There are two excellent websites available to students giving free access to enrichment and assistance outside the classroom.

1. Homework Help in Mathematics for students in grade 7 - 10

2. Ontario Educational Resource Bank for students JK - grade 12, any subject

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The two sites are:

• Homework Help in Mathematics:  This site, amongst other things, provides live one-on-one confidential access to on-line certified teachers at night to assist Grade 7-10 students with mathematics questions using special chat rooms. The teachers are available Sunday-Thursday from 5:30 pm-9:30 pm.  On any given night, there are up to 20 teachers available in each of the four grades to provide assistance. The service is free of charge. So instead of parents looking for a math tutor when their child is struggling, they could access the many on-line teacher-tutors on this site. You can see the site yourself at:

  www.homeworkhelp.ilc.org

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• Simply register as a Guest and you can access most of the resources on the site such as:  Best Sessions (a bank of frequently asked questions), Interactive Tutorials and Listen and Learn Sessions at any time of day.  You can even see the live sessions in the tutor chat rooms at night.  But as a Guest, you cannot ask a question.

• For students to be able to access the live teachers at night they must register as a student and that requires their OEN number.  The OEN number can be found on all report cards.  Its not the number that begins with 00 as that is their Halton student number.  Details on how students can register, is available in the Homework Help chatt conference (see "For Latest Information" Below).  Currently over 6,500 eligible Halton students have been registered to date.  

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• Ontario Educational Resource Bank (OERB):  This site is operated by the e-learning side of the Ministry of Education.  It provides access to an extensive array of resources in any subject from JK - grade 12.  It is an invaluable tool for both students and teachers and is readily searchable with three different search engines (searching guides can be found in theHomework Help chatt conference).  It also has filters for fine tuning the search which include:  learning style, type of resource, file format and author (note:  if you see ELO that is a Ministry of Education developed resource).  Unlike doing a google search, all of these resources are part of our Ontario Curriculum.
  
  ​The site currently houses over 24,000 resources.  These range from Interactive tutorials, educational games, remedial materials, videos and even entire high school courses that can be used for additional practice.  All of the ministries on-line courses are available on this site for enrichment or review.  The site is accessible 24/7 and 365 days a year.  It is rapidly expanding.  The ministry of education has recently become a licensed user of the Learn360 site that houses over 8700 educational videos.  The site is password protected but you can access the Learn360 site through the OERB without worrying about passwords. 
  
  To access the OERB use login URL and passwords provided:

http://resources.elearningontario.ca/

User id:        hdsbstudent   (all in lower case)

Password:     hdsb  (all in lower case)

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For the latest information on either site:  go to the internal chatt conference called Homework Help It can be accessed by entering Student Conferences and opening the Icons Junior Students,  Intermediate Students or Senior Students.  You will then see the Homework Help Conference under the Blue HH logo at the top.

(Information from Scott Dykes, e-Learning Contact - Homework Help Initiative, Halton District School Board)