Homework Help on the Web

General Homework Sites  |  Language Arts  |  Science  |  Social Science and History  |  Math  |  Other Handy Sites  | 

General Homework Sites

KidsClick!
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/

The junior analog to the indispensable Librarians' Index to the Internet [http://www.lii.org/] is KidsClick! created by librarians in the Ramapo Catskill Library System in Middletown N.Y. and maintained by the Colorado State Library in Denver. Use this searchable directory to find homework help in all subject areas, as well as a bunch of other great stuff for kids.

Bigchalk "Homework Central"
http://www.bigchalk.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/WOPortal.woa/db/Home.html

This is really a specialized search engine just for students K-12. It is divided into six levels: young students, kids in middle school, and high school, as well as three other specialized engines for teachers, parents, and school librarians. This is a great way to find useful homework help!

Learning Network
http://www.learningnetwork.com/

FactMonster, FunBrain, and InformationPlease Almanac all have their home at the Learning Network. InformationPlease Almanac is a fantastic general reference resource featuring an authoritative encyclopedia, a dictionary, and an atlas. Fact Monster has access to all that information via a kid-friendly interface and a homework help center. Go to FunBrain for games with an educational edge, such as a math-based tic-tac-toe, or "Grammar Gorilla".

BJ Pinchbeck's Homework Helper
http://school.discovery.com/homeworkhelp/bjpinchbeck/

A real kid named B.J. Pinchbeck and his dad have collected over 700 homework helper sites arranged by subject.

KidInfo
http://www.kidinfo.com/

Canfield, Ohio middle school teacher Linda Guterba has constructed this collection of homework help sites on the web. Guterba has categorized her directory based on the actual work students must complete in the K-12 across the United States.

Homework Help Sites from the King County Library System
http://www.kcls.org/hh/homework.cfm

Find the subject sites you need among 20 categories offered by the reference librarians of the King County Library system.

A+ Research and Writing for High School and College Students
http://www.ipl.org/div/aplus/

Kathryn L. Schwartz wrote this guide when she was a student at Information and Library Studies program at the University of Michigan. It is designed not only to teach writing but also steps for researching a paper using both print and electronic resources. Leave it to the Internet Public Library to mount such a useful resource.

Online Literary Criticism
http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/

The Internet has never been kind to the Humanities. Still, some hearty souls in academia still care enough to mount literary criticism on the Web. If it is out there, and it is free, the Internet Public Library has found it and categorized it by date, by genre, or alphabetically by author name.

YourDictionary.com
http://www.yourdictionary.com/

Here is a destination that offers quick definitions and synonyms from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary & Thesaurus as well as links to online dictionaries, translators, and Web-based language identifiers from all over the globe. Specialized English dictionaries, such as those for business or law are collected here, too. Many linguistic activities are addressed from this site, including links to language games such as crossword puzzles.

RhymeZone
http://www.rhymezone.com/

Lycos sponsors this excellent online rhyming dictionary and thesauraus. RhymeZone's results link to quotes from Shakespeare and other famous sources. Scroll farther down the home page to find quizzes, quotations, and the full text of important documents like the U.S. Constitution and the Bible.

On-line Books Page
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/

John Mark Ockerbloom, a digital library planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, created and maintains this definitive, searchable directory to books freely readable over the Web. Because he only links to full text in the public domain, some of his entries pull up some rather obscure stuff. On the other hand, it can also find any copy of a classic you might need. Search by author, title, or Library of Congress subject heading. Find your Chekhov, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton here!

Science Fair Central
http://school.discovery.com/sciencefaircentral/

Visit the Discovery Channel's guide to science fair projects. Get guidance to the steps required in an experiment, get ideas, and search their links and suggested books for data.

Experiments and Science Projects from the Internet Public Library
http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/browse/mas6000/

The Internet Public Library has assembled links to science fair sites from across the Web.

Frank Potter's Science Gems
http://www.sciencegems.com/

Physicist Frank Potter maintains this unmatched collection of science sites for students. He has amassed over than 14,000 science resources and sorted them by category, subcategory, and grade level. He has three separate collections of physical science sites, two earth science subcategories, two on life science, and one each on mathematics and engineering. Search the lot of them by keyword, too.

How Things Work
http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/

Louis A. Bloomfield, Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia, answers questions that readers send in regarding the physics of everyday things. Users can search Bloomfield's archive of revealed wisdom by keyword, date, or subject. Find out why coffee seems warmer after you stir in cream, even though the cream is cold (transfer of energy). Discover the reason that paper towels absorb water (cellulose binds to water easily). And finally, uncover ways to make your coffee so hot in the microwave that the cup explodes. Science is fun!

Weather.com Encyclopedia
http://www.weather.com/encyclopedia/

Do you have that assignment where you have to report on an historically important storm? This is the resource for you. Check for historical descriptions of storms under "Hurricanes", "Tornadoes", "Winter Storms", and "Flooding".

NASA Spacelink
http://spacelink.nasa.gov/

The Education Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration offers these pages designed to teach kids about space. Use their alphabetical index to browse for relevant sites, or just use their keyword search.

The Merck Manual Home Edition
http://www.merckhomeedition.com

When doctors and nurses get sick, they turn to the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy as their standard of diagnosis. But the medical terms in the regular Merck are often incomprehensible to the lay person. Students may prefer the Home Edition for the same great information translated into terms that all of us can understand. Choose the plain text site, or have fun with the cool, interactive version. Completely searchable, this online publication lists the causes, symptoms, and prognosis of just about everything that can go wrong with you. It also covers mental conditions, pediatrics, and infectious disease!

