Tutor Trove is upgrading!
The culmination of several weeks of long nights is upon us! From 10:00pm - 11:59pm PST today, we’re going to be switching to a rebuilt architecture - designed from the ground up to protect your data against any trouble!
Our new multi-server setup (for the technical, we’re implementing master-slave replication) will allow us to write changes in real-time, giving us two identical copies of all data, in case one should fail. We’re also doing disk dumps every 15 minutes should both fail, and offsite backups every 2 hours should our entire hosting provider (Amazon) fail. Finally, we’re doing nightly off-site backups in case the entire internet fails. Plan for the worst, hope for the best!
This is just the first step in a series of initiatives over the coming weeks to ensure not only that data is protected against loss, but that we have systems in place to get the site back up on its feet no matter what circumstance befalls it. This will include a suite of monitoring tools to alert us to any irregularities in any of our systems and disaster recovery plans for any level of disruption.
Tutor Trove will be unavailable for some or all of the time during the switch. This is to ensure that the data in our new system is completely fresh and up-to-date. We apologize for that inconvenience - but hope that you’ll like the results! As always, we’re here at info@tutortrove.com or 1-347-688-7683 to answer any questions or help out.
Sincerely yours,The Tutor Trove Team
Our First 1,000 Hour Month!
Back in April, we posted a major milestone for the company: 1,000 Lifetime Whiteboard Hours. Now, just four months later, we’re thrilled to announce that our servers saw over 1000 hours of online tutoring (and counting) in a single month! That’s over ten times our monthly average through April of this year, and nearly double our previous monthly high.
As the 2011-2012 school year begins, it looks like the next few months will be even busier. We want to thank everyone in the Tutor Trove family for making this possible as we continue to work on providing the best platform out there for online tutoring.
If you haven’t already heard, the Tutor Trove team has been busy launching a brand new company, Desmos. Desmos is a community for people to create educational content that works across platforms, from computers, to in-class touch screens, to mobile devices, with live collaboration built in. Desmos just launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC, and will be at ISTE 2011 starting June 26th.
Find out more at Desmos.com or check out Desmos’ Blog.
The link above details a pilot program to bring Interactive Whiteboard Technology to rural schools in Senegal. Using cheap, solar-powered computers, projectors, and cameras, a company called CyberSmart, with the help of USAID, is turning simple nylon screens into interactive Whiteboards.
These makeshift IWBs are now being used in schools that lack most other types of technology - even electricity. The goal is for teachers and students to engage with the technology in a productive, fun way. What’s more, the hope is that teachers will create lessons for these touchscreens and then share them with each other. All of this bodes very well for the future of Ed Tech in the 21st century.
The Whiteboard has grown up, but the spirit remains the same
1,000 Hours of Tutoring!
Following close on the heels of yesterday’s announcement of 25,000 files uploaded through our Document Annotator, Tutor Trove just reached another major milestone: our users have just surpassed 1,000 lifetime tutoring hours on our Whiteboard! We’re proud to say that we’ve helped facilitate 60,000 minutes of live, online collaboration. 3.6 million seconds of teaching, learning, and exchanging ideas.
It’s been a challenging and exciting journey. Now, back to the hard work of making our software even better.
25,000 Files Uploaded through the Document Annotator!
Time to break out the confetti! As of today, over 25,000 documents have been uploaded using our Document Annotator through our stellar partner, Haiku LMS. That’s 25,000 homework assignments, lessons, and files that have been submitted, marked up, and shared by users across the country. We’re proud to announce this milestone in Tutor Trove’s history. Here’s to 25 million more!
The New York Times just carried this interesting article about the rise in blended learning in school districts across the country. The article focuses on Memphis, a cash-strapped district with many struggling students, which has turned to online learning for some of their students. This has infuriated many opponents, who see the move as a way for Memphis to save money and offer kids lower quality education.
Verdict? It’s a complicated issue, but online learning looks like it’s here to stay. Nothing will every replace the interpersonal connection between teacher and student, but virtual ed has real potential to be a serious force for educational improvement. As the technology improves, so to will the caliber of the instruction. That’s what makes us at Tutor Trove excited to get to work every day.
So you want cross-platform solutions? Check out Tutor Trove!
http://bit.ly/i8FdOw\
One more reason to use Tutor Trove! Read this blog post from Educational Publishing. It’s mostly about the cool new products on display at TCEA (and the nearly 13,000 attendants). But there’s this gem at the bottom:
“As much as the attendees were interested in the new technology, though, the educators were concerned about being able to get products delivered on a variety of platforms.”
Our whiteboard works on any standard computer and on all major Whiteboard platforms. Jo-Ann McDevitt, we should talk!
