However, searching for a mentor who is an industry expert can be quite a task. Similarly, finding a well-deserving mentee can be difficult too. Hence, this challenge brings up a new opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to connect both sides effectively. By building an online mentoring platform they can help connect experienced mentors with mentees.

Types of Mentoring

We can see a huge scope in the online mentoring business space, but before tapping onto its potential let us see the different types of mentoring prevalent in the industry.

Individual

Also known as one-on-one mentoring, where a mentor with desirable experience and expertise, guide, and help a mentee achieve his goals. All points and feedback are discussed privately in face-to-face sessions.

Group

This type of mentoring involves a mentor guiding several mentees in a group. Here mentors can reach and guide more mentees in a shorter span of time. This is useful where no individual attention is required and the same skill is to be taught to every individual in the group.

Collective

In this type of mentoring, a group of mentors would guide and share knowledge with a group of mentees. This type of mentoring is mostly popular in enterprises.

Necessary Features for an Online Mentoring Platform

Before you start building your own online mentoring platform, there are certain necessary features that you should consider for the success of your platform.

Matching Algorithm

A mentor and mentees’ match is neither made in heaven nor is it guesswork. Albeit, it requires an effective matching algorithm to read user profiles and make suggested recommendations. A well-organized mentoring platform allows mentees to choose mentors according to their requirements, and in turn, mentors can add relevant particulars about themselves on their profiles to make that search easy for them.

In case, mentees don’t want to choose their mentors themselves, the admin can assign a mentor to them. Correct matching will ensure satisfaction at the mentees’ end and will increase trustability on your platform.

Interactive Tools

A well-established mentoring platform must have good communicative tools to facilitate seamless communication between mentors and apprentices. They should be able to interact in real time via video call or chat. They should be able to easily collaborate with each other by sharing links, and documents, on the platform.

Furthermore, features like a virtual whiteboard, screen sharing/recording, chat support, etc. are essential for any online mentoring platform.

Multilingual

If you wish to serve globally, this feature can help you get an edge over your competitors. This feature can help you break the language barrier and open opportunities for you to serve and mentor participants worldwide.

Progress Monitoring and Tracking Reports

This could be an important feature for mentors and mentees to evaluate the progress of the mentorship program. As accountability is essential for any training program and mentees’ success, monitoring and tracking reports that can show the progress of mentees in the form of graphs or in scores can be an added advantage.

Through these tools, mentees can assess their performance and can also identify weak areas where more support is needed.

Ratings and Reviews

Ratings and reviews can play an important role in improving the transparency of your platform. Mentees can provide feedback about their mentors and further new students can decide whether they want to hire a particular mentor or not. The rating of mentors can also be shown on their profile page to increase their accountability. Hence, we can say that ratings and reviews play an important role in client satisfaction.

As we have discussed essential features that should be included on the mentoring platform, let us see how you can start building your own online mentoring platform.

Building an Online Mentoring Platform

An online mentoring platform can majorly be developed in two ways:

1. Custom development
2. White-label solution

Custom Development

In custom development, you need to hire web developers and designers who will custom-build your platform from scratch keeping your business needs in mind. This solution offers high scalability and efficiency for your platform. Custom development allows you to fully reflect your brand identity and add personalized small touches to your user interface.

The main drawback of a custom-developed solution is that it takes a lot of time and money in the development process as the platform will be built from scratch.

White-Label Solution

A better alternative to custom development is to purchase a white-label solution that can cater to the needs of your business. As it is a pre-made solution, it is quite affordable. One of the major advantages of white-label solutions is that your platform is ready to launch within 2-3 days. And, as the platform developed from this solution is tested several times, there are fewer chances of any errors or bugs.

The expenses saved using white-label software can be realigned in a more effective way. You can use that budget in marketing your business to attract more users and eventually increase the profits and ROI. Moreover, investing in white label software eliminates the need to control the process of product implementation and you do not have to spend time and effort on project management, thereby saving a lot of time and effort.

Yo!Coach is one such popular solution that allows you to build your platform in a short period of time. It is white-label software that is fully customizable. It is cost-effective, highly scalable, and has all the basic and advanced features needed for establishing an online mentoring platform effectively.

This solution provides lifetime ownership with no recurring fee and is pre-integrated with popular video conferencing and payment APIs. There is no one size fits all choice when choosing the approach to build your mentoring platform. You should make your decision based on your unique business requirements.

Bottom Line

With the advent of new technologies and tools, we can see a gradual shift of people towards digital modes of mentorship, where they can not only attend classes according to their convenience but also can be guided by experienced mentors. Mentoring platforms exist because there is a need for such platforms in the market.

Facilitating both mentors and mentees with a feature-rich online mentoring platform can help turn your mentoring business into a success.

The post Essential Features For an Online Mentoring Platform appeared first on Tricky Enough.

As we are moving towards the contemporary era, technology and programming play an essential role. It is not necessary that coding and programming must be done in the twenties. Now, elementary school students are moving towards programming. You don’t look for the ability and curriculum of the students. There are coolest applications and software which will enable the kids to learn coding and programming. This article describes seven applications for teaching coding skills for children.

