The RatRaceRebellion.com Blog

Online Secondary Education Soars -- From 50,000 to 2M in 8 Years

Secondary-school students taking courses online has exploded from 50,000 in 2000 to 2M in 2008, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported this week.

"It's going to drastically change over time what classroom education looks like," one US Dept. of Education official, Brian Lekander, was quoted as saying. Lekander is the Program Manager of Star Schools, a distance-learning initiative in the US Education Department's Office of Innovation and Improvement.

Some 70 percent of all school districts have virtual-education programs, reported the Chronicle, citing US Education Dept. data.

While Chris and I advocate virtual learning for a variety of reasons (children can spend more time with their parents and in their communities, less time in institutions and school buses; we can reduce taxes and pollution; etc.), online courses are not a panacea, and a blend with other kinds of learning (a theme we'll have to leave for another post) might well work best.

Regardless, this much is clear: The Internet appears to be doing to public education what it has already done in so many other parts of our lives -- creating change at a pace that leaves established processes (most particularly anything bureaucratic) in the dust.    

For more on virtual K-12 education, see:

-- The International Association for K-12 Online Learning (Be sure to check out their extensive links to distance learning programs by state.)

-- MyFoxDC.com's "Online Learning Takes Off for Students"

Come Join Rat Race Rebellion on Facebook!

Chris and I just opened the Rat Race Rebellion Facebook page, where we can finally "let our hair down," and share tips, news and personal things in a warm and relaxed environment.

On Facebook, we can share much more often (it just seems to lend itself to "opening up"), and hear from you much more easily too!

Blogs and websites and newsletters are great -- as far as they go -- but they're much more "one-way" than Facebook. We're just discovering all its features, so come on over and introduce yourself!

We look forward to meeting you there!

Best,

Mike

More Work at Home for India's 750,000 BPO Employees?

India is taking another small but notable step toward letting more of its massive Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) workforce work from home, India's Business Standard reported today. One of its leading BPO providers, Quatrro BPO Solutions, has launched work-at-home pilot programs for employees in Mumbai and Delhi, and plans another for Chennai soon.

Judging from the article, Raman Roy, Quatrro's Chairman & Managing Director, is serious about building out the home-based model: "We feel this is the next-generation step for the industry. It will create jobs for people who are educated but don't have the flexibility to go to offices. Besides opening a career option for them, it will create a flexible workforce."

Another firm, Aspect Software, "the founder of the contact center industry" (per one of its press releases), is also interested in expanding the work-at-home model, the Business Standard reports.  

On the minus side, India has significant infrastructure challenges, in communications as well as other areas of the economy, and its oft-mentioned "red tape" issues could impede things as well. Further, it's not clear whether workers in significant numbers would have home environments that permit "cube-grade" (brick-and-mortar level) productivity.

Nevertheless, India isn't by any means short on entrepreneurship, and already Quatrro's Roy is planning to furnish schools with computers that the schools themselves would use in the morning, and aspiring BPO work-from-homers would use for training in the evening. 

Why couldn't we do that here in the US?

For the Business Standard article, go here.

   

Three Quick Tips to Speed Your Work-at-Home Job Search

Finding the right work-at-home job or project takes time, but there are many ways to shorten the search. Here are three quick tips to help make your research more effective.

• Use good search terms. We've included 60 thought-starters here. These are self-executing links: Just click, and a Google search is done automatically. (Bear in mind that using "good" search terms won't guarantee that all results are legitimate. Because of the high scam ratio -- 58-to-1 this week on our home page Scam-o-Meter -- some bad apples will usually turn up, and you'll need to throw those away.) 

• Check work-at-home forums for discussions of employers, jobs and scams. (For more on two forums we visit often, see Heather Schulte's recent article here, which also mentions us Rats.)

• Use tools like Whois Source and TinEye to check authenticity of websites. Many scam sites are created just before the scam is launched, and will feature bogus companies claiming to have been operating for years, with bios of executives thrown in for good measure. Whois, however, will often show that the domain was only recently created, and TinEye will show you where the executive photos -- or testimonial photos -- really came from. (Hint: Executive photos are often stolen from real company websites, and "testimonial" photos are often stock photography.)   

There are many legitimate companies hiring home-based workers, and, properly "armed," you can find the one that fits your unique needs and personality best.

VIPdesk Steps Up Recruiting of Work-at-Home Agents

Virtual call center VIPdesk notified us today that they're stepping up their recruiting efforts for work-at-home agents, aka "Brand Ambassadors." So if you've been thinking about applying, now's the time.