MEDLINEplus Health Information
http://medlineplus.gov

The National Library of Medicine has assembled its resources onto one attractive portal designed for general health consumers. Students can visit this site to find information on conditions, diseases, drugs, and wellness. Also, they can use the handy medical dictionaries here to translate difficult medical terms.

HyperHistory Online
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html

Here's a cool thing: HyperHistory covers 3,000 years of world history with an interactive combination of timelines, lifelines, and maps. Get and print your historical maps here.

National Geographic Online
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

Wow! Use this site to play with a virtual solar system, make maps of anywhere on earth, or learn to sail a boat interactively. Under "Homework Help", learn about history and culture, geography, animals, and nature.

Links to the News
http://poynteronline.org/column.asp?id=49

For those who must report on recent history, the Poynter Institute for journalism offers information and background for the major story every week all the way back through 1995. Do you have to do a report on the Oklahoma City bombing? Pull up contemporary news reports on this site!

FactFinder Kids' Corner!
http://factfinder.census.gov/home/en/kids/kids.html

The U.S. Census Bureau, in conjunction with Allison Druin from the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at the University of Maryland, serves up this page of kid-friendly facts from the 2000 Census. This is a great place to get the latest population and demographic information for those ubiquitous state reports.

ClassBrain's State Reports
http://www.classbrain.com/artstate/publish/

If you have a state report due, visit here first. ClassBrain provides maps, links to state sites, and interesting local lore from each congressional district. Print their handsome templates to give a polished look to your report.

Outline Maps
http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/

The Houghton Mifflin Company offers quality outline maps of the United States, Europe, and the rest of the world free for homework use. Some maps are in PDF format and require the Adobe Acrobat reader to see them.

Math.com
http://www.math.com/index.aspx

This is a commercial destination that can nevertheless be a big help to those with math problems. Use this site to explore everything from addition to advanced calculus. There is a nice section here of "Everyday Math" for grown-up boneheads like myself who still need a good half an hour to remember how to calculate square footage needed for a home improvement project or how to convert recipe amounts from British to U.S. units.

Ask Dr. Math
http://mathforum.org/dr.math/

Over the years, many people have written to the Math Forum at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with questions about their math homework. The Math Forum has collected these questions and answers in a searchable archive arranged by general grade level. Did they never answer the question that you have? Feel free to submit your query to Dr. Math.

QuickMath
http://www.quickmath.com/
Sometimes, you just want answers. Turn to QuickMath, developed by Australian Ben Langton. Type in an algebra or calculus problem and have the MathScript server calculate results for you. This is a particularly nice site for lazy high school and college students.

Webmath from Discovery.com
http://school.discovery.com/homeworkhelp/webmath/

Here is another site that invites you to type in your equations and get the answers. Just to check your work, of course.

InfoPlease Almanac
http://www.infoplease.com/

This is a great destination for quick answers to many questions. What is the deepest lake in the world? (Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia, at more than a mile deep.) Who invented air conditioning? (Willis Carrier, in 1911.) What were some of the major world events in the first decade of the last century? (The Russians revolted, the Wright Brothers flew, and Henry Ford began making automobiles). Find maps, definitions, and brief biographies here.

Biography.com
http://www.biography.com/

Speaking of biographies, use this site to "search over 25,000 of the greatest lives, past and present." The site does not give out in-depth information, but at least it will give you an handle on the subject of your biographical report.

FindArticles.com
http://www.findarticles.com/PI/index.jhtml

Need articles? Search this free archive of full-text articles dating back to 1998 from more than 300 magazines and journals.

MagPortal.com
http://magportal.com/

MagPortal collects and classifies links to those newsletters and magazines that offer current, interesting, yet free content on the Web.

Calculators On-Line Center
http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/RefCalculators.html

Jim Martindale of the University of California at Irvine has collected links to over 15,000 calculators. Use these tools to solve math and engineering problems, or to figure out wacky things such as a callsign code generator for ham radio operators and a heat loss calculator for industrial buildings.

Learn 2 Type
http://learn2type.com/

No matter what, if you're going to use the Web, you're going to have to learn how to type. For those of us who didn't endure that nasty typing class back in junior high school, here is a free service to help us move beyond the hunt-and-peck stage. Register for free and take the typing course for adults, or the Learn2 Type for Kids program.

EasyType
http://www.easytype.com/

In return for free registration, this Flash-based Web application, featuring a cool cartoon kid and a sunglass-wearing dog, will teach you to type. Test your speed here, too. Families who wish to bypass advertising on the site can pay $15 for a pool of licenses, one for every person in the house.

Live Homework Help on the Web

24/7 Reference
http://www.247ref.org/

The Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Cooperative Library System (MCLS) operates this live chat reference service that can call a librarian's help at any time, day or night. This service is oriented toward pointing the user to answers that lie out on the Web rather than just giving users answers outright.

Live Homework Help from Tutor.com
http://tutor.com/

4th to 12th graders can register to get a free 14-day trial for live homework help from 2 p.m. to midnight EST, seven days a week. Need more help? Get special one-on-one instruction for as little as $20 per hour.

October 28, 2002