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Online OG Tutoring: Is it right for you? |

Orton-Gillingham online tutor, Grace Sharma, FIT/AOGPE

It’s time to teach the next student in my schedule, but instead of driving to a new location or welcoming her into my home, I boot up my laptop and iPad to answer the distinctive FaceTime ring. “Hello, how is your day going?” I ask as I open the digital whiteboard link on my iPad. I can see she is already signed in and has drawn a “cute” emoji (she has informed me putting twinkles in their eyes makes them “cute” instead of boring) with hearts around the periphery of the title slide I’ve uploaded for us to work on. I brightly say “Okay, let’s get your brain warmed up!” as I move her visual drill card deck in front of my computer camera. We continue through the typical drills and activities of an Orton-Gillingham lesson using FaceTime, head-phones, iPads, a stylus for me and the student, an instantly syncing online, digital white board program (I use https://awwapp.com/), and a card deck (would it be Orton-Gillingham if cards weren’t involved?).

In 2019, when almost everything can be done through a device that fits in your pocket and tele-commuting has become a more common workplace option, are we surprised that online tutoring is now a growing field? I’ve been an online Orton-Gillingham tutor for nearly 3 years now and have been asked to share what I have learned about the method and its effectiveness. While this won’t be an exhaustive disser-tation on successful online tutoring, it’s meant to help give you some ideas about what online tutoring may feel like for you and your students, and if it may be something you want to learn more about for your own practice.

Why did I start online tutoring?

Online tutoring found me more than I sought it out. I had been working as an Orton-Gillingham tutor for some time in Ohio when I got married and relocated to California. I let my students know that I was planning on moving that coming summer. Naturally, they started looking for other tutoring options, but any tutors they found either had waitlists or were too far away for commutes. In addition, we had built a strong rapport after working together for

multiple years. They asked if there was any way I could continue to work with them online, and I had recently been to the Academy’s annual conference where I had heard Jean Osman, Founding Fellow/AOGPE mention that she was doing online Orton-Gillingham tutoring. Luckily, I’m also blessed to have a husband who works in tech-nology, so while I was still tutoring students in-person in

Ohio, we began experimenting with what could work if I were to teach them online from Califor-nia. The key question to answer was – how do we best retain the multisensory teaching experi-ence online?

How do I make online tutoring work?

First off, the ability to see each other during lessons was essen-tial. I use Apple products, and my students also had Apple devices, so we chose to use FaceTime for video conferencing so we could see and hear each other using technology in which we were familiar. Today, there are many video conferencing options, such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype, GoToMeeting, and WebEx,

to name a few. For example, I utilize Google Hangouts with a student who doesn’t own an Apple device. As long as the platform is a reliable service, and you and your student have reliable WiFi, it should work. In order to make sure the student has the crispest sound experience, quality headphones with mics should be worn by both the tutor and student, along with making sure there are minimal sound or visual distractions happening in either location.

To share word lists and written work, my husband helped me research numerous different online white board options for one that gave simultaneous syncing, the ability to upload files to work on, and then the ability to download the files to save student work. I chose the AWW App, as it provided the most complete feature set for text and images to be uploaded as a file ahead of the lesson, worked collaboratively in real-time during the lesson and, at the end, allowed the session’s work to be archived online as a PDF with an option to download all the work at any point in the future. The student and I both use a

by Grace Sharma, FIT/AOGPE

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Online OG Tutoring: Is it right for you? | (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 12)

touch screen device and stylus to work on AWW App during the lesson. Most of my students use iPads, although some use Windows tablets or Chromebooks/laptops with touch screens.

Does online tutoring work for all students?

I always let parents know that online tutoring may not be the right fit for every student. Age, attention span, and the severity of dyslexia are all important factors to consider. That being said, I have worked with students as young as first grade and with students with attention deficits, and I have witnessed similar progress and success to what I would expect if tutoring was provided in-person based on my experience with other students on my caseload. I de-veloped many tricks for pulling a student’s attention back to me. I also learned to become more visually interactive on the digital white board over the years. Some of these strategies involve quick auditory cues (such as clicking my tongue or changing the tone of my voice) that catch a student’s attention or visual reward cues like dog kisses (I pick up my dog and swoop her nose to the camera) for completing a task.

Does online tutoring work for all tutors?

Online tutoring is a good fit for an experienced tutor – typically one able to make diagnostic changes during a lesson and who is comfortable with their devices. Why? Technology has the implicit possibility of something going wrong. The clouds may be too dense where your student lives, a website may be down for technical updates, or a device may have a problem. You have to be able to quickly and diagnostically make decisions about how to not only tweak your lesson as needed, but also make changes in the lesson. For instance, sometimes I have had my students switch to pencil and paper with just Facetime in order to get around a device or website failure. These are not very common but being able to get around tech glitches when they do happen will save your session.

How can an online tutor be prepared?

Just as it took you awhile to get comfortable with the com-ponents of an Orton-Gillingham lesson, it will take time

for you to work out the kinks that may come up when you transition to online OG tutoring. I typically begin transi-tioning to online tutoring with a student sitting next to me (both of us on our separate devices) so I can reach over and help them when needed. However, there are times where I’ve never met my student in person because they live in a different state. In these instances (especially for young students), having a parent nearby is vital. Typically, the students learn the digital tools pretty quickly, and often they will teach me new features they have uncovered or that have been added with the latest software update. You also need to get creative with how you demonstrate con-cepts visually using a digital white board instead of tactile items or getting a student’s attention without being able to reach over to tap the paper in front of them.

How many of us are there?

There are currently four Academy members on the online tutor list. But there may be many more of you out there. Can you take a moment to share your online tutoring abili-ties with the Academy office, to be added to the directory for parents who aren’t able to find tutors in their geograph-ical area? You may open the door to a whole new world a student wouldn’t have been able to access just by opening your laptop for sessions.

Want to learn more about online tutoring?

As noted at the beginning of the article, this is my experi-ence and advice with online tutoring. For more informa-tion and a demonstration on how I tutor online I will be leading a session Online OG Tutoring - Is it right for you? at the AOGPE Conference in April 2020.

For additional information on online Orton-Gillingham tutoring, you can also look back through the Newsletter Archives (Winter/Spring 2017 issue) to read two articles: The Perfect Match: OG and Technology (starting on p. 1) by Fay Van Vliet F/AOGPE and Susan Christenson, and The Universe of Skype Tutoring (starting on p. 8) by Laurie J. Cousseau, F/AOGPE.

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