How I met my online language pal?
I recently had an amazing experience with my tutee, Tiger, when I visited China. It was as if the tables had turned and Tiger was now the “tutor”, guiding and bringing me around his city.
Tiger is 15 years old and he lives in Chengdu, China. Through our lessons, I found out that there are many interesting places to explore in China.
Learn more about this tutoring platform ➤
How did my online tutee, a common 15-year old Chinese teenager, become my friend and tour guide who gave me a real-life lesson about Chinese Culture?
I have been a tutor on an online peer learning platform for two years and my initial primary reason was to earn some extra pocket money during my free time. Looking back, never could I have imagined being friends with my tutee and even having the chance to meet him in person! Three months ago, some of my classmates suggested a graduation trip to Chengdu, China, when I told Tiger about it, he kindly offered to be my tour guide!
The trip!
Fast-forward to the trip, I still remember how excited Tiger was when he saw us at the airport. They then brought us around the city for the next few days to visit some attractions and try some local delights. Tiger even taught me how to use chopsticks and why it is rude to stick your chopsticks in your bowl in Chinese culture! We watched the Sichuan Opera, visited the panda breeding center, Tianfu Square and Red Walls, shopped along Jinli street, devoured some delicious street snacks and traditional cuisines.
Tiger taught me simple Chinese phrases when we were ordering food and introduced different Chinese snacks! Tiger and his family gave us such a wonderful experience with their hospitality and if they were to visit the states in the future, I will definitely return the favor.
There is so much more about this gig job!
Just like how people comment on each other’s pronunciation or writing here on HelloTalk, I help to correct my tutees’ pronunciation and choice of words through having a conversation. The best part of the whole experience is I can earn an average of 300USD monthly as long as I maintain a regular tutoring schedule.
You me alike, we high-schoolers are often busy with school and activities. By talking to fellow teens of the same age or younger, I could relieve some stress. This is more than a gig job! BuzzKID has also written me recommendation letters for my college application which also helped me greatly in sourcing for internships and other jobs.
Now, I view every half-an-hour online session as a way for me to meet another kid from a different background, hoping that one day I can recreate the experience that Tiger created for me. I hope this story resonates with you and you also can have the same experience as a BuzzKID tutor!
Privacy Policy
BUZZKID ("us", "we", or "our") operates the www.buzzbuzzenglish.com website (the "Service").
This page informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data when you use our Service and the choices you have associated with that data.
We use your data to provide and improve the Service. By using the Service, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. Unless otherwise defined in this Privacy Policy, terms used in this Privacy Policy have the same meanings as in our Terms and Conditions, accessible from www.buzzbuzzenglish.com
Information Collection And Use
We collect several different types of information for various purposes to provide and improve our Service to you.
Types of Data Collected
Personal Data
While using our Service, we may ask you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information that can be used to contact or identify you ("Personal Data"). Personally identifiable information may include, but is not limited to:
Email address
Phone number
Cookies and Usage Data
Usage Data
We may also collect information how the Service is accessed and used ("Usage Data"). This Usage Data may include information such as your computer's Internet Protocol address (e.g. IP address), browser type, browser version, the pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, unique device identifiers and other diagnostic data.
Use of Data
BUZZKID uses the collected data for various purposes:
To provide and maintain the Service
To notify you about changes to our Service
To allow you to participate in interactive features of our Service when you choose to do so
To provide customer care and support
To provide analysis or valuable information so that we can improve the Service
To monitor the usage of the Service
To detect, prevent and address technical issues
Transfer Of Data
Your information, including Personal Data, may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of your state, province, country or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ than those from your jurisdiction.
If you are located outside China and choose to provide information to us, please note that we transfer the data, including Personal Data, to China and process it there.
Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by your submission of such information represents your agreement to that transfer.
BUZZKID will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and no transfer of your Personal Data will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of your data and other personal information.
