5 Things that Must go on the "Flyer”

Flyers are effective marketing tools that you can distribute for people to know more about your tutorial business. It is important in advertising that you include 5 important things in order to grab the attention of people. Without them, your flyer will be dull, with people not even bothering to take a further look at what you have to offer.

Tutorial Business Name

Naturally, your flyer must contain your business name, and if possible, your name. This gives your flyer the identity it needs to be different from others. In thinking of a business name, make sure it is relevant and easy to remember so that people can easily identify your business.

Services You Offer

After your business name, summarize the most important services you offer. Preferably, arrange them in terms of demand. You may or may not include a price tag, but if you do, make sure to emphasize its value.

Credentials and Testimonials

Another added bonus to your flyer, if you have certification logos, put them there. Your credibility is very important, and people usually look for that first. Furthermore, if you have really satisfied clients, then add a few testimonials. Future clients enjoy the feeling that others have successfully received what they wanted through the tutorial service provided.

Appealing Design

Use attractive colors in the design. Play around with color combinations to get the right colors. Never go with Neon or any eye hurting colors because they can really hurt your advertising results. Be wise in color selection, as it can make or break your flyer.

Contact Details

Lastly, always keep your contact details clear! Include email, numbers, or whatever means of contact in order to give people the option of contacting in the most convenient way they see fit.

These five things make your flyer attractive and appealing, and at the same time, functional as an important marketing tool. Whenever you want to improve your business position through effective marketing tactics, always direct the people’s attention to the details that matter and you will have a working marketing strategy that will captivate people and turn them into clients.

10 iPad Ideas to Use in Tutoring Sessions

The iPad has become a very useful tool in businesses, especially in handling e-mail and other important updates. This is not surprising that the iPad, too, can be used for your tutoring. This very handy device can help you in your tutoring sessions so that you can easily convey the subject material to your students through a very flexible visual aid. Here are 10 great ideas you can use your iPad with in tutoring.

1. Using Evernote to Make Dynamic Notes

This popular app is very useful for jotting down notes, either as pictures or text. Evernote is also useful for sharing to students what you found out regarding a topic, and the ease of access makes the note taking a whole lot easier. Moreover, you can distribute the files to your students as class notes to help them study.

2. Mathematical Formulas

Generally, any app would work too, but the convenience of having a collection of formulas to help you teach math with ease. Having it as an app is so much easier than shuffling through pages as it will save time and provide you with the right information you need in no time.

3. Keynote for Dynamic Presentation

Keynote is an app that allows you to create PowerPoint-style presentations. You can hook it up to external displays to easily share to your student information you created. This is more convenient than bringing with you a laptop where you have to continuously go back and forth to change slides. With an iPad, it becomes just smooth tapping.

4. Information Accessibility

Once hooked up to WiFi or a 3G connection, your iPad will act as the perfect hub for information whenever you need it. This is very helpful if you want to verify something or you want to add a little more background to your lesson.

5. Video and Audio Convenience

If you want to show a documentary to your student, the iPad makes the perfect screen that combines detail and quality sound feedback. The screen accommodates that video experience that you can carry around with you at all times.

6. World Book - This Day in History

This app is very useful for sharing some trivia on what happened during that specific day when you're tutoring. As a nice way to break the ice between breaks, this iPad app will truly interest your student.

7. Store Reading Material

In teaching a literature class, having your material on your iPad keeps things lightweight. You don't have to carry huge books, especially when you're on a tight schedule. The material can be readily be found in your iBooks or Kindle app.

8. CutieBounce for Physics Learning

How much fun can Physics be with an app that lets your students learn the fundamental concepts? This app is useful in explaining how gravity works by letting students enjoy the bouncing action and response to tilting the iPad around.

9. Recording Ideas

Probably one of the features of an iPad is that you can record conversations and as a result, ideas. If your student wants to, you can compile the lectures you conducted and even the ideas he or she shared for later listening when reviewing. This builds up effective retention because your student listens to the lecture again.

10. Whiteboard

Your iPad can be used as a medium to explain lessons actively. You can either use a stylus or your fingers to illustrate examples using whiteboard-type applications. The best thing is: you don't have to worry about your ink finishing because everything is digital, unlike a traditional whiteboard!

Your iPad really is a great way to convey your tutoring sessions with an even more dynamic touch to it all. Keep these 10 tips in mind to ensure that your tutorial will turn out even more captivating for the student.

If you use an iPad in your tutoring sessions, how do you use it?

For Teachers: The Benefits of Tutoring Over Summer Break

With no official office hours during summer break for teachers, it may be difficult to obtain a stable income. To this effect, one of the part time jobs that teachers can surely excel and earn enough income to go through that summer break would be to tutor. Here are some benefits of tutoring over summer break.

Extra Income

The main benefit of tutoring over summer is that extra income generated. It allows teachers to support themselves over the summer through tutoring. This effectively gives teachers the opportunity to continue practicing their career through tutoring.

