Word: homework
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...Homework in the future may not be any less laborious, but it will certainly be more wired. And as more children gain access to computers and the Net--75% of teens and 47% of kids ages 2 to 12 are expected to be online by 2002--schools and technology companies are responding with unique assignments and high-tech homework help for parents and kids. On the menu...
TAILOR-MADE ASSIGNMENTS. The most profound way homework will change is that instead of everybody heading home with the same lesson, each student will sit down to an individual assignment, says Kevin O'Leary, president of educational-software giant the Learning Co. "If you thought of it conceptually as every child having a personal tutor, that's what we're aiming for." The school's server, or central computer, will maintain information on each student's progress and dole out the appropriate work when the child checks the Web page. At Pine Hill School in Sherborn, Mass., some teachers already...
KEEPING IN TOUCH. For students like high school junior Samantha Symonds of Pottstown, Pa., the simple ease of getting assignments online and turning them in via e-mail is reason enough to take homework digital. Samantha, a competitive fencer, travels far from her school for tournaments and boots up to stay on top of her classwork. Logging on in hotel rooms and airports, she gets copies of course lectures and lab assignments, e-mails her teacher when she's stumped and even takes tests online. "You can actually focus on what you need to know rather than tracking down someone...
...searching websites and CD-ROMs for research projects, and wowing teachers with what they find. "Even at the best schools, you used to be limited by how much you could pack into one little library," says Judy Breck, an educator for 20 years and now the content master at Homework Central, a commercial homework-help website. "Now if you have Web access, you're only limited by what's known...
WIRING THE HAVE-NOTS. As computers become the homework tool of choice, educators worry about children who don't have access to the technology. "The kids who don't have computers at home will be at such a fundamental disadvantage. It will be as if they don't have a pen or paper," says Elliot Soloway, a professor at the University of Michigan. He just finished a study in which Internet TVs were placed in the homes of a class of Detroit public-school students, and found it not only benefited the kids but boosted parental involvement as well...