Captain Crow addressing the parents and students interested in online tutoring.

Stressing the importance of education in his remarks, Captain Crow encouraged everyone in the room to take their studies seriously. And to take advantage of Tutor.com to get help with homework and studying—especially valuable when a parent is deployed and can’t help with math homework. The online tutoring program from Tutor.com is provided by the Department of Defense and gives Navy families (as well as military service families in the Army, Marines and Air Force) access to a professional tutor online 24/7 at no charge.

Mr. Dan Barnthouse, MWR Director at JEB Little Creek-Fort Story, was also on hand to speak to the families and Tutor.com’s Kara Froman led the group through a demonstration of how the online classroom works.

Parents and military spouses came to the event to see how this program can help their families.

Navy members must sign in to Navy Knowledge Online to access the service. Once on the NKO site, click on the REFERENCE tab in the navigation bar. Look for the Tutor.com box in the right column and click on the links Kids and Teens or Adults to get a tutor.

You probably don’t spend much time in the East Room of your house, but on Wednesday your dad invited more than 100 of the country’s top teachers there to announce his new “Educate to Innovate” campaign.  After handing out some awards, he joked about putting his guests to work:

“As I mentioned to some of you, because I’ve got two girls upstairs with math tests coming up, I figure that a little extra help from the best of the best couldn’t hurt.  So you’re going to have assignments after this.  These awards were not free.”

We assume you did just fine on those math tests.

Unfortunately, you won’t always have a crowd of brilliant teachers downstairs to help you study. Of course, you could always get help from your parents, but they’ll both be pretty busy for the next three to seven years.  So what’s a first daughter to do?

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.  Tutor.com has thousands of certified math and science tutors available to help you with homework, studying and lab reports, 24/7.  We cover social studies, history and essay-writing too—and we can even help you prepare for the SAT when you start thinking about college.

So the next time you’re stuck on a tough problem, don’t drag your dad out of a meeting with the National Security Council.  Our tutors are just a few clicks away, and there’s no charge for military families (as daughters of the commander-in-chief, we figure you qualify) or patrons of the DC Public Library.  We hope to see you soon!

Sincerely,

The Tutor.com Team

Today, Tutor.com has more than 1,800 tutors and we conduct about 1,500 online tutoring sessions in two hours every day after-school.  Students of all ages use Tutor.com thanks to more than 1,800 public libraries, schools and corporations as well as the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps that offer Tutor.com services free to the students in their respective communities.  Students connect to a tutor from wherever they have a computer and Internet access.

A lot has changed since those first few months in 2001. We’ve since won lots of awards, brought on thousands of tutors and now, our latest achievement? We’ve conducted our five millionth session. That’s a lot of answered questions about science fair projects and balanced chemical equations. We’ve found the length of side B and the themes in Of Mice and Men quite a few times.

It’s a big number and we are really, really proud of such an accomplishment. If you are wondering how to size-up five million online tutoring sessions go to www.tutor.com/5million for our top fun facts and watch our video that shows just where across the United States students have been using Tutor.com.

We also want to say “Thank You.” Thank you to all the organizations that have provided this service to their patrons, to the students who have left us wonderful comments that make our days brighter (students told us that Tutor.com “rocks” almost 9,000 times in post session comments), to the librarians and program managers who are always finding new and creative ways to tell their communities about the service and to the thousands of tutors who are helping with all of those “aha!” moments. Thanks, and here’s to the next fifty million!

In honor of Thanksgiving, we wanted to share (unedited) comments where students mentioned how grateful or thankful they were for the free help that libraries and schools provide.

• Thank you Sinking Spring Library for sponsoring my learning!
• Thank you the Houston Public Library for offering tutor.com to the community. We students really appreciate it and we value it for saving our time and money. Thank you very much
• Dear Elizabeth Public Library, Thank you for offering such a wonderful tool to help students and adults. You guys make things right instead of the the wrong things. Thankyou
• Thank you so much Howard County Libraries for giving us FREE access to this incredible website!! It makes it much easier to do homework for people of ALL AGES!!
• Thanks hcplc for offering this service for free! Thanks for doing your part to help improve the learning experience for American students!
• We would like to thank you for making tutors available to our family for FREE! Homework time has become an increasingly long and difficult task, but your tutoring services have provided us with a fun and interactive way to learn.
• Thanks, Gwinnett Public Library system! Your dedication and resources are indescribably valuable to the students and people of Georgia!
• This service is wonderful, which makes sense because the libraries are one of the best parts of Pasadena – a city with lots of great things to say.
• Thank you so much Rowlett Public Library. Without you I don’t know how I would have ever discovered Tutor.com. I also don’t know how I would have raised my grades up dramatically.
• Thank you so much, Black Earth Public Library, for offering such a wonderful learning site. Please keep offering it!!
• I don’t have the money for a tutor and having the capability to acces a tutor online when I need it not, Mondays at 5:30 only, but everyday really helps my grades.
• I’d like to thank the library for putting this up and offering this kind of help for those who are in need of some extra help and also the tutors, you know of how and what i thank you for =). I’d also like to thank my school, which is Terra Nova Highschool for offering this as well. Thanks so much!!
• Thank-you San Bernardino Public libraries for making this possible, this is one of the grandest things which has helped me so much. By helping us in this way, you demonstrate how much much you care about the community ,and I appreciate it!
• Thank you sooooooo. much Matteson Public Library with out you i wouldn’t have the grades i have now. I so glad you are doing this program to help us kids get a better grib on or furture and our grades. THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH.