Refinement of Teaching

The advantage of tutoring over summer is that you won’t stop teaching. This keeps you active in your teaching methods and approaches preparing you for the next academic year on full gear. Tutoring even teaches you new methods that you can apply in your classes, which becomes an educational fulfillment.

Preparation of Students

Another benefit is that you prepare students for the coming year and enhance their knowledge of a subject matter. The performance of students will increase and this will allow classroom lectures to efficiently function smoothly.

Being a teacher can be tough if you’ve got nothing to do over the summer. With tutoring, you can earn extra money, refine your teaching skills, and even prepare students for the coming year. These benefits can be done through tutoring.


If you are really serious about getting into the tutoring business, then I strongly suggest that you read my book "Becoming a Better Tutor: A Data-Driven Approach to Tutoring". This book will definitely help you determine if tutoring is right for you and teach you how to get your first tutoring client, and provide data-driven tutoring to get results for your clients.

Intellectual Property 104: 9 Reasons Why I Can't Use Copyrighted Materials for Tutoring

Tutoring has grown into one of the most important service industry. Traditional school coaching is no longer sufficient to survive the cut throat competition of the world. An edge is essential to fare better and most students resort to tutors to help them gain the edge. This has lead to the mushrooming of tutors-both online and offline.

              Now a student has the luxury to choose from a spectrum of tutors. The presence of a large number of tutors has brought in the competition among the tutors. All tutors look for resources that will make them a better tutor. One common domain where everyone looks is the World Wide Web. But one just cannot use videos or articles in these sites. One has to be aware of the source and any copyright associated with its usage.

              Use of copyrighted materials in tutoring is completely discouraged as the law does not spare even if you were unaware of the consequences. Thus, it is necessary to know the punishments associated with the usage of copyrighted materials in tutoring.

Here are nine reasons that tell you why you should avoid the usage of copyrighted materials in tutoring:

1.      The main reason-illegal usage of copyrighted materials is punishable by a fine or imprisonment and sometimes even both.

2.    You cannot plead innocence.

3.    Many people will have to bear the brunt of copyright infringement. The tutor, the board of the tutoring agency and even the technician can be punished after gauging their level of involvement.

4.    It is also illegal to make a copy of the video you purchased in the store. But you can play a video that you rented from the store if it has Public Performance Rights (PPR).

5.     Use of copyrighted materials by students can also land the tutor in trouble. Thus you must teach your students to be careful when choosing content in the web.

6.    It is very easy to exploit ‘fair use’ and this will land you in trouble.

7.     Use of copyrighted materials in tutoring can sometimes be considered as ‘profitable usage’ and it is illegal.

8.    You can also not transfer copyrighted video to another country where you have a student as it is illegal.

9.    Prosecution due to copyright infringement could mar your reputation as a tutor.

Due to all these reasons it is logical to avoid the use of copyrighted materials in tutoring. You have spent so much time building your tutoring practice so it’s in your best interest to check out what is allowed and not allowed when using copyright material.

Also, if you have created your own content, you need to protect yourself and your tutoring business and file a copyright claim. It takes about 10-15 minutes.

For more information on U.S. Copyright Laws, please visit the following website: http://www.copyright.gov/

The Effect of Drugs on the Brain: Why People Who Use Drugs Cannot Remember Information over Time

As a tutor, you need to be aware of the effects of drugs on the brain. This is important because, at some point in your tutoring career, you will encounter clients who may be using drugs. While this does not typically occur with young children, but it does occur when working with adult learners. They do not always divulge this type of information, so please be careful. 

The last thing that you want is a bad reputation due to something that you had no control over, which is in your client’s personal lives. Therefore, you should definitely ask this question on your client intake form for adults and keep it on file. 

This will serve two purposes: (a) to better understand how to help the client; and (b) to protect your tutoring practice. Since this form is confidential anyways, no one will know about it except you.

Let’s take a closer look at what drugs can do to the brain.

Drugs have venomous tentacles that suck out the life of a person and do not let the person be in the right frame of mind. Some of the effects of drugs on the brain are:

• Drugs like heroine make the brain cells addicted and control a person to such an extent that he starts depending on them for performing daily functions.
• Drugs entice users by giving a pleasurable feeling and finally turning them into addicts.
• Marijuana not only hampers short-term memory, but also prevents a marijuana user from retaining current episodes in the long term memory.
• Drugs like cocaine makes a person lose interest in life, family, friends, and recreational activities.
• Drugs can increase respiration, blood pressure, heartbeat, and even cause hypothermia. They also cause weight loss, anxiety, insomnia, dental problems, delusion, and violent behavior.

Why People Get Hooked to Drugs

As against the natural process, drugs increases the dopamine level to 2 to 10 times more than the normal amount. This effect motivates people to take more drugs in order to enjoy the euphoric feeling.

How Drugs Disrupt the Brain

Drugs attack the brain by bombarding it with dopamine. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter that controls the emotions, movement, cognition, and feelings of bliss, when triggered in excess enhances the ecstatic feeling fooling people into taking them repeatedly. When the brain is continuously flooded by dopamine along with other neurotransmitters, the brain reduces the number of dopamine receptors. As excess of anything is bad, the brain identifies it as an abnormal activity and restricts the flow of these neurotransmitters.  Therefore, the pleasurable feeling reduces leading to depression in drug abusers.