Disclosure Of Data
Legal Requirements
BUZZKID may disclose your Personal Data in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to:
To comply with a legal obligation
To protect and defend the rights or property of BUZZKID
To prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with the Service
To protect the personal safety of users of the Service or the public
To protect against legal liability
Security Of Data
The security of your data is important to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
Service Providers
We may employ third party companies and individuals to facilitate our Service ("Service Providers"), to provide the Service on our behalf, to perform Service-related services or to assist us in analyzing how our Service is used.
These third parties have access to your Personal Data only to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for any other purpose.
Links To Other Sites
Our Service may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us. If you click on a third party link, you will be directed to that third party's site. We strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of every site you visit.
We have no control over and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third party sites or services.
Children's Privacy
Our sites and applications offer a variety of activities, including activities that may collect information from children. Below we summarize potential instances of collection and outline how and when we will provide parental notice and/or seek parental consent. In any instance that we collect personal information from a child, we will retain that information only so long as reasonably necessary to fulfill the activity request or allow the child to continue to participate in the activity, and ensure the security of our users and our services, or as required by law. In the event we discover we have collected information from a child in a manner inconsistent with COPPA’s requirements, we will either delete the information or immediately seek the parent’s consent for that collection.
Registration
Children can, in many cases, register with our sites and applications to view content, participate in tutoring features. During the registration process, we may ask the child to provide certain information for notification and security purposes, including a parent or guardian’s email address, the child’s first name and gender, the child’s member or account username, and password. We also may ask for birth dates from children to validate their ages. We strongly advise children never to provide any personal information in their usernames. Please note that children can choose whether to share their information with us, but certain features cannot function without it. As a result, children may not be able to access certain features if required information has not been provided. We will not require a child to provide more information than is reasonably necessary in order to participate in an online tutoring activity.
About the collection of parent email address: Consistent with the requirements of COPPA, on any child-targeted site or application, or in any instance where we ask for age and determine the user is age 12 or under, we will ask for a parent or guardian email address before we collect any personal information from the child. If you believe your child is participating in an activity that collects personal information and you or another parent/guardian have NOT received an email providing notice or seeking your consent, please feel free to contact us at peertutor@buzzbuzzenglish.com. We will not use parent emails provided for parental consent purposes to market to the parent, unless the parent has expressly opted in to email marketing or has separately participated in an activity that allows for such email contact.
Content Generated by a Child
Certain activities on our sites and applications allow children to create or manipulate content and save it with BUZZKID. Some of these activities do not require children to provide any personal information and therefore may not result in notice to the parent or require parental consent. If an activity potentially allows a child to insert personal information in their created content, we will either pre-screen the submission to delete any personal information, or we will seek verifiable parental consent by email for the collection. Examples of created content that may include personal information are stories or other open-text fields, and drawings that allow text or free-hand entry of information. If, in addition to collecting content that includes personal information, BUZZKID also plans to post the content publicly or share it with a third party for the third party’s own use, we will obtain a higher level of parental consent.
About Verifiable Parental Consent:
Email Consent. In the event BUZZKID wishes to collect personal information from a child, COPPA requires that we first seek a parent or guardian’s consent by email. In the email we will explain what information we are collecting, how we plan to use it, how the parent can provide consent, and how the parent can revoke consent. If we do not receive parental consent within a reasonable time, we will delete the parent contact information and any other information collected from the child in connection with that activity.
High-Level Consent. In the event BUZZKID collects personal information from a child that will be posted publicly, we will seek a higher level of consent than email consent. Such “high-level” methods of consent include but are not limited to asking for a credit card or other payment method for verification (with a nominal charge involved), speaking to a trained customer service representative by telephone or video chat, or requiring a signed consent form by mail, email attachment, or fax. After providing high-level consent, a parent may have the opportunity to use a pin or password in future communications as a way to confirm the parent’s identity.
Teacher consent in lieu of a parent. With regard to school-based activities, COPPA allows teachers and school administrators to act in the stead of parents to provide consent for the collection of personal information from children. Schools should always notify parents about these activities. For more information on parental rights with respect to a child’s educational record under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), please visit the FERPA site.
