
DATE: Wednesday, September 24, 1997         TAG: 9709250615

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY REBECCA MYERS CUTCHINS, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   91 lines

PORTSMOUTH SCHOOLS CAN NOW USE INFOLINE FOR HOMEWORK HINTS

Sixth-grade teacher Georgina Oke had students combing the newspaper for stories on education and schools.

Students in Joann Ballard's English class were told to write a paragraph on what they thought happened to Ichabod Crane in ``The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.''

Sixth-graders in Rosemary Williams' class were warned to master their multiplication tables for daily quizzes.

That was just a sampling of some of the homework assigned at Cradock Middle School in a 60-second message recorded nightly on INFOLINE's Classroom Connection.

The hot line, which connects teachers with students and parents 24 hours a day, recently was installed in nearly two dozen elementary and middle schools in Portsmouth.

With Portsmouth on board, the hot line is now available in all five South Hampton Roads cities and soon may be introduced in Franklin and Southampton County schools.

The service, coordinated by The Virginian-Pilot, started about four years ago in a Virginia Beach middle school and became so popular it expanded to most of the middle and elementary schools in Virginia Beach, said Alison Schoew, INFOLINE program director.

The Classroom Connection costs $1 per student per school year. In Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Chesapeake, the tab is picked up by Hills Department Stores. Lakeview Medical Center sponsors the hot line in Suffolk and Portsmouth and also plans to cover Southampton County and Franklin schools if they can be brought online, Schoew said.

In return for their sponsorships, the businesses receive advertising sound bites on INFOLINE before and after each recorded message.

``Every school night except Friday since we've started back at school, we've had between 13,000 and 14,000 calls,'' said Schoew, who added that the service is not available in high schools.

Teachers are given their own voice mailboxes to record homework assignments, reminders about tests, extra credit problems and classroom announcements.

``Actually, my child calls more than I do,'' said Carol Bluestein, parent of a fifth-grader at Woodstock Elementary School in Virginia Beach. ``He's been sick a couple of days this year already . . . but he was able to call INFOLINE and get all his homework assignments.''

That's one reason teachers have embraced the service, Schoew says.

``They no longer have to scramble to send a note home with homework assignments or have the secretary of the school call with what the homework is,'' she said. ``Now it's the parents' or the students' responsibility.''

But the Classroom Connection contains more than messages about homework.

A Virginia Beach school, which has an abundance of students from military families, uses the system to provide enrollment and withdrawal information.

A Portsmouth school that encourages students to wear uniforms installed a ``Uniform Line'' to inform parents of the proper dress code.

Guidance counselors can record messages about changes in class schedules, PTA presidents can remind parents about upcoming fund-raising campaigns, and principals can make their own pitches, too.

Teachers have developedinnovative methods to make INFOLINE fun for students.

Robyn Whitaker, who works at the DAC Center, a special education preschool in Portsmouth, likes to sing her messages.

``I actually take what I have put in my lesson plans and try to work it into a little tune,'' said Whitaker, who sang a week's worth of lessons recently to the tune of ``If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands.''

The teachers at DAC use the Classroom Connection ``more to be able to relay to parents what's planned for the week,'' Principal Sharon Warren said.

``It's important to our kids because most of them can't go home and say, `Guess what I did at school today?' '' ILLUSTRATION: Graphics

CALLS RECEIVED

Number of INFOLINE Classroom Connection calls received in the

first 14 days of the 1997-98 school year:

City (schools) Calls

Virginia Beach (45 schools) 98,683

Chesapeake (24 schools) 60,504

Portsmouth (23 schools) 35,548

Norfolk * (15 schools) 15,206

Suffolk (12 schools) 8,203

Total (119 schools) 218,144