Virtual Tutors
Summer’s winding down, Labor Day is just a stone’s throw away, and you know what that means: School is starting soon, and so are the same old fights over homework and grades. No, no, no, you protest, not this year. Maybe this list of homework helper Web sites will do the trick.
A Little Help From Above: Homework Heaven (https://www.homeworkheaven.com/) is indeed some kind of paradise for kids looking for a little help with their homework. HH claims to be the biggest study site on the Internet, and once you see their links to “everything that’s fit to learn,†you’ll be inclined to agree. They tout a base of 2,200 study subjects, including arts, biography, geography, current events, law, literature, math, philosophy, religion, government and civics, languages and more. The site also has a list of the 100 most influential people in U.S. public education, a special school subject search engine and an e-mail service in which kids can get answers to their questions from one of HH’s 140 experts. And don’t miss the chat rooms, bulletin boards, fraternity and sorority info and lists of the world’s colleges and universities and school newspapers.
A Quick Study: Hoping to make life “a little less troublesome†is Homework Help (https://members.aol.com/Jiskha/Homework_Help/). The information here is in the form of tutorials. The science section has a tutorial on rainbows, the lit section has one on “The Sword in the Stone,†there’s a copy of the Gettysburg Address and a place to learn to count in Italian. All that in addition to art, computers, foods, foreign languages, health, history, math, music and even sewing.
Slackers of the World Unite: Who says kids these days don’t have any causes to fight? Take, for instance, the Junior Anti Homework League, a group of high schoolers who contend that they spend enough time in school every day and that should be enough. Down with homework, they cry. Their demand is simple: a homework-free world in which their free time is their own. Hey, give ‘em a break: There’s simply not enough time in the day to watch “Dawson’s Creek,†hang out at the mall, call boys they like only to hang up when they answer and read “Hamlet.†Let your kid take a stand--show them the way to https://www.jahl.org/.
Nauseous Knowledge: The Yuckiest Site on the Internet (https://www.yucky.com/) seeks to teach by way of bodily functions and other stuff both too numerous and too disgusting to mention here. But your kids will love it. No one ever said education was pretty.
Words to the Wise: If the SAT verbal section already has your high schooler a little worried, or if his vocabulary leaves a little to be desired, point him to Kaplan’s Vocabulator (https://www.kaplan.com/games/vocab/). Your kid can test himself with a word, then click on it and get the definition and an example of it used in a sentence.
Learning by the Numbers: All these sites are well and good, but if math help is what your kid needs, the Math Forum Home Page is the place to go. There are resources for all grade levels, including college. They’re serious, too, with stuff like a Dividing by Zero FAQ, isohedral tilings, algebra, geometry, calculus, arithmetic, discrete math, game theory and programming. The site is at https://forum.swarthmore.edu/.
Study Buddies: Need a little more help than some of these sites offer? Then head over to Tutor 2000 (https://www.tutor2000.com/), an online referral service sponsored by the National Tutoring Assn. of America, pairing students with tutors. There are also links, related organizations and a chat room.
Readin’ Right: Parents of children with reading problems should check out the OnLine Reading Tour (https://members.aol.com/djennfam/OnLine_Reading_Tutor/index.html). There’s a help section on reading fluency as well as a place to submit specific questions.
The Elements of Success: Chemistry equations can be pesky if your child doesn’t quite know what she’s doing. That won’t be a problem now that you know about Chemistry Functions (https://members.iquest.net/~glassman/chemfunctions.html). Just type the numbers into the designated boxes, hit the kind of computation desired and presto . . . moles are converted to particles, particles are converted to moles, molar mass is calculated, pounds turn into grams, grams into particles, moles into grams and more.
Brain Boosters: The name probably says it all: Schoolwork.ugh. Though your kids may feel a little different after visiting the site’s sections on art, biography, government, history, law, health, maps, languages, grammar, math, mythology, philosophy, science, music, sports, writing and religion. Schoolwork.ugh (https://www.schoolwork.org) is mainly for older kids, but the littler ones need not feel left out. They have KidsClick (https://sunsite.Berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/). And to put your own mind at ease, you should know that both sites were put together by librarians, so you know all the links will be kid-friendly.
