A few words on my experience of online tutoring during the COVID-19 crisis school closure. I have had extensive experience tutoring maths and science online before the school closure but my bread and butter was always face-to-face one-to-one tutoring in my home office in Wimbledon.

As such, I had never before fully explored the tech available to enhance online tuition. I was always dubious about using virtual whiteboards as I worried about losing the spontaneity of hand-drawing diagrams. After a few weeks though, I got sick of holding my notepad up to the webcam.

After a couple of very frustrating weeks drawing using my laptop’s trackpad, I decided to invest in a writing tablet with a stylus. At first, I found the tablet’s surface a little slippery to write on but just like writing on a real whiteboard, I soon got used to it. (Any teacher will tell you of returning to school in September to find they’d lost their whiteboard skills!)

The weird little half-glove made me laugh at first but it does actually prove quite useful for keeping the tablet surface clean and avoiding triggering the sensors.

Skype and Zoom are very much of a muchness to my mind. Both have the basic functionality. Zoom has its own virtual whiteboard but the tablet supports MS Whiteboard which works fine with screen sharing. I’d be interested to hear if other people have a preferred platform. I teach mainly one-to-one so group/meeting features haven’t been a particular consideration for me but obviously they may be more important to others.