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[Zero]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/biztech/07/05/Asia.wyoming.insource.teach/index.html?hpt=Sbin


(CNN) -- When it comes to call centers filled with English-speaking employees, India likely comes to mind. Not a tiny town in Wyoming called Ten Sleep, population about 300.

What Ten Sleep has is not, exactly, a call center. Instead, the town is home to a teaching center that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There, American teachers provide real-time video English lessons to thousands of students in classrooms across Asia via high-speed fiber optic networks.

Ten Sleep isn't the only small Wyoming town that has a center: So does Cody, Powell, Lovell and nearly a half dozen other communities across the state. They're owned by Eleutian Technology, a company that is using the internet to bring jobs once outsourced to cheap labor in the East to back to unemployed Americans in the West.

"This is more of an 'insourcing' phenomenon," said Robert Grady, managing director of Cheyenne Capital Fund, which invested $10 million in Eleutian in February. "We are creating jobs by helping the development and emergence of the high growth economies in Asia. We are the fastest private employer in Wyoming, and we are hiring at a time when job creation is priority number one."

When Eleutian was founded in Ten Sleep back in 2006, only a handful of teachers were involved. Now the company employs 700 educators who have either been laid off from public school systems or who are seeking part-time employment. They earn about $12 an hour.

Kent Holiday, head of the company, says he expects to hire more than 3,000 instructors over the next couple of years as well as set up teaching centers in almost every community in Wyoming. There are also plans to expand to other states. The company has built one office in Utah.

Holiday says the idea to start Eleutian (named after the Aleutian Islands, which stretch like a broken bridge between America and Asia) began when he returned home to Ten Sleep after spending a decade working in the telecom sector in South Korea. His two children had enrolled in the local school, and with Holiday's plans to relocate his family to Utah, the school's enrollment would drop from 71 to 69, which meant it would have to close and its teachers would have to find elsewhere to work.

Around that time, high-speed internet cables were hooked up to every home and business in Ten Sleep thanks to a federal subsidy program aimed at connecting rural America to the web.

Holiday said he told the local school district he would stay if he could use its facilities and its teachers to start a business providing English instruction to students in Asia where, according to Holiday, there aren't enough skilled language instructors, particularly in non-urban areas, to teach.

The company pipes its teachers into 500 classrooms across Korea and Japan via video conferencing technology and is now vying for the biggest prize of all: China (Holiday and Brady made a trip to Beijing to meet with local education officials there at the end of June).

"You can't get thousands of teachers to go to Korea and you certainly won't get them to go to rural Korea," Holiday said. "Take that problem and then go to rural China. No one wants to go there."

An article published last November in Korea's JoongAng Daily said the country would recruit 100 teachers from India to work in rural areas where there is a shortage of English instructors and after failing to find qualified teachers from the West. Of the more than 7,000 teachers employed in Korean schools, only 13 percent are certified, the article said.

"We are offering the Asians what they want," Holiday told CNN. "We are bringing in a real, certified school teacher and combing them with a local teacher and teaching the students in the classroom."

The Wyoming teachers work in shifts that begin when the sun is setting in America and rising in Asia. Some teach from home while others go to the teaching centers in the middle of the night. They use curriculum from Pearson.
This is more of an 'insourcing' phenomenon
--Robert Grady, Cheyenne Capital Fund
RELATED TOPICS

* English Language
* Globalization
* Education

"One of the things that I do miss is being in the classroom and being able to physically touch and play games with the students," said Candace McMillan who works in a teaching center in Powell. "You miss that tangible part of it."

Over the eight years that McMillan taught science, art and math to middle schoolers, she was laid off three times.

Eleutian is also attracting more jobs to the state.

"The effect they are having on the economy is just unreal," said Kim Rightmer, vice president of the Casper Area Economic Development Alliance. In April, Eleutian opened a teaching center in Casper and is considering eventually moving into a now empty building that once housed a call center for OfficeMax.

"It is gathering a lot of attention and attracting companies with similar technology needs," Rightmer said. "Eleutian is providing awareness of opportunities outside the state and outside the country -- what kind of impact we can have on the other side of the world."

And Eleutian is an example of how more companies, even local governments, in rural America are quietly inking deals in the East, particularly in China.

Last August, Arkansas' lieutenant governor traveled to Beijing to discuss business opportunities with the government. Wisconsin has also been forging economic ties with the Chinese. Most recently, representatives from Idaho were looking for investment from wealthy Chinese in a gold mine near Boise.

