How you use the Web in your studies depends on a number of things -- the subject, the assignment, and the teacher. Let's start with that last one: Make sure that you understand your teacher's policy on homework help, both in-person and online. Most teachers will appreciate a student who takes the effort to get a leg up, but there are definitely some circumstances when answering a question after an online search is inappropriate (a take-home test, for instance). So remember: Make sure your teacher approves of online research before you amaze him or her with your Net savvy.
Once that's cleared up, the sky's the limit. The Homework Helpcategory in Yahooligans! is a perfect place to start. Yahoo!'s K-12 Resources category also offers a number of helpful sites. Or, you can use a search engine or Internet navigation site to find resources that relate to your specific topic (e.g., geometry, civil war, and differential calculus). You can also enter in a more general request (e.g., homework help), as there are many sites that provide message boards or email responses to questions from students around the world.
Once you've located online information relating to your homework, make sure you do your best to check it for accuracy. After all, just because something is online doesn't necessarily mean it's true.
What is more important to a high school student than being popular? Anyone who's ever attended high school or at least seen a John Hughes movie knows the answer to that one. When Theresa Sommers first discovered MySpace three years ago, the teen from Minneapolis/St. Paul thought she'd found the ultimate high school popularity contest. She could spend hours a day creating an online profile, finding cool backgrounds and music to decorate her page, and signing up interesting looking people to be her online "friends." And along the way, she could compete with her friends (and enemies) for all to see who had the most friends or most-visited page.
The more she used the online social networking site (SNS), however, the more bored she became with merely being popular; she started using her time for more heartfelt conversations with friends and delved more deeply into her personal interests. A budding photographer, she posted her best shots to the site and searched forums of professional photographers for encouragement and advice. She began, as well, to seek out students at colleges she was interested in attending, even opening up a new account on Facebook, a site more heavily used by college students, to network. And she even began to post some of her creative writing and would solicit advice on homework essays from her circle of friends, asking them "How long did you take on your essay?" or "How'd you write it?" Often she'd post her homework online. "Everybody does it," she says.
That's news to most teachers and parents who have never used social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook -- and even to some of us who have. If we hear about them at all in the press, it's usually to illustrate their dangers, with stories of online sexual predators, cyber bullying, or a job application faux pas when a potential employer rescinds a job offer based on embarrassing online photos or comments. At best, these sites seem like a frivolous distraction -- the telephone on steroids -- tolerated along with text messaging and Wii as the latest technologies to help kids procrastinate from their schoolwork.
