Live from Tutor.com, It's Homework Help

Tutor.com's Live Homework Help is a one-to-one tutoring service that brings tutors to libraries via the Net. While the company has provided tutoring online for over a year, it has moved recently to offer its services, via user licenses, to libraries. A student logs on and is instantly connected to one of 30,000 tutors, many of whom are retired teachers. The student and tutor can communicate in real time via Internet chat, or by audio with the aid of a sound card and headphones. There's also a "whiteboard," or online chalkboard, to use onscreen. It enables a student to draw a geometry problem, for example. "This is really for the child who's going through a rough patch," says Toni Bernardi, head of children's and youth services at the San Francisco Public Library, which uses the service in five of its branches. She says feedback from users has been "excellent."

The Internet-based service is free to students. Libraries, however, pay a $500 user license per month. Only one child per license can use the service at a time. "It certainly is not an inexpensive program, but no tutor program is inexpensive," notes Bernardi, adding that it's in high demand in San Francisco, where children are disproportionately poor. It's been especially helpful to children of parents for whom English is a second language, she says.

Karen Duff, formerly children's services coordinator at Boston Public Library, who created a successful online tutoring program ("Tutor in a Box," June 2000, p. 17) has joined Tutor.com as director of library and afterschool programs.