Chat
Certain activities that are directed to children allow users to communicate directly with other users by means of a chat system. In most cases, these chat systems employ filters that are intended to prevent the communication of both personal information and age-inappropriate words and phrases. In addition to filters, we may employ live moderation and/or encourage other users to flag inappropriate communications. We strongly encourage children who use these interactive features on our sites and applications never to provide personal information about themselves or any third party, and certainly never to attempt to circumvent our filters or moderation. We also recommend that parents carefully supervise their children when the children participate in online activities.
Where BUZZKID employs a chat system that does not filter all or nearly all personal information, we will first seek high-level consent from the parent.
Contests and Sweepstakes
For contests and sweepstakes, we typically require only the information necessary for a child to participate, such as first name (to distinguish among family members) and parent email address (to notify the parent where required by law). We only contact the parent for more personalized information for prize-fulfillment purposes when the child wins the contest or sweepstakes.
Of course, some contests and sweepstakes ask the child to submit their own created content along with the child’s entry. In those instances, we may require parental consent prior to submission. Please see Content Generated by a Child above for more information on our collection, notice, and consent policies.
Email Contact with a Child
On occasion, in order to respond to a question or request from a child, BUZZKID may need to ask for the child’s online contact information, such as an email address. BUZZKID will delete this information immediately after responding to the question or request.
In connection with certain activities or services, we may collect a child’s online contact information, such as an email address, in order to communicate with the child more than once. In such instances we will retain the child’s online contact information to honor the request and for no other purpose such as marketing. One example would be a newsletter that provides occasional updates about us. Whenever we collect a child’s online contact information for ongoing communications, we will simultaneously require a parent email address in order to notify the parent about the collection and use of the child’s information, as well as to provide the parent an opportunity to prevent further contact with the child. On some occasions a child may be engaged in more than one ongoing communication, and a parent may be required to “opt-out” of each communication individually.
Push Notifications
Push notifications are notifications on mobile and other computer devices, and which can communicate to the device holder even when the application is not in use. We will require a child to provide a parent email address before the child can receive push notifications from our child-directed applications that collect a device identifier. We will then provide the parent with notice of our contact with the child and will provide the parent the opportunity to prevent further notifications. Finally, we will not associate the device identifier with other personal information without contacting the parent to get consent.
Persistent Identifiers
When children interact with us, certain information may automatically be collected, both to make our sites and applications more interesting and useful to children and for various purposes related to our mission. Examples include the type of computer operating system, the child’s IP address or mobile device identifier, the web browser, the frequency with which the child visits various parts of our sites or applications, and information regarding the online or mobile service provider. This information is collected using technologies such as cookies, flash cookies, web beacons, and other unique identifiers (which we define under the “Online Tracking Technologies” section of our general Privacy Policy). This information may be collected by BUZZKID or by a third party. This data is principally used for internal purposes only, in order to: provide children with access to features and activities on our sites and applications, customize content and improve our sites and applications conduct research and analysis to address the performance of our sites and applications generate anonymous reporting for use by BUZZKID.
In the event we collect (or allow others to collect) such information from children on our sites and applications for other purposes, we will notify parents and obtain consent prior to such collection.
At any time, parents can refuse to permit us to collect further personal information from their children in association with a particular account, and can request that we delete from our records the personal information we have collected in connection with that account. Please keep in mind that a request to delete records may lead to a termination of an account, membership, or other service.
Where a child has registered for a BUZZKID account, we use two methods to allow parents to access, change, or delete the personally identifiable information that we have collected from their children: Parents can request access to and delete their child’s personal information by logging on to the child’s account through the Member Services Home Page. Parents will need their child’s username and password. The Your Account home page explains how to recover a password if the child cannot recall it. Parents can contact Guest Services to request access to, change, or delete their child’s personal information by sending an email to us at peertutor@buzzbuzzenglish.com. A valid request to delete personal information will be accommodated within a reasonable time.
Changes To This Privacy Policy
We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page.
We will let you know via email and/or a prominent notice on our Service, prior to the change becoming effective and update the "effective date" at the top of this Privacy Policy.
You are advised to review this Privacy Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Privacy Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.
Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us:
By email: peertutor@buzzbuzzenglish.com