"Before my marriage, I was working as a Math teacher in a primary school. Now I have a six month old daughter and so I am unable to go for a job. If you suggest a way to earn money working from home, I will be grateful to you," said Ramya.
"Have you thought about your interests, and opportunities around you?" I asked her. "Yes. I think I am good at teaching Math to kids," she said.
"If you teach Math to kids in the evenings, you may be able to earn a few hundred rupees a month. However, if you use a computer, you will be able to earn many thousands a month," I told Ramya and her beautiful eyes became brighter. "I have a computer at home. Please tell me what I should do," she said.
"A teacher is a human being and has emotions, attitudes and opinions. If she is in good mood and has right attitude at the time of teaching, students will benefit from that session. If on a particular day she is not in good mood and teaches an important lesson badly, the kids will not learn it properly even if she is generally an excellent teacher," I said, Ramya replied, "I agree with you. It is impossible for any teacher to always maintain the best form and have the right attitude. Whenever she is down, her students also perform badly."
"Computer is an impersonal organization and it does not have wavering moods and attitudes. If you configure it properly, it would always work at the peak of its efficiency. So, if you happily allow computer to replace you in teaching, students will shine like the Sun. In the process you can earn well!" I said. "How can a non-thinking computer replace a thinking teacher?" Ramya asked me.
I explained, "I was talking about the process of teaching that can be easily automated. However the teacher must feed the lessons into the computer. Only then the computer can teach the students. Let us say that you want to teach English grammar to Vth standard children. You have a copy of the text book and the syllabus. You know how to teach the students well so that they can understand the concepts easily. Prepare the lessons step-by-step using any good presentation software program such as Microsoft PowerPoint. Add text slides, image slides, audio and exercises. You can consult the best books on English grammar and make sure that your virtual class room session is error free and excellent. Then use a training video making program such as Camtasia Studio from http://techsmith.com/ to convert your PowerPoint presentation into a self-running Math class video. Now you can run the video on a computer, a DVD player or a CD player. Your students can play it as many times as they need, and can interact with you only when they have any questions."
"If I use computer I will be able to teach large number of students without any stress and I can even sell these videos online. Is it difficult to learn how to use PowerPoint and Camtasia studio?" asked Ramya.
I replied, "Even a 10 year old child can learn how to use them. It is that simple. The catch is not in the computer knowledge; it is in your knowledge in teaching. I will give you an example. When some colleagues asked Bob Tabor for help in learning how to harness the power of Visual Studio, a software program, he made a few dozen video tutorials and gave them away. To his surprise, the tutorials instantly gained attention as a great way to learn. His site grew not only in popularity, but in size - in just a couple years, he went from making a handful of video tutorials to over 500 video tutorials and 500,000 people have watched them. He uses the same tools that I have recommended here. You can go to his website http://learnvisualstudio.net/ and download free tutorials to see how they look like."
Ramya downloaded trial versions of PowerPoint and Camtasia Studio from the web and prepared a few Math video lessons. When she showed them to kids in the neighborhood, she was stunned by the appreciation the tutorials got from the parents and the kids.
She has developed lessons and hopes to teach 30 students with the help of her computer and television and earn Rs. 4,500 a month. She will not have to teach personally even for an hour a day. Her computer will work on her behalf.
A few schools have contacted her and she is negotiating terms to license her tutorials.