Happy Thanksgiving from Tutor.com

Unfortunately, millions of Americans either have no broadband service where they live, or they cannot afford the access.   As a result, they (and their children) are at grave risk at being left behind in an increasingly digital world.  This problem is known as the digital divide.

What we collectively can and should do about the digital divide was the subject of an important event I attended this week, called the 2009 Minority Broadband Summit.

The best news about this event is that I was the least important person in the room.   When I arrived for the opening breakfast I sat down next to a very nice woman.  After a few minutes I realized that I was dining and chatting with the first female physician elected to the U.S. Congress – Assistant Majority Whip Donna Christensen.   I quickly sat up straight and reached for the proper fork.

Also at my table were John Marks (the mayor of Nashville), Dr. Lee Brown (the first black mayor of Houston), and Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis.   Other notable attendees included the Chairman of the Alliance for Digital Equality, Julius Hollis, Intel’s head of Public Strategic Initiatives, Rick Herrmann, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement, Jim Shelton.    There were many more luminaries and big brains that I don’t have space to list.  (The full list is here for those who may be curious.)   The event was moderated wonderfully by CNN Contributor Roland Martin, who clearly cares deeply about kids reaching their potential.

For the next four hours we collectively discussed what we can and should do about the digital divide.  What should the government do to facilitate broadband connections for those who want them but can’t get them (due to lack of availability) or can’t afford them?   What should schools and libraries do to help?   How can private companies play a role?   Should we focus on wiring up every home across the country or are broadband wireless services such as Wi-Max ready for prime time?

Another interesting question we explored was what to do about the segment of the population that barely knows what the Internet is and doesn’t realize how it can help them?   Professor Soto from Northwestern University told a story about how she was talking with a taco vendor in Chicago about the Internet and the vendor said why should she bother with the Internet since it wasn’t needed to make tacos?   How can we collectively demonstrate to her what the Internet can do for her and her family?

Rick Hermann from Intel asked us to imagine a world in which every kid has the ability to connect instantly to a math tutor for help with homework, through the Internet.   Rick mentioned that Intel is doing this right now for its entire employee base – as a free employee benefit — and suggested that the federal government give all private companies a tax incentive to follow Intel’s lead.   Similarly, Jim Shelton from the U.S. Department of Education talked about the power of using the Internet to connect students to experts around the country.   Why should a student in rural Georgia be limited to the one physics teacher within 50 miles of her school when the Internet can allow her to connect to the very best and brightest physics teachers across the country?

We also heard from NPR analyst and former Baltimore Chief Technology Officer Mario Armstrong about how kids are using video games to learn science and math and how crucially important it is for our country’s future that we retake our previous lead in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) education.   (You don’t want to know where the U.S. is currently ranked in the top twenty countries worldwide.)

All in all, it was an excellent event, and I am looking forward to working with several of the folks who attended.   Tutor.com is already powering the wonderful Intel program and is excited to be working with the Alliance for Digital Equality to help the kids of Clayton County, Georgia.

Tutor.com, the world’s largest online tutoring and homework help service, works with numerous school districts and non-profit organizations to bring online homework help and tutoring to underserved communities across the country.  For further information, feel free to contact Bart Epstein, Senior Vice President of Tutor.com, at bepstein@tutor.com.

Tutor.com: Your teen website is stacked with information, links, stories, contests. What am I leaving out?
Sara Cofer: We also have the Quick Poll where we ask the teens different types of questions. We added some new features to our blog including a Goodreads widget and a Finetune widget.

Tutor.com: How many people does it take to maintain all of that content?
SC: As far as content, there are three teen librarians (including myself, Ann Pechacek and Mandy Simon) that create the blog posts. Our webmaster also helps by uploading photos, posters, changing the quick polls, adding features and fixing our posts when we run into a problem.

Sarah Cofer, Ann Pechacek and Mandy Simon with author John Green

Tutor.com: Do you have any teens helping to maintain it, or submitting content?
SC: We did have teens help us design the look of the blog, but we do not have any teens who deliberately maintain or submit content to the blog. We do have teens that consistently publish their comments. In the future, I would love to have teens help submit content to it. We discussed this when we first launched the blog, but decided to wait and see how many comments we received and from whom. I think this is certainly something to explore.

Tutor.com: Have you identified any benefits from having a blog, in order to justify the effort?
SC: Our blog is usually the 2nd or 3rd most viewed section of our entire library website. That’s pretty rewarding! The teens know to look at the blog for upcoming events and to look at the photos of events after they take place. I had one high school guy who comes to the library frequently, but never asked for help or approached the staff. One day he stopped me and asked me when I was going to put the pictures from the recent Game Tournament on the blog. I was floored because he was not someone I would have thought even knew we had a teen blog, let alone read it.

