the set of online tutors, selects a small group- based on the request and makes them available to the student. The student may select one of those and make a request for teaching, at which time; the anonymised identity of the student is presented to the tutor. Once the tutor accepts the request, “EachOneTeachOne” establishes and manages the chat session between the two.

Let’s take an example to illustrate more; Annie is a busy graduate student and uses Social Networking Sites (SNSs) to connect to her friends. She also wants to do some volunteer and community work but doesn’t have the time to do so. There is another girl Asha who wants to learn eighth grade mathematics. She tries to use the Internet to get answers but it takes her a long time to get the correct information. Annie and Asha have added our “EachOneTeachOne” application to their profiles on facebook and “EachOneTeachOne” has given them anonymous names “An1” and “As1” respectively.

An1 comes online on “EachOneTeachOne” and indicates the time she will be online. When As1 comes online and requests for learning eighth grade mathematics, “EachOneTeachOne” selects a bunch of tutors capable of teaching As1 and displays them on the online tutor list. Online tutor list consists of the tutors’ screen-names, educational information and also the time for which each tutor will be available.

As1 (actually Asha) sees An1 (actually Annie) in the list and also sees that An1 has a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics. As1 sends a request to An1 that she is interested in learning from her. An1 accepts the request and their one-to-one chat conversation starts through which An1 teaches As1.After the session is complete; As1 and An1 both rate each other as a student and teacher to provide feedback for future users. At the end of the session, As1 gets to learn mathematics and An1 gets virtual points for helping As1.