After Years of Research, HelpMe2Teach.com is a Welcomed Resource for Parents, Students, and Teachers Across the Internet

By Elaine Taylor, MA and Kevin S. Taylor, MBA

Among the many Internet-based services offered by Las Vegas Web Design company Expert Website Services LLC, www.Helpme2teach.com, is a unique product which was developed to assist parents, teachers and students in kindergarten through high school. The website itself is an intense, database-driven, educational website directory for all phases of academia. The content was developed and refined over with almost a decade of research and development by an educator with over 40 years of classroom experience, teaching credentials in two states, and expertise in the areas of curriculum development and home school consulting.

The teacher that spawned the idea was working as an educator for a virtual charter school with limited support with regard to curriculum. She began surfing the web to find educational resources and began sharing them with others, spending literally thousands of hours separating the appropriate sites from the advertisements and inappropriate media. The initial list of websites contained only 700 links categorized by subject matter, age appropriateness, and whether they were geared toward the parent, student, or educator. Even with a list of 700 sites; however, the challenge was keeping the links updated. It was a daunting and almost full-time task to manage the links and replace some resources with new ones when their respective sources had moved or shut down. The project has grown tremendously from this initial list and now contains several thousand resources at any given time. The links are checked daily and automatically removed so that a user is not troubled by links that do not work. New websites are manually added after being reviewed by the educational department for appropriateness on a daily basis.

Users can log in to their account and use the site to find grade or age appropriate materials for nearly any subject imaginable. Nearly all of the website links are to sites that provide the resources free of charge; although, there are a small percentage that charge fees. The description or location of the site in the directory will let the user know if that particular link requires membership or other types of charges. In addition to being completely searchable, the websites in this directory are arranged by subject matter, each with a brief content description, and each coded as for the age level(s)  for which it is most suited: Primary-grades preschool through two, Elementary- grades two through five), Senior-Middle and High School, and Parent or teacher. They are also arranged in an easy to follow table of contents, which is arranged by subject matter covering all areas of curriculum.

There are 3 primary target markets that Expert Website Services hopes to reach with this product:

INDIVIDUAL FAMILIES OR EDUCATORS

Parents or grandparents who wish to supplement their children’s homework or summer break with additional resources would benefit a great deal by using this tool. This is especially true of students with special needs who may be struggling in a particular area. Teachers are also using this website to find and prepare material to supplement their daily lesson plans. Parents who are home schooling their children are also using this as an exhaustive resource for supplemental and primary curriculum.

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS

In these harsh economic times, one of the first places cuts are being made are in the schools. Schools need three basic fundamentals to operate – buildings, qualified personnel, and educational materials. In most cases, the buildings are there, although many are in need of repair. Portable buildings are usually available if a school outgrows its classrooms. Qualified personnel will only take so many pay cuts before they can’t live on their salaries or what they make is not worth the effort put forward by a teacher. Classes can only get so large before the teacher just becomes a babysitter. Educational materials are very expensive.

Textbooks can often cost $50.00 or more per student, per subject. When it is all added up, the costs are astronomical. Textbooks in math, English and literature have a relatively long lifespan if they are properly cared for. Science books and books in the social sciences become obsolete fairly quickly.

Individual Schools or School Districts can purchase site licenses to use Helpme2teach.com based on the number of students or educators that will be using the system. Each contract for site licenses is negotiated individually so that the needs of the user can be addressed and the cost can be maintained within the users budget. Expert Website Services is even providing co-branding opportunities for large site license holders who wish to integrate the tool into their existing online format.

FUNDRAISING

Finally, Expert Website Services is hoping to help organizations underwrite the costs of investing in their local youth by providing fundraising opportunities for schools and other institutions to resell licenses to helpme2teach.com as a fundraising endeavor. Instead of catalogs with merchandise, and other products, the fundraiser basically works by having the stakeholders sell annual subscriptions to helpme2teach.com at the retail price of $29.95. For each subscription sold, the organization will receive $15.00 back, over 50% profit. This provides an opportunity for any organization to have a successful fundraiser and contribute to the education of the local youth at the same time.

More information on any of these programs can be obtained by visiting the site at http://www.helpme2teach.com or by e-mailing Elaine@HelpMe2Teach.com.