"In 20 years, the states that are going to have a lot of power and be part of this global economy will be the Wyomings and the North Dakotas and the Iowas," Holiday said. "People in middle America are pretty savvy business people."

[Old Surrender]

First the Internet decimates newspapers (where I worked for several years, I bailed after my newspaper finished its second round of layoffs, I didn't want to stick around to see if I'd make the cut on round three) and now it looks like it's going to start working on this industry.

Hmm... time to start looking at new work again in a few years. On the other hand, hakwon owners have been trying to replace us with robots in Korea for quite a while now without much luck.

Here are my questions: How much are these students paying for this online class? Will there be premium classes that feature a laowai in person? How long do you think it will be before this becomes a legitimate job-killer?

[Big Poppa Pump]

I suspect we are safe for a good long while.

[MisterButtkins]

I haven't been to rural Wyoming and I have no interest in working there. Rural China is just fine for me, thanks.

[Zero]

Realistically, the schools will do whatever they think will save them money while still attracting students. So, theoretically, this is something that could cut into jobs. But some considerations are:

-Would it be appreciably cheaper? The companies that do this must pay American wages, and they still want to make a profit, so I don't know. You could save money by having people in India do it, but can you really attract students with a video feed from India?

-Would you still attract students, even with American teachers on video? Given a choice between School A with a video feed and School B with a live laowai, most will probably choose the live dancing monkey, even if it costs more.

-Can you hire enough teachers in the U.S. to do this? Maybe for the moment, with a bad economy, you can. But who knows, maybe eventually the economy will recover, not that I see any signs of it.

[johntpartee]

[themanymoonsofjupiter]

[Zero]

The Chinese school could save on airfare and housing. But they would probably have extra costs in the form of service fees to the American company's bottom line. So cost-wise it is probably a wash. And the in-the-flesh laowai gives a marketing advantage. So the concept will probably stay limited to areas that can't find a live foreigner.

[nickpellatt]

Sounds like they think they can take advantage of the rural areas? Hmmm, cant see many people out in the sticks paying what must surely be waaaaay in excess of 100 rmb per hour for an online internet lesson. I can only imagine this being a success by being cheap, clearly ... it isnt. I wouldnt worry about this at all. How many of the rural areas even how a reliable and speedy internet connection? Actually, how many towns or cities do?

$12 an hour teachers? Hmmm, see how many stick with that for longer than a month at a time...again, not many. A new teacher every other lesson I reckon...again, hardly likely to inspire confidence.

For those of you who offer private lessons...suggest to your private students that you will be MSN Video Call lessons for 10% less than your current rates. See how many people take you up on it. I would guess no-one will.

[struelle]

Another problem is what happens if the connection goes bad or there are delays in the response time between teacher and students communicating?

In the most state-of-the-art situation, that is live video feeds on the news broadcasts (i.e. CNN) you still see about a 2-3 second delay between responses. The news anchor will say, "OK, now our correspondent in the Middle East has more" We wait about 3 seconds, and then the video goes to him. Of course, he speaks in a monologue most of the time so as not to incur another delay if he wanted to transfer back to the news anchor. And sometimes when the news anchor cuts in to ask questions, you will see how this delay works.

We are talking the most advanced kind of technology here, and we still see these kind of delays in communication that would hinder a 'free flow' which is necessary in ESL instruction.

So the internet connection would have to be both speedy and flawless for this to work, and approximate the 'optimal' conditions as the above. How often do we see technological problems and things breaking down, even simple things like a microphone not working because they forgot to charge the battery? This happens constantly in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, so I seriously have my doubts they can get things up to par in the sticks.

[Menino80]

The internet needed for this is massive as noted, this will simply not work for teaching authentic communicative English. That never stopped anybody in Asia before though now did it.

[Mister Al]

$12 an hour is laughable. Qualified teachers accepting near minimum wage to 'interact' with kids on the other side of the planet. Must be a truly rewarding experience. I think I'm gonna be sick.......

[malu]

[choudoufu]

$12 an hour in wages only. that is not the true cost to the
employer. you must factor in fica, social insecurity,
unemployment compensation, workers comp, etc. the
additional cost to the employer is normally 100% of wages.

[malu]

If I were a Chinese businessman I would be thinking about poaching ESL teachers in China so as to set up an operation supplying Japan, Korea and T-aiwan at a cost that undercuts the US.

The jobs that will be lost are the well-paid ones in those other countries, not the average jobs in China.