Tutor.com: Can you tell us about one particular instance when having any particular teen-focused content on your site paid back big dividends?
SC: I don’t know if there has been one big payoff. I think there have been lots of little payoffs that together make our blog a success. Voting for the chairs for our new teen area is helpful in creating excitement and ownership of our physical space. When we had Sharon Draper come for a visit, several of the teens discussed which books of hers they have read and their favorites. Sharon Draper’s visit was the event that brought the most teen comments to our blog. We launched our blog at the same time we launched a new after-hours program series called TGIF. We advertised our programs in house like we usually do, but we also advertised them on the blog. We had record numbers to our TGIF programs.

Tutor.com: What is your number one most successful motivator for getting teens to visit your website?
SC: When we launched the blog we created hot pink post-it notes that listed the URL for our blog. We put them everywhere: on books, on walls, at schools etc. We put one on each of the Summer Reading Program reading record and allowed the teens to earn points for their Summer Reading Program by visiting the blog!

Our numbers really spiked during the summer. This past fall we had an online game we called BlogQuest where questions were posted every week for ten weeks. After the ten weeks, teens could submit their answers to win an MP3 player. We didn’t get very many entries and in hindsight we feel the questions should have been listed all together and then given them a few weeks to find the answers. I think that would have gotten more response.

Saran and Ann with some of the former teen volunteers who now run the gaming events.

Sarah’s Side Notes: When we launched the blog in June of 2006, we had 718 visits. By December 2006, our visits were at 7,597. A year later in June of 2007 we had 16,278. I am sure being library of the year didn’t hurt our numbers, but before we were announced library of the year our numbers were still pretty good. A visit is defined as “All the activity of one visitor to a Web site.” So they could click on multiple sections of our blog, but it is still counted as one visit. These are not necessarily unique visitors. If the visitor continues to browse our site after they reach the idle-time limit (30 minutes) a new visit is counted.

Are you considering a blog for your library? If you are already a blogging pro, tell us about your experience.

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, The Waves by Virginia Woolf

-          Jen, Marketing

Shakespeare: Hamlet and Macbeth

-          Adam, Marketing

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, World Book Encyclopedia

-          George, CEO

A Ring of Endless Light by Madeline L’Engle,  Robert Heinlein’s  Stranger in a Strange Land, Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery

-          Julie, Client Services

I couldn’t resist the Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy M. Montgomery and the Nancy Drew series! And, I was addicted to John Grisham (A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief, The Firm.)

-          Jill, Marketing

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, Dune by Frank Herbert, Stephen King’s The Stand, Watership Down by  Richard Adams, The Once & Future King by T.H. White, King Arthur and His Knights by Sir James Knowles, and a compilation called Man’s Greatest Adventure which was a compilation of all of the Apollo moon missions, told by the NASA administrators and astronauts themselves, with these amazing photographs. I still have it, actually.

-           Duane, Creative Services

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

-          Krissie, Sales

Plays by Federico Garcia Lorca (Bodas de Sangre, Yerma, La Casa de Bernarda Alba,) In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

-          Avy,  Provider Management

I loved the Sweet Valley High series/Babysitter Club series – yes even as a teenager.  They were terrific.  I loved them.  I don’t care that I should have grown out of them by then. I loved those Chicken Soup books.  I was obsessed.  I thought they were so witty.  Now, not so much. School books I liked – I liked Tess of the d’Urbervilles.  I don’t remember why.  But I remember loving it.  Everyone else hated it, and I remember agreeing with the teacher that this book was soooo cool – which made me not cool.  I think I am going to have to read it over to try and remember why I loved it… And Bridget Jones’ Diary had just come out and we had a teacher/student book club.  It was a blast.  Loved Bridget.  Still love Bridget.  It was a great one.  And a very controversial book club talk.

-          Carolann, Creative Services

What were your favorite books to read as a teen? Would you still consider them a favorite?

Hello Live Homework staff, thank you for all your help and support. I appreciate all you have done for others and I. America should be proud of all of you, as well as society. When the government gives out speeches regarding educational standards, they should talk about tutoring, after-school tutors, and online free tutoring. Why? Well, not all of America’s teenagers and kids have the ability to go to a center for tutoring, or to pay tuition for tutoring, whether it’s online or personal tutoring. Everyone is thankful for this free service that the Ferguson Library provides, and hopefully other organizations do too. We all wish that not only America, but other nations as well, can have this process of “help for the people by the people” in their developing, or not-so-developing, countries. The government helps the country, but people, my great friends, are who help people. Thank You!

Whether it’s online tutoring, internet access, cultural events, or just something to read, public libraries across the country provide essential services to students, parents and entire communities. We’re excited to contribute to this effort, and we look forward to helping the next million students who work with our tutors as much as we’ve helped this one.