Back to School with Broadband Applications

While a decade removed from the last time Labor Day meant the beginning of my school year, I can’t help but feel nostalgic around this date.

Of course, things are much different for students of today, as evidenced by two applications/services I stumbled across that leverage broadband to help support the educational aspirations of students.

The first is a site called Tutor.com. As its name suggests, this site provides tutoring services over the Internet.

The way it works is pretty straightforward: set your kid up with an account, then when he or she runs into trouble while doing their homework, they can initiate a session with a tutor, no scheduling needed.

Effective tutoring is enabled by things like chat, an interactive white board, and file sharing, not to mention the simple fact that since this is all done online students can pull in other resources from the Web.

Sessions are recorded for students to review at a later time, and parents can gain access to transcripts to ensure everything’s on the up and up.

To date, Tutor.com has hosted more than a million tutoring sessions in subjects ranging from English to arithmetic to chemistry.

Interestingly, in this News.com article I learned that “the use of online tutors who meet government-approved academic standards is supported by the US Department of Education for supplemental education services under its No Child Left Behind Act.”

The second site I read about today is SchoolWebLockers.com.

This ComputerWorld article details the dilemma faced by the Tulsa, OK-based Monte Cassino School when they decided to provide its seventh and eighth grade students with new Tablet PCs.

Previously, the school had only offered 10MB of storage on its servers to students, but in order to more fully realize the benefits of everyone having a computer, they needed to find a better solution for offering hosted storage, which is where School Web Lockers comes into the picture.

Now, students at Monte Cassino School can store up to 100MB, and staff have access to 1GB of storage. Additionally, the School Web Lockers service enables chat, calendaring, and collaboration applications.

On the backend, the system will scan stored files for viruses, accounts are password protected, and the school district is able to monitor all files uploaded into the system, allowing them to identify and restrict access to abusers.

Both Tutor.com and School Web Lockers are fascinating services that leverage broadband to improve the educational opportunities and experiences of students. Perfect examples of the potential for broadband to enable applications for the betterment of all.