Many military families do not move during summer, leaving students to make the transition during the school year.  This means new teachers and therefore teaching styles, differing academic standards, and playing the game of catch-up.  No matter if your move of schools was within the Department of Defense (DoD) network with the same academic standards or a new state with differing standards the amount of time the move takes leaves the student with a lot of homework to complete, tests to take, and lessons to learn.  The DoD  tries to support students in the move by offering transition counselors, youth sponsorship programs, and counseling for social and personal issues but it still may not be enough.  Through a survey of the DoD Education Activity organization (DoDEA) most parents did not know to use the transition planning services by 57 percent of the 18,075 parents surveyed in 2008 while only 15 percent were satisfied with the services.  There are a few things you can do and encourage your student to do to make sure they are both ready for their new school and able to catch-up on previous schoolwork.

Have the new school meet the old school.

Contact your new school find out what they need and how your student’s credentials line up.  Have your student’s guidance counselor send their official transcript to the new school so they can start working on the placement and academic support your student may need before you get there.  Make sure to get a copy of the transcript to bring along with you just incase.

Get in the know.

Utilize the services offered by the DoD such as transition planners and counselors that help your child ease into their new life.  These transition planners help the student to find the proper classes and academic support they made need to make the transition a positive one.

Reduce the stress with new people.

Encourage your student to get involved at school.  This may reduce the stress of catching up academically as well as finding new peers to possibly help them complete the catching-up process.  However, make sure your student balances this social and academic life so they do not fall even further behind.

Get a Tutor (dotcom)

The DoD allows for 24/7 unlimited online one-to-one tutoring for members of the military and their families.  This is a great resource for a student to just catch-up on work or lessons.  Our tutors are available for your student any day of the week at any hour and most importantly it is free.  Students can have a tutor review their homework to make sure they have everything correct and making a great first impression on their new teacher or engage in a hour long session where they learn how to solve quadratic equations.  This is a great resource for students in a new location, if they are too embarrassed to ask for help at their new school, they can do so at home and online.  Not only does Tutor.com offer online virtual tutoring but also a homework help resource database with links to hundreds of homework help websites for the exact topic they are looking for.

The DoD seeks to make this process as easy as possible and by utilizing their services whether it be transition planners and counselors or using Tutor.com, it is up to you and your student to make it successful.  Making new friends, catching up on homework, and turning a negative into a positive experience is the ultimate goal because in the end it is most important that your student is happy, healthy, and successful in their new home.

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

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.

A math tutor helps a student graph a problem using the TI-Nspire calculator in the Tutor.com Online Classroom

Helping students prepare for an exam, understand a difficult algebra concept or just get through their nightly homework assignment is what our tutors do every night. Tutors have many tools to help them teach in our online classroom and now thanks to Texas Instruments our algebra tutors have one more –
access to the TI-Nspire Teacher Edition graphing software.

Tutor.com is the first online tutoring service to offer this special integration of TI graphing software within the online learning environment. Algebra tutors working with our consumer customers can load the software to illustrate math problems four different ways on the student’s computer screen. Showing the same problem four different ways enables students with different learning styles to grasp the concepts in terms they understand.

We’re very excited about this new feature. To celebrate we’ve put out a Tutor.com and Texas Instruments announcement and we’re going to be tweeting excellent math tips from our tutors for the next month. These tips will be helpful for both parents and students. So if you don’t already follow us on twitter find us today at www.twitter/tutordotcom.

What’s Mole Day? Every October 23rd, we celebrate the “mole.” Not the furry creature, but the term an Italian scientist named Amedeo Avogadro coined in 1811. The mole, sometimes called Avogadro’s Number, is a unit of measurement used in chemistry. Learn more about moles.

We hope you enjoy this selection of mole jokes. It’s brightened our day, and kept (most of us) from breaking out in embarassing dances.

Q: What did Avogadro teach his students in math class?
A: Moletiplication

Q: What kind of fruit did Avogadro eat in the summer?
A: Watermolens

Q: Why was there only one Avogadro?
A: When they made him, they broke the Moled

Q: What kept Avogadro in bed for two months?
A: Moleonucleosis

Q: What line from Shakespeare do high school moles have to memorize?
A: “To mole or not to mole, this is the question.”

Q: What did Avogadro invent for his wife to use as a night cream?
A: Oil of Molay

Q: How much does Avogadro exaggerate?
A: He makes mountains out of mole hills

Q: What element do moles love to study in chemistry?
A: Molybdenum

During the last academic year, students completed over 83,000 chemistry sessions with our expert tutors.  They needed help and we were here to provide it.

If you are a chemistry expert, consider teaching other students by becoming an online tutor with Tutor.com.  You set your own hours, work from home and you help students reach their academic goals – whether it’s preparing for tomorrow’s exam, finishing a lab assignment or understanding a difficult concept.

“I have a biochemistry test tomorrow and I didn’t feel so good about it, but now I feel a lot better! Thank you Gwinnett County Public Library for offering this service!” – Tutor.com Student

If you have what it takes to help students with Chemistry, Calculus, Physics or Statistics then go to www.tutor.com/apply.  What better way to celebrate National Chemistry Week than helping our future educators and scientists?

“America’s economic future lies with its next generation of workers and their ability to develop new technologies and products. This means we must strengthen math and science education in the U.S.” – Craig Barrett Chairman, Intel Corporation

At Tutor.com we help thousands of kids with math homework and math concepts.  Fourth grade math is important.  This is when students begin to master fundamental math skills that they’ll use for the rest of their academic career.  During the 2008-2009 school year our tutors completed more than 16,500 one-to-one tutoring sessions with fourth grade students and 64% of these sessions were in math.  The most frequently asked questions included topics such as division, odd and even numbers, adding and subtracting decimals and fractions, and writing mathematical expression and patterns.  Many of these topics can be found on the  NAEP exam.

Why are kids turning to online tutoring?  Here’s the key reasons we see in students’ comments and from our tutors’ observations:

• The Online Whiteboard – for many of the kids seeing their problem drawn in real-time on the whiteboard (in color!) makes a big difference in how they relate and engage with the material.
• Smiley Faces – our tutors know that all students, but especially younger ones need lots of positive reinforcement.   We do this online by using emoticons, letting the kids know at each step what a great job they are doing and encouraging them to keep  up the good work.
• Pacing – students get to work at their own pace taking as long as they need to understand the concept at hand.  And, they’re not embarrassed to ask a question or admit they “don’t get it”.
• Resources –  in addition to tutoring, we offer peer-reviewed, tutor-approved resources.  Our Elementary Math materials are used the most.

After a recent session a fourth grader left this comment  “it was great.  I think I am smarter.”   All of our kids need to be “smarter” when it comes to math.  Let’s help them get there.