29th July 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
We had to switch the venue of a tutor assessment day last week because the room was too hot! There have been lots of reasons for last minute changes before: fire, an ill assessor, the venue being closed for cleaning. However, the temperature isn’t something which we usually have to think of in the UK. I have assessed tutors before on particularly sunny days, and, for the few minutes when the sun hit me through the window, it was difficult to concentrate, and must’ve been doubly difficult for the tutor given their nerves. I’m really glad that we switched the venue actually; the heat is the sort of thing which we could pass off as simply being out of our control, but I like the idea that tutors are comfortable (if possible in an assessment) while they’re teaching.
I spent the weekend just gone in Newcastle with the friend who’s helping me with online tuition. In the last few weeks I had got all the functionality working, but it looked pretty ugly, and we spent a lot of time deciding on how everything should look, and making sure that it has the appearance of a slick piece of software (even though it already was a slick piece of software). There were also a few things to tinker with in terms of how it all works, so a little more work for me there. However, overall it’s only a few weeks from being ready to take to a proper developer to ask them to slot in the communication platform. Fingers crossed that we might start testing by the end of the year.