Now the second phase kicks in where drug abusers take the drug to bring the dopamine  back to normal level, and in order to get the high euphoric feeling they take larger amounts of the drug.

The long-term effect of subjecting the brain cells to neurotransmitters like dopamine leads to reduced cognitive ability, uncontrolled longings, addiction, and makes the abuser incapable of making sound decisions. Contimuous drug abuse interferes with the critical functions that are carried by the brain. 

How do you handle such situations in your tutoring practice? 

Reference: http://www.drugabuse.gov/scienceofaddiction/brain.html

Critical Thinking in Tutoring: How to Get Students to Think

Having a wide perspective is crucial for any person to gain a certain analytical way of thinking that allows him or her to solve problems he or she encounters. Gaining this perspective isn't as simple as memorizing a set of lessons or learning algebra rules. Gaining this perspective involves the development that is unique to each student, but there are key points to tackle in order to expand how students think.

Critical thinking involves the assessment of ideas in unique ways that expose different angles of how they are viewed. This kind of thinking is important not only in academics, but also in actual life experiences that students will encounter. Here are some techniques that you can use for students to develop a wider perspective on things.

Argumentation (Debates)

Probably the most important aspect of enhancing critical thinking is the use of argumentation. Argumentation can be in the form of debates or even just simple contrasting of ideas. When one topic or idea is up for argument, the result usually combines a different set of opinions about the ideas, widening the perspective of people involved.

Argumentation teaches the value of critical analysis because it describes how an idea can be viewed from different angles. These perceptions allow students to look at things from another aspect which allows an extensive form of development, especially in the course of understanding topics in open ended subjects such as History and Literature.

Root Cause Analysis (Getting to the Bottom of Things with Concrete Evidence)

Basically, you find the root cause of a certain event or idea. This kind of analytical thinking is very effective in enhancing critical thought because of how the student takes steps back into the origin of something. It makes him or her think about the possible cause of something by analyzing possible factors.

In most analytical thinking aspects such as science topics, root cause analysis is very effective. It allows students to explain complex cycles like the birth and growth of a frog or perhaps the motion of molecules affecting the nature of substances.

Exposure (Letting Learners Gain Hands-On Experience)

The last form of letting students enhance their critical thinking is to expose them to different settings. Whether by video or by actual visits, the exposure will allow students to gain a deeper understanding as they are present in the actual simulation or area of interest.

Exposure is very effective because it not only taps into the mind central of the student, but also the other senses are stimulated as well. This teaches students to understand events more easily. For instance, it would be much better to let your student tour a World War 2 exhibit than to narrate the events. He or she will grasp the intensity of the war much more readily through the exposure.

Critical thinking is important in making it in this busy world, especially when your students will deal with problems that require extra effort in analysis. By widening their perspective, students will be at ease when dealing with problems that seem difficult, because they have the confidence to tackle them.

How do you employ critical thinking skills in your tutoring sessions?

10 Reasons to Have a Tutor Mentor to Help Your Business Grow

Risk exists in any business venture. All you can do is reduce the quotient of risk. The best of doing that is being guided by a mentor. This is mandatory if you are a novice businessman. Mentors may help you in many ways and the reasons for appointing them are:

1.      Most important decision as an entrepreneur is choosing the correct mentor because he or she will be the key to the success or failure of your business. He or she will inspire you as well as the others with the expertise in that particular field of work.

2.       Answerability: business owners are often known to have overlooked some minute details. A mentor helps you set real goals and help you achieve it in terms of marketing or finance or advertisements.

3.      Strategy building: he or she will be aware of the common mistakes and will avoid them while formulating the business plan thus helping your venture.

4.      Objective: you as the owner may get emotionally attached and will refrain yourself from taking important decisions. The staff is like your family but the mentor doesn’t have these limitations. Necessary decisions shall be taken on time.

5.      Maintenance: mentor will detect the problems and find the solutions along with you to support and maintain the business. Without the right maintenance it would collapse.

6.      Expert opinion: mentor is the one who has an expert knowledge of that line of work as well as a pro as a businessman due to past experience. Thus he being a part of your core team is an asset!

7.      Insightfulness: you are the owner of the business. You finance it with the capital. But the in-depth knowledge of the business and how it can do better lies with the mentor.

8.      Networking: the mentor shall have a name for himself in the market so along with him you get to exploit his contacts. Thus he or she becomes the representative of your organization. Thus an instant marketing strategy.

9.      Feedback mechanism: through the mentor you can get an outsider view of the situation. It would be unbiased along with necessary suggestions to perform better.

10.  Communication: mentors have capability of reaching out to the employees and customers of all strata thus his communication techniques can be observed and should be benefited from. Like in marketing and sales firms techniques of convincing is an important aspects of training at all levels

If you are looking for a tutor mentor to help you grow your business, I am accepting a few clients in June 2011. Please email me at drhollandj@gmail.com.