A Better Way to Learn Math
The Guaranteach Blog for Students, Parents, and Teachers
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It happens to everyone eventually – the sudden demand to “clean up that bedroom or ELSE!” These are the times we're happy to have closets with closable doors. But how much will those closets really hold?
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After record breaking snowfalls, schools in the Mid-Atlantic began opening their doors again last Wednesday.
Luckily, schools that were using Guaranteach didn’t miss a beat, and their students came back to the classroom fully prepared! Since GT students have access to Guaranteach at home as well as at school, throughout the blizzard students in Guaranteach Virtual Schools continued to watch reams of math videos on fractions, algebra, probability and more, all from the safety of their homes.
We just wanted to say congratulations to all of our virtual students for the great work that they did, collectively watching over 2,000 videos during Snowmaggedon 2010! We would also like to send a special shout out to Southwest Academy, who just passed their 7,000th video this school year! Great work, guys!
At Guaranteach, we believe that every individual learns in a unique way, so we strive to provide our students with a variety of approaches to choose from. Michelle Bauer, our resident math expert and curriculum manager, has put together a set of ten video lessons that clearly demonstrate the different ways Guaranteach can teach.
Check it out at http://www.guaranteach.com/community/exploring and let us know which style you like best!
Sign up for Guaranteach this week and get your first month of online math tutoring for FREE (additional months are only $9.95/month - and there is no fixed term, you can cancel at any time). Use coupon code: FREEOCT
Click here to visit our subscribe page to take advantage of this offer.
(Details below, I've updated to post above for any visitors we might have from the good folks over at Consumerist.com, who've included us in their daily "morning deals" post)
We received some feedback last week that our “Cashback for subscribing” deal had a problem: We limited it to the first 20 users, but didn’t give anyone a way to know (before they signed up) whether they were still part of the first 20 or if the deal had run out as the weekend progressed. That didn’t stop everybody, but it did stop at least a few folks.
So, we thought we’d run a deal again for those visitors who were turned off by the lack of transparency:
From now until the end of this weekend (11:59 PM EST on Sunday, October 4th) the first 20 individuals who subscribe to Guaranteach using the coupon code: FREEOCT will get the first month free!
This is a perfect for anyone who is dreading the first midterm or test for their math class.
The code will only work for the first 20 visitors. After that, when you click "apply" it won't work. (Wou’ll see a red message telling you the deal has been used up) So, that hopefully helps allay concerns people have had.
May the deal begin! We don' t expect it to last through the weekend, so subscribe today!
I had a conversation yesterday with a Guaranteach user who made an interesting comment: “I wish you had more videos from students on your site.” She went on to explain how she feels that we’d be much more engaging to students if they felt they could also participate in the content of our site. It is a thought that we’ve heard before – and one that we agree with.
So we’re happy to announce a student video contest!
Send us a math video teaching any topic by October 15th, and you could not only have your video posted to Guaranteach, but you could also win $200. You can find the details, including instructions and tips on how to make a video, at http://www.guaranteach.com/community/video_contest
Note: This contest is open only to students. But if you are a teacher (or parent) you can enter our “teacher video contest.” Details about this second contest can also be found on http://www.guaranteach.com/community/video_contest.
Good luck!
We'd like to announce a special, limited- time offer:
Subscribe to Guaranteach this weekend and get $20 dollars cashback!
Sounds a bit crazy, doesn't it? That we'd give you more money ($20) back than you're actually paying us ($9.95)? Well, perhaps it is. But we prefer to think of it as a vote of confidence on our part. We're pretty sure that you'll like us enough to stick around and keep using us to help you with your math tests, homework and lessons.
But if not, you can cancel at any time with no future obligations to pay anything. It is a risk we're willing to take.
So, how can you earn your $20?
Just click here: www.guaranteach.com/subscribe/subscribe. Once you complete the subscription process, we'll confirm your address and get you your rebate within 2 weeks.
Note: This offer is limited to the first 20 people to take advantage of it. Limit one rebate per household. This offer is limited to new subscribers of Guaranteach. Offer ends at 11:59 pm EST Sunday, Sept. 20th.
CNN iReport has been asking a question this week that we couldn't resist answering:
What if we improve our education system? There are many problems with the education system in the United States. But some schools have found ways to fix them. We want to see something that's working well in the school system where you live. Whether it's a particular teaching style or an innovative after-school program, show us through photos and video the small thing that's making a big difference in your schools.
