Go Online to Check School Assignments

The Times-Picayune
By Angel Thompson


     As the new school year begins, parents face the challenge of getting children to do homework, make good grades and strive for success.

     And, for many families, it's a tough, stressful challenge.

     At Ascension of Our Lord Catholic School in LaPlace, officials are helping to ease homework stress for parents and students with a new online homework program.

     With a few mouse clicks and a password, parents enter The Homework Site, and they can keep track of their children's daily, weekly and monthly homework assignments.

     Ascension of Our Lord is among a growing number of schools in the New Orleans area allowing parents to go to their school's Web site which posts homework assignments, test dates, due dates for projects, summaries of lesson plans and other pertinent school information.

     At the beginning of the school year, students created their own profiles, listed their teachers and corresponding classes. The information has been assimilated into a database that a parent can access with a password. Parents can enter their child's name and the password, view the class schedule, and click for the homework assignments.

     In addition to information about assignments, the program lets teachers post comments on a bulletin board and schedule activities on a school calendar.

     "Parents can keep up with what's going on at school, and they can really stay on top of their child's homework," said Gene Becker, who designed AOL's program and is the vice president of sales and marketing for The Homework Site, an Internet start-up in Harahan. "Parents are very pleased with the program."

     "The program is also working well for teachers," computer teacher Andy DiMaggio said.

     "With the built-in shortcuts incorporated into the design of the program, teachers can enter their assignments in about five minutes," he said. "It's a very user-friendly program for the teachers as well as the parents."

     "Teachers also like that the program will save time and effort in gathering homework assignments for absent students," DiMaggio said.

     Visiting The Homework Site is a daily routine for Richard Felton of LaPlace, who has two sons at AOL. Ricky is in the eighth grade and Derek is a kindergartner.

     "It's a great tool," he said. "It gives us an additional avenue to work with our kids."

     For eighth-grader Farren Alexander, The Homework Site is a "good back-up" program. "It's great, because if you forget your homework, you can go to the site and check it," she said. "You also can check your test schedule."

     While the program is working well, school officials still require students to write down homework in their notebook.

     "This is not meant to take the place of students being responsible for taking down their homework assignments," said computer assistant teacher Karen Verbeek, "but is a way to reinforce what they do."