1. CODESPARK ACADEMY: KIDS CODING

An award-winning application that guides the children about coding. The interface used in CodeSpark is developed in such a way that kids involve more in fun activities and don’t even realize that they are learning. With the character – “Foos”, they learn to code. Since this application involves fundamental coding concepts, to help Foos, they use logical thinking and problem-solving ability. CodeSpark develops young buds to create their own stories and games.

This application is free of cost and available on the android and ios platforms. The puzzles in CodeSpark are developed primarily for kids so that they can use this application without the direction of adults. There is an open play area in CodeSpark, where kids can code and share their private games. With the help of custom voice, recordings and photos, they can even interact with the application while coding. Beyond puzzles and play areas they can even learn additional programming concepts and algorithms in a fun-way method.

2. CODAKID

Another amazing coding platform for kids, apart from the active computing books that they have in their School where they can practice real programming languages, professional tools to create games and learn to build websites. Codakid includes programming languages such as Javascript, Java, CSS, Unreal engine, Python, Arduino, HTML, and Lua. This application also boosts the kids to be proficient in maths, problem-solving skill and critical learning ability. Apart from coding and programming language, Codakid develops the kid in programming drones, build applications, Minecraft and Roblox coding.

3. HOPSCOTCH: PROGRAMMING FOR KIDS

Hopscotch is a perfect application for kids to learn to code. This application is essentially designed for the students of grade 2 to grade 6. This is a cost-free application which revises for ios version. Through the regular practice of Hopscotch, the kids are able to develop games, applications, and animations individually. As they develop the games, applications, and animations by themselves, the application nurtures creativity at an early stage. Hopscotch is a user-friendly tool and very comfortable to access. This application involves video tutorials that guide your kid by developing popular games such as Dino run, Minecraft, Cherry pot, Geometry Dash, Pokemon go and many more games. Moreover, Hopscotch creates new possibilities for students in diversified subjects. This application is recognized as the best app education by Parents magazine.

4. KODABLE

Another exciting application to develop coding skills is through “Kodable”. This application serves to teach coding from basic to advanced levels. Kodable teaches Javascript, Python, HTML, CSS, Java and many other programming languages. This application breaks down complex concepts into a basic one to provide a strong foundation on computer Knowledge. Students who are willing to choose their career in computer science, Kodable provides your kid with great knowledge and learning.

On both on-screen and off-screen components, the children are able to learn over 70 lessons and each lesson includes instruction guidance, study materials, and vocabulary words. There are certain levels included in the Kodable application. At the first level, students learn the basic coding and at the further levels, they move in advance. Apart from the coding activities for children, teachers can create a class account, share vocabulary, show classroom tutorials and manage coding levels for the students.

5. TYNKER

A unique coding application for kids aged seven and above. With the Tynker application, kids learn to code using different programming concepts. Tynker is involved with programming languages such as Javascript, Python, CSS, HTML and many more. Moreover, the application includes over 2000 challenging activities to develop programming skills. Apart from Tynker, there are few other applications such as Tynker Junior and Mod Creator which enables the student to learn more about coding through interactive learning modules, mini-games, challenging puzzles, and coding projects.

They can even work with loop statements, condition statements, and many other C programming concepts. In addition to this, Tynker introduces Visual Programming Languages. Kids learn coding skills in a fun and adventurous style. Kids are offered buggy code snippets to solve challenging puzzles. They are practiced more with critical thinking, logical thinking, and problem-solving ability. For grades eleven and twelve, Tynker offers coding puzzles on Python to solve. This application is developed for the ios platform.

6. SCRATCH

Free coding application for young buds that works well in the android and ios platform. This is the best application for kids aged five to eight. In a very early stage, the application “Scratch” helps your kid to program their own interactive stories and games. By using this application in an advanced grade, they learn to solve problems, design projects and showcase their creativity. Children learn the basic level of visual programming and make use of this to develop their own favorite characters and make those to move, jump, walk and perform many other activities according to their wish.

Because of learning coding and programs, they not only learn to be more interactive but, they can even express their creativity in front of the computer. Due to this, they can design their own subject projects, solve complex problems, think logically and critically and furthermore build self-confidence. Moreover, they use math as a motivating context to develop numeracy in early childhood.

7. BEE BOT

From a very popular Bee-Bot floor robot, there emerged the application Bee-Bot which makes the student understand the basic and complex programs in an easy way. This application allows the kid to perform many challenging puzzles and games using the Bee. With the help of the Bee-Bot application, students can develop their coding skills, learn different programming languages and ability to think logically and critically. This application nurtures creativity among childhood at an advanced stage so that when they grow up, they can handle complex problems and think logically. This application always satisfies with unique programming challenges and puzzles for the kid at different aspects of the game.

Suggested:

The 5 Programming Languages You Should Start Learning Today

Latest Programming Technologies to learn.

CONCLUSION

Coding is neither difficult nor easy. It depends on the way we took it. It is difficult for a student to suddenly fall into advanced programming concepts. Because of this, the student may lose interest in programming and coding. It is necessary to bring coding and programming as an important subject in schools. Even if the child is not interested in learning to code, he is at least able to learn logical thinking, problem-solving and critical thinking. When coding is introduced at an early stage of childhood, we could witness many benefits such as creativity and interaction. So, it’s time to teach coding for your kids by using these applications.

The post 7 APPS FOR TEACHING CHILDREN CODING SKILLS appeared first on Tricky Enough.