Online homework help

“The dog ate my homework.” This one-liner excuse is well known by generations of students who faced a stern teacher empty-handed. It didn’t fly then, and it won’t fly now…but for a different reason. Today’s interaction among student, teacher and curriculum has undergone a phenomenal shift, thanks primarily to Web-based homework management. This winning combination of online communication and file sharing between teachers and students has been eagerly adopted by school districts across the country.

While parents and teachers are still hustling to keep up, kids are adapting and embracing new ways to learn with lightning speed. “This new generation of digital learners—call them the MEdia Generation—take in the world via the filter of computing devices: the cellular phones,…PDAs, and laptops they take everywhere, plus the computers, TVs, and game consoles at home,” states Josh McHugh in a recent Edutopia article.

There are many ways parents and their children can take advantage of homework help online, from content-rich search sites to virtual tutoring, such as Tutor.com. This site and others like it has thousands of tutors, from college students to retired professors, on call to help your child convert fractions to percentages or understand the breakup of Czechoslovakia. Kids who are accustomed to social networking usually respond well to this way of absorbing information. Sessions aren’t cheap, though; parents need to keep a close eye on the time their children are spending to ensure they are using their minutes wisely.

More comprehensive programs for optimizing the learning experience are found on programs like HotChalk. HotChalk is a Web-based learning environment built for students, teachers, and parents. Teachers create lesson plans, distribute homework assignments and manage their grade books. Students can download and turn in homework assignments electronically and ask their teacher questions via email. Grades are posted and accessible to teachers, students and parents via a secure login or by email. HotChalk is free to students and teachers, with access to premium content such as news video and educational courses offered via a paid subscription.

WebAssign is a similar service offered free to teachers and for a per-semester fee of $15.45 for students. Geared primarily to high school students, WebAssign includes a calendar-sharing feature, providing students access to their teacher’s current and upcoming assignments. It also provides teachers unprecedented opportunities to build on and share lessons beyond what is contained in standard textbooks.

Recognizing the importance of social networking at the middle school level, First Class built a comprehensive communications system into its online learning package. Students can communicate freely and safely with classmates, post resumes about themselves and stay abreast of upcoming assignments and lessons.

As children get older and wrestle with increasingly challenging topics, parents and teachers expect them to depend more and more on themselves to seek the answers. Enter community forums like Cramster, a global community of students grappling with subjects such as physics, calculus and statistics. Questions and answers are posted in a similar fashion to a message board.

More and more teachers are encouraging their students to use their growing multimedia skills to enhance their homework projects. Instead of a written book report, for example, a student might submit an iMovie review, or perhaps analyze the book on a podcast.

The old-fashioned rules of good work habits still apply—teach your kids to take homework responsibility, and give them the quiet time they need to do it right. Still, parents need to understand that the look and feel of homework has changed dramatically—it is now in an electronic folder that no self-respecting dog will ever try to swallow again.