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THE ELECTRONIC TUTOR IS INAOL's Academic Assistance Center helps thousands of students every dayI suspect all of us remember at least one of those terrifying moments in our school lives when a critical assignment was bearing down on us, the library was closed, and we were in desperate straits. Ah, if only we'd had the Internet. The Internet and the Web are a rich lode of reference material for people of all ages. There are online magazines and newspapers, encyclopedias, and technical journals--all reachable with a few clicks of a search engine. Sites catering specifically to students are especially useful during a homework crunch (table). But none of the cyber study halls I've seen offer as much as an America Online area called the Academic Assistance Center. (BUSINESS WEEK ONLINE also appears on AOL.) The AAC traces its origins to the Cyber Stone Age--1988--and has grown into a comprehensive, well-staffed service that goes far beyond access to reference works. Teachers and other staffers guide students to research areas, answer specific questions, and even offer one-on-one tutoring. LIVELY. The AAC never sleeps. When things are slow, it throttles back to a single chat room. But on a typical weeknight at 11 p.m., it will have 10 rooms open, with students firing off a string of messages, teachers responding, and the dialogue scrolling past for all participants to see. Besides general rooms set aside for students at every level from first grade through college, there are specialized rooms for subjects such as Spanish, biology, or math. Students who have made arrangements ahead of time by E-mail can get individual help working through a math problem or practicing their Spanish verbs. Even on the Saturday night between Christmas and New Year's Day, I found the single open room a lively place. A dozen students and four teachers were on hand. Thanatius was after ''some stuff on Charles V.'' Krumankids needed information on Christmas traditions in Central America. Magg wanted to know what double jeopardy is. The teachers didn't answer the questions directly but helped students think about them and offered suggestions on where they might find what they needed. Thanatius said he already had tried the encyclopedia and, at one teacher's suggestion, went off to Knowledge Database, the AAC's collection of frequently asked questions. Thanatius was soon back, with only a paragraph of information. A teacher suggested the AltaVista search engine and told Thanatius to be sure to put Charles V in quotes. ''VERYHELPFUL.''WhenI checked with Thanatius later, he had found what he was looking for. ''This place is very helpful,'' he messaged me. He said he had used the center for help on French, math, chemistry, and global studies. ''But sometimes there are too many people in the rooms.'' Presiding over this thriving electronic study hall is Hal Rosengarten, the Marlboro (N.Y.) sixth-grade teacher who is the AAC coordinator. Since taking charge of the site in 1993, Rosengarten has seen the number of students swell from 15 or so a day to 5,000. The number of tutors has gone from 100 to 1,300 in the same time. ''It's a constant battle getting people to join and stay,'' he says. The tutors, like Rosengarten, are volunteers who get only a free AOL account. Some 60% of the tutors are teachers from elementary school through college. Others include doctors, lawyers, accountants, and nurses--one of whom logs on from Britain. What motivates these people? After all, teachers where I live just outside New York City get $50 an hour and up for private tutoring. Marilou Bebak, a Buffalo high school biology teacher who has been part of the AAC for three years, has a ready answer: ''I really enjoy teaching, and this is a great way to help students all over the country.'' She says she also likes the sense of camaraderie she gets from working with the other volunteers. It would be good if this area, or one like it, were more widely available. Happily, more sites are moving from the proprietary online services to the Web, where anyone with an Internet browser has access. For example, Infonautics, which set up the innovative Homework Helper reference site on Prodigy two years ago, offers a similar service called the Electronic Library on the Web. It has recently added an area to help students find topics for and write research papers. But don't expect to find the AAC on the Web soon. Rosengarten says the center, particularly now that it has become so popular, needs the sort of strong technical support that AOL offers to its ''content providers.'' Also, AOL makes adding new technology less painful. For example, Rosengarten hopes AOL can someday help the center begin offering more multimedia, including live chat with audio, a development foreign-language teachers are eager for. So if you hear a strange voice coming from your family room some night, relax.
It's probably just Junior getting ready for that big Spanish test.
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Updated June 15, 1997 by bwwebmaster
Copyright 1997, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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