From their email:

We are actively pursuing Inside Sales/Customer Service Representatives (we call you “Brand Ambassadors” because of the importance of what you do), with weekday and weekend availability. Brand Ambassadors are sales-focused professionals who directly interact with clients, responding to customer requests via phone, e-mail, and online chat support.

Brand Ambassadors are paid per Active Talk Minute and may also be eligible for performance and sales incentives. On average, this translates to $8.00 – $12.00/hour.
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For more detail, click here.

About.com Seeks "Contributing Writers" in New Work-at-Home Position

Randy Duermyer, Home Business Guide at About.com, reported yesterday that About.com seeks Contributing Writers to work alongside Guides. Base pay is $500 per month, plus incentives for page views.

According to Randy, the writers "are responsible for producing at least 12 pieces of content every month; a mix of short and long-form content. Unlike a full About.com Guide, Contributing Writers are not responsible for managing or maintaining a full GuideSite."

For more, see his full post here.

Beware Bogus "Google Work-from-Home Kits," on Twitter too

A scam that surfaced earlier involving "Google Work-from-Home Kits" continues, and is being aggressively pushed on Twitter. The ads claim that Google is suddenly hiring thousands of people to work from home, and paying them high fees to "post links for Google."

Google does hire some people to work from home (we often feature these legitimate leads on our site and in our Bulletin), but primarily as Ads Quality Raters. Quoting from Google, "As an Ads Quality Rater, you will be responsible for reporting and tracking the visual quality and content accuracy of Google advertisements."

You can see an example of a legitimate Ads Quality Rater lead here.

Convergys UK Hiring Update / Work-at-Home Agents

After my post yesterday about Convergys' expansion of its work-at-home agent program into the UK, the company issued a press release with much more detail.

A few useful excerpts:

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Home agents receive calls ranging from billing and informational service to technical assistance from customers of Convergys clients in a variety of industries. They can work full time or even part time from their homes...

The only workplace requirements for candidates will be a quiet place to work inside their home, a PC that meets Convergys' minimum standards, cable or DSL high-speed Internet access, and a noise-canceling headset.

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To view the press release, click here.

Convergys Now Hiring Work-at-Home Agents in UK, Still Hiring in US

Convergys, one of the largest companies participating in the homeshoring movement, with 70,000 employees internationally, is taking its home-agent program to the UK, the Cincinnati Business Courier reported today. A check of the company's website shows it's hiring "throughout the UK."

For US job-seekers, the website also includes the following:

"Convergys is currently filling Home Agent positions in the following states: Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming."

For the Business Courier article, click here.

For Convergys' work-at-home recruiting site (US and UK), click here.

To compare Convergys to 85 other hirers of home-based agents, including wages and other details, see our chart  here.

Conventional Journalism Jobs Dying at Three Times Average Rate

The news from journalism is worse than many thought, with conventional jobs disappearing at three times the average national job-loss rate, Editor & Publisher reported today.

Only a few years ago, newspapers were thought to have a monopoly in their cities and regions. Barriers to entry were high, readers were considered "loyal," and advertisers could be charged accordingly. Savvy investors like Warren Buffett justifiably extolled their value and purchased shares accordingly.

Now, even Buffett was quoted as saying recently, "We would not buy newspapers at any price."

Radio and TV are suffering, but print media job losses have been gut-wrenchingly high. According to Editor & Publisher, citing a report by Unity Journalists of Color, of the 36,000 jobs lost in the news media in the past year, a full 24,500 -- or 68% -- came from print journalism.  

Blogs and other online news sources are only partly to blame. The Internet has pushed communications generally through a "wormhole," into a dimension where massive amounts of "breaking" information are transmitted in seconds, globally, 24-7-365. In comparison, the lead times of hard-copy "news" publications has burdened the industry with (in the minds of younger readers in particular) an almost medieval fog.

Secondly, with the Internet, a public long accustomed to "aristocratic" one-way communications from the media (think of rural families, for example, clustered around their radio sets in the 1930s, listening to FDR's "Fireside Chats," or the 1960s' parental reverence for Walter Cronkite) was suddenly treated to heady jolts of recognition. Now, we could not only view our own news-article comments on a TV-like "screen" that millions like us were viewing, too (the monitor), but the journalist might actually respond to our opinions publicly, right there, for all to see.

And in the same vein, rather than feeling like anonymous units, "consuming media" in a place no one cared about (our individual lives, loves, and locales), we were now actually courted, hearkened to and esteemed as "website visitors," with tens of millions of vendors and voices clamoring for our attention.

As the population grows and daily life becomes more mechanized, bureaucratized, institutionalized and impersonal, we can expect the relative immediacy and authenticity of the online experience to become even more valued in the "consumer's" mind.