MAterials?

I have my first SPanish session Friday, and I want to prepare some visuals for my student. I have a google docs account. Does it make sense to create presentation/docs there, then have the student refer to them as we chat? Any other tutors doing that or something similar?

Hey Tracy!

Congratulations on your first Spanish lesson! That’s really cool. :)

I also use Google Docs account, it is extremely useful for storing lessons and students have a permanent record for each lesson. The downside is that there seems to be a really irritating bug with it. After you fill up one page and you have to scroll down to page 2 etc. when 2 of you are both logged on and sharing the document, everytime it saves it “jumps” to the top. I’m not sure if you’ve experienced this. Only seems to happen when 2 people are sharing.

I have seen on Google Groups that this is extremely common! :( Don’t forget that everything in the eduFire chat window is saved for both you and your student and certainly for me provides a more interactive solution. Perhaps you can use a mixture of both?

As the tutor tools continue to be upgraded we’ll be able to stay completely within eduFire which would be excellent. I prepare lessons using G Docs, then copy and paste in the eduFire chat window right now. I prefer it as both tutor and student make use of the webcam.

I’m sure other tutors will offer more tips. In the meantime, congratulations again and I hope it goes famously as I’m sure it will. :)

Will I be able to put any clip art or photos into the chat window?

Not that I’m aware of right now. Though I know Jon has mentioned increasing tutoring tools. These are great ideas though Tracy so sounds like you have something for the Ideas Board!

Tracy, you could print out the visuals as well and hold them up for the camera and that seems to work pretty well.

You could see if a Powerpoint type presentation could be displayed in a new window where you can feature your suggestions above…something for the idea board maybe ?!?

PowerPoint is a good idea. I hadn’t thought of that!

Stephanie! That’s a great idea! :)

One thing you could do, is to share your computer with your student, so that they can see what’s on your desktop, if you don’t mind doing that. I have the info. on how to do it with my Mac, and I’m sure PC’s can do this as well. Maybe a techie can assist you with that. Another way perhaps, is to have your Powerpoint presentation loaded up to a site where you can store documents. It will cost you, though. You can give a student the password for the folder in which the document or presentation is stored. I did this with Mac.com and it worked well if I first changed my Keynote presentation into a PDF file, which was a slideshow. Good luck!

Googledocs is the best “quick and dirty” solution I have found. I have not been successful with screensharing from my PC, and believe it is in general easier to do that with a Mac.

Marco: Have you tried not putting page breaks in? I don’t put them in because, and I know this sounds stupid, paper in the US is a different size from paper in Europe. The difference is just enough to be a pain with longer documents. I have not had the jumping problem, but maybe it’s a matter of time…..

Tracy — Good luck on your lesson. It’ll go really well, I’m sure.

Rick

So Tracy!!! How was it? How did it go??? If there’s anyway I can help you with ideas or anything let em know…I’ve been giving a few spanish lessons lately…not too many, but a few and have developed a few ideas!!

Sue

Hey Charles…I have tried making a google docs presentation but I can’t get clip art or pics onto the slides. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong. I can get text in it, but not pics.