Immediate Release

Contact

Friday, March 29, 2002

Lorraine Oback, Library, (408) 277-4851
Jennifer Kohn, Tutor.com, 212/528-3101, x228

San José, CA - Children and young adults served by Berryessa and Hillview Branch Libraries don't have to be stumped by a tough homework assignment! Kids and teens from 5th grade to 12th grade can simply visit Berryessa or Hillview to get immediate help from qualified tutors. The two branches began a seven-month pilot this month offering Live Homework Help, an online tutoring service from Tutor.com that connects students to expert tutors in math, science, social studies and English via the Internet.

Log On and Learn

Live Homework Help is simple to use. Children and young adults log on to designated library computer terminals, enter their grade level and the subject they need help in. Students are immediately connected to a tutor in an Online Classroom for up to 20 minutes of help. Students and tutors can review specific homework questions in the Online Classroom using features such as controlled chat, an interactive white board and shared Web browsing. When the session is over, students can print their session for future reference or to share with a parent, guardian or teacher. Both tutors and students complete surveys and this information is aggregated and shared with the library each month.

Live Homework Help is available weekday afternoons or evenings and Saturday afternoons, according to the following schedule:

Learn from Qualified Tutors in an Online Classroom

Live Homework Help tutors are certified teachers, college professors, professional tutors and graduate school students from across the country. All of the participating tutors have received a 7-year criminal background check and reference check from Kroll Background America (students' credentials are confirmed by their university) and have been certified through the Tutor.com Training Program.

"Live Homework Help will be particularly helpful in meeting a critical need for tutors with a higher level of expertise, who can coach students in middle school and high school," states Library Director Jane Light. "We're very pleased that we were able to successfully compete for the two sites allotted to each participating library system."

The service is being made available through the California State Library Live Homework Help Grant Program, which provided Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds provided through the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services and administered by the State Librarian. California is the first State Library to work with Tutor.com to offer online tutoring services. More than 50 public library jurisdictions from across the state applied for the program and 39 of the applications were accepted.

About Tutor.com

Founded in partnership with The Princeton Review, Tutor.com is the leading provider of online tutoring services for education institutions and individual students. Tutor.com provides one-to-one, online tutoring delivered via its proprietary Online Classroom, utilizing the Web's largest network of tutors, and supported by powerful administrative and reporting tools. The Tutor.com Online Classroom enables learners and tutors to interact in a variety of ways, including speaking to each other live, using whiteboard technology, sharing documents, chatting and browsing the Web together. Tutor.com currently provides tutoring services for more than 60 public libraries and education organizations across the country. In addition to San José, these include the Boston Public Library, San Francisco Public Library, Louisville Free Public Library, Phoenix Public Library, King County Library System (WA) and Cleveland Public Library.

For more information about Tutor.com, please visit www.tutor.com. For other online homework resources, visit San José Public Library eBranch at www.sjpl.lib.ca.us.

# # # # #