Sunday, March 22, 2009

A review for the site HelpMe2Teach.com

Today I will review a site called HelpMe2Teach.com . This has been our first official assignment for the TOS Crew. I took a few days to check it out and ponder what to write…

HelpMe2Teach is a tool which helps a teacher or homeschool parent to find in a record time some prescreened websites on specific subject. You could find up to 2000 links to educational sites with HelpMe2Teach. Let me specify that this is not a search engine. The author has been a teacher for more than 40 years and has spent numerous hours to gather the information that you could find on the site. However, there is a price attached to this site. You have to pay a subscription to be able to access this directory of internet resources. Memberships are available on a trial, one-a-month, three months or annual basis. Prices varies according to the type of membership you choose going from 4, 95$ US for a trial subscription to up to 29, 95$ US for an annual subscription.

This internet tool list the links in 23 categories - Academic benchmarks $ Standards, Animals, Arts & Crafts, Computers, Cooking for kids, For Teachers/Parents only, Foreign Languages, Health & Safety, Holidays, Kites, Language Arts, Magazines/Student/Student News, Mathematics, Media, Multi-Subjects Sites, Music & Dance, Olympics, Preparing for College, Primarily Primary, Science, Social Studies, Special Pay Sites, and Specialty Topics.

Once you have bought your subscription and accessed the site, you will have the categories. You simply click on a specific category to access the link that will interest you or you type your subject of interest in the search box at the top of the page. Simple enough as you can see. But is it worth spending your money on this site? Let’s see what I have found.

Personally, I find the site interesting enough to investigate it. There is lots of interesting subjects that I could dig into. I discovered some very interesting sites as I was looking into HelpMe2Teach. I even found a Canadian site with lesson plans! And since we are studying creation these days, I thought it would be interesting to check out the subject of dinosaurs. I found only secular sites about it. While doing another search I probably found the only Christian site listed in there and that site had a dinosaur section on a Christian perspective. They even had a video for the kids to watch which I found was very interesting by the way!
Unfortunately, I have found many broken links while performing the searches I wanted. Personally this is a turndown for me. I don’t like having broken links… Another thing I realized is that there are a lot of repeats for some sites. I would suspect that the person who would have bought the 29, 95$ subscription would be quite disappointed with it because of the broken links and the repeats. Finally, my last negative point for this tool would be that if you perform a search on anything related to the Bible like Noah, Jesus, Tower of Babel and so on, nothing will come up. I couldn’t even found anything on butterflies! I think it’s sad that you don’t give access to this kind of information. For example, when I type birth of Jesus links about science and animals came up because of the word birth in my search criteria. Mmmm! Not quite effective for a search right? I guess this is what they mean by prescreened websites… But I am still wondering why there is sites about Jewish Holidays like Passover, Chanuka and Purim or about Kwanzaa which is a holiday for African American and nothing about the Christian fatih. Mind you there are sites about Christmas and Easter but these sites have a secular perspective to it.

Being a search engine queen, I must honestly say that I wouldn’t get such a subscription for me. However, I know that not everyone is wired the same way and do not possess the gift of finding interesting sites rapidly. So HelpMe2Teach might help if you are such a person. But do not subscribe to the more expensive subscription because I think you will be disappointed. I would strongly suggest that you take a less expensive version depending on how much time you have in your hands to dig into this site. Then you can save the links in your Favorites folder of your browser. And if you are a Christian, remember that you won’t find any links related to all the stories of the Bible. You better perform you own search on Google or Yahoo… If you are interested in HelpMe2Teach.com , visit their site and click on the sign-up link at the top of the page.

UPDATE:Since I wrote this review, Elaine at HelpMe2Teach has made many improvement to the site. She included the missing searches I had found and also included a christian section. This is a work in progress and she has asked the crew to provided any interesting sites for her to add - especially on the Christian ones. She also asked us to tell our readers that right now she is having a promotion.

BUY A 1 YEAR SUBSCRIPTION AND GET A 2ND YEAR FREE!

This is an amazing deal when you think about it. To get this deal, simply use the code TOS in the discount code field when subscribing. With more the 2,000 prescreened websites, this site is a really good tool for the kids to use while doing research on a subject. And remember, if you don't find something let Elaine know about it and she will rapidly modify the site to include whatever you have mentioned to her. She is the only person who works on this site and she has proved to be a dedicated person who listen to her users. I am impressed with her rapid response and her willingness to ask for help to find sites that could be interesting for Christians.

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