Chat Room-Great Expectations

by Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 4/1/2001

Will yourhomework.com make librarians' dreams come true?

Public librarians know the drill. Without letting the librarians know in advance, teachers assign two-page reports on mammals to two classes, each with 30 fourth-graders. The first two students to reach the library take out everything that circulates on the subject, leaving nothing for the other 58 kids to check out. Some librarians attempt to remedy the problem by dropping off "assignment alert" postcards at schools, hoping the teachers will return them, but there's usually not much--if any--response. Several libraries have added an assignment-alert page to their Web sites, but I haven't heard of any that report much success getting teachers to use them. Even when school librarians ask the teachers in their buildings to let them know about upcoming assignments, so they can make sure materials are ready, teachers often forget to let them know.

Over the years, I've asked busy teachers about letting librarians know about assignments, but let's face it--giving public librarians a heads-up is not a high priority for them. The teachers who have been most honest with me have shrugged and said, "Well, I'll try, but...." And then I'd hear about all the things they had to do every day. Now, I certainly don't want to add to the load of expectations that teachers haul around in the Era of Standardized Tests. But if only (and please imagine that harp crescendo that always used to play in '60s sitcoms when a character would enter a daydream sequence) there were a way to convince teachers to let their local public librarians know about assignments....

That dream may soon come true--with an emphasis on may--if the minds behind a new startup, yourhomework.com, have their way. "We want to fill a fundamental need," says Laura Flynn, yourhomework.com's director of business development and a former teacher. "We want to make it easy for students, parents, teachers, and librarians to communicate."

The service works like this: individual teachers or entire faculties may sign up at http://www.yourhomework.com. Then they type current and upcoming assignments for the classes they teach into a box and click a button to post them to the teacher's publicly-accessible Web site, where students and parents can find them. Checking another box sends an e-mail with the text of the assignment to one or several local public libraries, and notification of the school media specialist had just been added as well. Use of the service is free, and yourhomework.com does not collect personal data or target ads at its users. The dot-com hopes to profit from widespread use of its online fundraising "mall." The mall lets parents shop at online retailers, such as Walmart.com, and raise money for their children's schools; yourhomework.com gets a percentage of each sale.

All of this sounds intriguing, although I'm still not convinced that teachers will be motivated to post their assignments. Even if they post them for a week or a month, I'm also skeptical that they will make online posting of assignments a habit. Whenever I speak to educators and consultants who want to make technology a bigger part of the learning process, I hear that many teachers are still reluctant to use it as part of their own day-to-day classroom-management work. Lots of teachers, I'm told, still won't use e-mail. When I expressed my skepticism to Laura Flynn, she acknowledged that convincing teachers to post their assignments regularly is one of the company's challenges, but "yourhomework.com has worked," she says, "to make the service the easiest method of homework posting. We're not expecting too much from teachers."

Yourhomework.com's service, which has been up and running since last fall, has attracted the notice of several public libraries and school districts. Altoona (PA) public schools have been using it on a widespread basis. In fact, the junior high principals have required teachers use it. But so far only fewer than 10 assignments have reached the local public library's e-mail inbox, says Deborah Weakland, director of the Altoona Area Public Library.

Yourhomework.com, which is based near Los Angeles, is also working to convince the Los Angeles Unified School Distict and other districts in Los Angeles County to try it. "I think it's great, and we're willing to support it," says Anne Connor, Los Angles Public Library's children's coordinator. "But the teachers need to commit to entering the assignments."