CENTEREACH
When Anna Chiaramonte, a teacher, goes to her second job a couple of nights a week, she doesn't have to venture farther than her son Michael's bedroom.
Her students, who live on Shelter Island some 40 miles away, don't have to leave their homes either.
"Hola Sean," said Mrs. Chiaramonte, initiating a Wednesday evening Spanish lesson from her Centereach home. "Hola," said Sean Wilson, her student.
The class was not being conducted over the phone, but over the Internet. Mrs. Chiaramonte had E-mailed a grammar lesson to Mr. Wilson earlier, and the on-line session was for review and practice.
Mrs. Chiaramonte said that teaching over the Internet was an opportunity to be on the cutting edge, and that the challenge was made easier by the fact that her teen-age son, a computer wiz, provides live-in technical support.
On Shelter Island, students go on line for a broader education.
"The first time I'm sitting here and we're trying to connect and I'm sweating," she said of her first on-line class. But with familiarity and after some software problems were ironed out, she said, the system has become easy to use. "This is definitely going to take off," she said.
"The on-line service, through a Lake Grove-based outfit called the Babbage Net School, provides text and voice links but no video. Mrs. Chiaramonte said she hadn't met ether of her on-line students but was going to invite them and their parents to her home at the end of the semester.
"I know their age and how they sound, but I don't know how, they look," she said. "I miss the feedback, the immediate facial expression."
But she said the lack of video was major hindrance to her teaching, and that she didn't need to see Mr. Wilson to judge his performance.
"He's very prompt," Mrs. Chiaramonte said of Mr. Wilson. "He sounds like he's a very nice kid when we're talking and he's always well prepared."
For Mr. Wilson, a 10th grader, doing classwork on line is a means of taking courses not offered in traditional classrooms in the small Shelter Island school district. The prospect of working via his home computer does not intimidate him.
"It's all very basic and they provide you with all the settings," he said. "I'm having a lot of fun at it and I'm learning an incredible amount. I think certainly it could be a way of the future."
But Mr. Wilson said he doesn't envision a day when all schooling is done on line. "I think classrooms are very much an integral part of the school system," he added.
Four Shelter Island students opted to take advanced placement courses over the internet as part of a pilot program with the Babbage Net School: www.BabbageNetSchool.com
The students are taking a total of six courses including French, Spanish, Biology, Spanish Literature, Calculus and Psychology. In addition to Spanish, Mr. Wilson is taking Biology. Mrs. Chiarainonte, a Bellport High School foreign language teacher, teaches French on line to another Shelter Island student.
"It's really a Whole new mode of work," said Shelter Island's computer coordinator, Walter Brigham. "We don't have enough students' to have teachers for all these courses. I went to school at Shelter Island and that's always been one of our big limitations."
While the district of fewer than 300 students has on-site advanced placement courses, it can't offer a wide selection.
"This expands the offering," said the Superintendent of Schools, Lydia Axelrod. "It's open. In years to come I'm envisioning Greek literature."
The district-financed pilot courses cost $990 each, with the students taking the classes in the evenings with their own personal computers or with hardware made available by the school district
The Babbage Net network also provides a number of services offered by traditional schools, including an on-line main office where students can ask questions and fill out applications and a virtual cafeteria where students can study together or chat socially.
While the Shelter Island pilot program is the first actual high school course work being carried out via computer on Long Island, some Dowling College students have taken courses through Babbage Net, and it has provided Scholastic Achievement Test preparation courses.
Teacher training is also being conducted via Babbage Net by the Suffolk County Organization for the Promotion of Education, a teachers' group. More than 50 teachers are currently taking courses through the school.
The Babbage Net School is the only service of its type on Long Island, according to Clifford Dittrich, who owns the Babbage Net School.
Mr. Dittrich, a Centereach High School math teacher and engineer, runs the on-line company from an office in his home. Mr. Dittrich currently employs 12 teachers and has 20 more ready to go.
"We have to show that it really does work," Mr. Dittrich said. "This is something that couldn't have been done even last year."
While on-line courses are new to Long Island, education using computers and the Internet is widespread. America Online recently awarded grants to two Long Island schools based on proposals submitted for using computer technology. The two are among 54 chosen throughout the nation.
One of the grants went to the W. Tresper Clarke Middle School in Westbury, where a grant of $7,000 is being used to enable students to provide computer instruction to senior citizens.
The Northern Parkway School in Uniondale was awarded $7,500 to use the Internet, CAD programs and E-mail to study architecture, engineering and construction.