* geometry: pi, area, perimeter, volume equations for shapes (circle, triangle, etc)
* chemistry: draw molecules, periodic table
* spanish: accents & punctuation

When I search ziizoo for “LSAT”, I get 65 hits, but very few actually teach LSAT at all, but rather the search engine picks up “SAT” or something, and presents them as matches.

I suspect that this would be quite frustrating to any potential student.

Also: trig identities would be super helpful. Pythagorean theorem (though I seriously hope someone in Calculus would have that memorized by now).

Also the plus/minus symbol would be super helpful. The one with a plus on top and a minus on the bottom denoting some irrational or imaginary numbers.

Root symbol where you can change the root to the nth root (ie: square root, cube root, 4th root, etc), exponent to nth term (squared, cubed, 4th, etc).

Also for Math (in addition to Michael’s excellent list above):
greater than or equal to
less than or equal to
does not equal
pi
equals approximately (wavy equals)
times
division
degree
empty set
greek symbols (especially theta)
ability to do fractions
ability to make number lines easily (template?)

I’m sure I’ll think of more…

Somewhere in the help page, describe the time increment thing (I couldn’t remember if you use 1 min or 5 min, and couldn’t seem to find it). Also, a FAQ/help page might be helpful for new students. I think they are used to looking for faq or help in the link on the front page. Some of the topics are not explained fully either, the http://blog.ziizoo.com/about/students-parents/ page (which could be linked to a help link) could go more in depth about some things (I explained them to this student in an email, hopefully I’ll have my first real student Thursday evening).

Maybe a printable pdf file (1 page) for students that goes over how to do some common things would be helpful I think. That way, once they are going, they have it in front of them to help them.

Also, if someone initiates a session while we’re away from our computer, perhaps that can have a time stamp so we know how recent it was.

I think that’s it for now.

Also, as I have not yet had a client, it would be great to have a demo run of what the actual environment looks like. That way I can prepare my tutoring strategies for different types of categories.

thanx!

Also, a more obvious link to the blogs–I had totally forgotten about them until Robert reminded me, and it took some looking to get to the links. I bet more people would visit them if they had a more constant reminder.

Finally, an IM-ish way that tutors can talk, like Michelle suggested!

Thanks!

1) Next year we would like to add a “Twitter” like feature where students and tutors can set their own status messages.

2) Thanks for the comment about blog links - we will feature them more prominently.

3) This is a feature we debated releasing in late 2007. Instead it will come in 2008. We want to make it easy for students and tutors to informally communicate before launching a session. The Message Center is the proxy, so that is why we delayed this feature.

Thanks!

Robert

“It would be nice to have all the geometric objects ready to go, i.e. triangles, squares, circles, and even 3-dimensional objects would be great (perhaps too difficult), but cubes and spheres and cylinders and cones and pyramids would have helped.

Also, any mathematical symbols that could be added to the whiteboard would be great, I’m anticipating any calculus tutoring or physics tutoring I might do - integral signs, exponentials, things like this.”