Secondary School Learning

 by: Jane Fulton

Not only does the internet provide research for everyday school work, students can also find useful material to help prepare them for college.

Some sites allow you to look up information for homework and provide help to complete special assignments or projects. Your child will find question and answer sessions and be able to chat with other students online.

There is a site for just about any topic-- History, Current affairs, Health, Math. Is your child a language student? If so, their skills can be honed by reading online foreign language magazines. Your child will find resources that will help them with any area of study.

One of the largest and best search engines online, can be found at: http://www.google.com When you get to the home page, type a keyword or phrase into the search box. You will receive a list of websites that pertain to your search.

A great site to start with is: http://www.education-world.com They offer links for science, history, math and universities, plus other subjects. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, there is also a link for Special Education students.

In order to interact with some sites, you will need to download Shockwave. Shockwave is a plug-in that you can download from a site. There will be a link to download it from, if the site requires it.

You will find that some of the sites charge users a fee to access their services and information. One such site is: http://homeworkhelp.com They offer some free study aids, but charges a fee for their full range of lessons and quizzes in core middle school and high school subjects.

At this site, you can buy books and textbooks: http://www.bguide.com

At http://www.howstuffworks.com , you can learn how things work. It covers car engines to tornadoes, and also has an extensive question-and -answer section.

TIP: Be sure to look for free subscriptions to educational newsletters, that can be sent to your email address.

For The Parents: Chatting online can be addictive. You will need to set a time limit for your child to visit the chat rooms, like you do when they talk on the phone. At http://www.akrontech.com/ they have software that offers parental control (what sites your children view) and an internet timer. The internet timer is a great tool. You, the parent sets up individual accounts and determines how much time each user gets to be online. When their time is up, they are automatically logged out and not allowed to go back online. The cost of this software is $34.95 and they even give you a 30day free trial, to see if it's right for you and your family.