Naturally, we think that our unique way of using smart software and video lessons form expert math teachers is a very innovative program that is making a big difference. So we shared a video that takes clips from interviews with a number of our teachers to express our education philosophy. And CNN picked it up!
It isn't clear to us yet where it can be seen "On CNN," but we'll certainly be spending a lot of time this weekend looking!
We've received tremendous encouragement from our users about our first "topic page" on fractions. The page is a great aid for anyone who needs fractions help. And on some days, in fact, it earns as much traffic as our home page does!
So, we've decided to create more of these pages. They don't each have free content like the fractions page does (although some do), but they are still great resources users who like to have an alternate way to view our library of videos in a more visual way.
Let us know what you think! Links to the pages are below:
As many of you know, a week ago, on Friday, August 6th, Guaranteach took a monumental (for us) step and setup our first retail location in the Towson Town Center mall. We’ve generally been happy with the response, including the large number of kind conversations we’ve been able to have as we get the word out about our unique online, personalized method of tutoring and sell our new prepaid tutoring cards. And we have many people to thank, including those at the Towson Town Center mall who have been ever so helpful as our online company has made its first steps into the real world of retail.
One company that has been utterly unhelpful, however, is Verizon. Due to their numerous screw-ups we’ve had to go our entire first week without DSL – and it still isn’t working! Without DSL, we don’t have enough bandwidth to stream our videos and use our site. Given that we are, at our core, a video tutoring website, you can imagine that not being able to demo videos for potential customers is a HUGE handicap.
So, we’re taking the step of blogging about this to see if we can’t move Verizon to action. We’ve tried (so so many times) to get things done through the official channels – but the screw-ups just don’t end.
Verizon, if you reading this, we’re not happy. We’re paying for DSL and YOU are preventing us from using. Fix it. Fix it NOW. We still believe you CAN fix things. You just need to get out of your own way and decide to make it happen. Please. Pretty please with sugar on top. Help us!
How? By sending a Baltimore-area tech out to the Towson Town Center mall, (Suite 7503) to install a floor jack A – S –A – P!
When you do, we’ll forgive you for every mistake you’ve made over the past two weeks, including:
Selling us a speed (7.0 Mbps) that you realized later we couldn’t actually get. And then “solving” this problem by cancelling our order and starting a new one. Time lost: 5 days. (Because it took you THAT long to realize you couldn’t deliver on what you sold us)
Sending our DSL modem and startup kit to the wrong address, and not providing us with a tracking number or telling us that delivery had failed until we called to ask: “Hey, where is our modem!?” . And then you didn’t have a mechanism to correct the UPS address (in fact, you told us that we could call UPS and do it, except that when we tried, UPS rightly said that only the sender – YOU – could change the address. But you “have no process” for that). In the end, you had to send us a new modem to replace the one now lost in UPS purgatory. Time lost: 2 days
Destroying our hope. Once we finally got the modem and moved our mall cart to expose the floor jack we discovered that your technicians had LEFT ONLY WIRES AND NO JACK IN THE FLOOR when they’d been out a week before to setup the line. Since we discovered this just today in the evening, (we foolishly waited for the modem to come) your local office was closed for the weekend and we’ve been left with no option but to turn to the blogosphere. Time lost: AT LEAST 2 days
So here we are: with no DSL and no one who help us with more than a “We’re sorry sir, but you’ll have to call the local office when they open on Monday to schedule a time for a tech to come out... and we can't guarantee when that will be." Total time lost so far: 9 days. Will we make it to 10? Stay tuned.
UPDATE (08/17/09): Over this weekend, after posting the entry above to our blog and writing an email to Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg (and CC-ing bloggers over at Consumerist), we received a phone call from, Jackie, a very friendly (and apologetic) Verizon person based out of Baltimore. She made sure that a technician came out right away Monday morning to get things straightened out. We have DSL at our kiosk now and can happily demo videos for anyone who comes by!
We are happy to tell you that the Guaranteach blog is now entirely hosted on our own site, and is no longer on Wordpress.com. This blog is only one of the new changes coming to Guaranteach. We have started creating Topic pages, for help on specific subjects, totally redesigned the frontpage, and as always new videos are being added daily. Be sure to check back in the coming days for more updates to the blog.