The New York Public Library has partnered with online tutoring service Brainfuse to offer all New York area students access to free after-school homework help, including virtual 1-on-1 tutoring in a wide range of subjects for K-12 students.
New service one of many free digital tools being offered by the Library to support parents and K-12 students during remote learning
The New York Public Library has partnered with online tutoring service Brainfuse to offer all New York area students access to free after-school homework help, including virtual 1-on-1 tutoring in a wide range of subjects for K-12 students.
The new tool – available beginning today March 24, 2020 at http://nypl.org/brainfuse – offers a bank of videos, activities, writing labs, and other enrichment activities 24/7, as well as tutoring via chat from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week, in both English and Spanish. The service is free with a New York Public Library card, which can be obtained virtually via the Library’s e-reading app SimplyE.
Brainfuse is just one of a number of remote educational tools that the Library has made available, enhanced, or continues to make available during its temporary closure to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19. In addition to Brainfuse-being offered temporarily to support students and parents beginning remote learning-the Library is offering BookFlix (for remotely-accessible read alouds), the Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center (to build critical thinking skills), and much more at https://www.nypl.org/about/remote-resources/kids-and-teens.
“One of the Library’s key roles is to support a culture of learning and reading in New York City outside of the classroom, offering homework help, internet access, and materials access to hundreds of thousands of students each day after school,” said Brian Bannon, the Merryl and James Tisch Director of The New York Public Library. “The need for this help hasn’t gone away with remote learning, and so we are pleased to be able to offer Brainfuse and many other tools and tips to support families ‘after school,’ even when school is in their living room. With this new service, we are essentially offering every student, regardless of background, the opportunity to have a private tutor, and every parent the support that they need right now.”
Maggie Jacobs, the Library’s Director of Educational Programs, added, “Remote learning requires a different set of skills for teachers, students and their caregivers. We therefore decided to curate the e-resources we thought would be most helpful, not only to support student learning in digital school, but to support teachers in integrating quality, engaging materials into their online teaching, and provide families with fun activities to learn and play together during an otherwise stressful time. We are hoping this becomes a trusted, favorite one-stop resource to meet family and educator needs.”
In addition to educational resources for students, while the Library is temporarily closed until further notice it is offering a wide range of public service assistance, including:
* E-Books / Digital Library Cards: During this temporary closure, the Library has seen a significant spike in e-book usage, and will continue to offer access to hundreds of thousands of free e-books via our e-reading app SimplyE. Through this app, New Yorkers can immediately receive a digital library card and gain access to a multitude of other digital resources we have made available during this temporary closure.
* Expanded E-Resources: The Library has worked with vendors to expand access to several digital research databases to allow for at-home access, including Ancestry.com, periodical archives, JSTOR and EBSCO databases for academic articles and abstracts. All of the various digital resources for researchers, including the newly accessible ones, can be found here.
* Book Recommendations: The Library offers expert reading recommendations and lists (including our 125 Books We Love list released for our 125th anniversary in February).
* Existing Digital Resources: The Library continues to offer nearly 900,000 digitized images from our research collections, nearly 11,000 digitized archives, and our Ask NYPL reference / help service.
For the latest information on service offerings, patrons should sign up for NYPL Connect, a new, special newsletter focused on digital resources. They can visit http://nypl.org/ for more information.
About The New York Public Library
For 125 years, The New York Public Library has been a free provider of education and information for the people of New York and beyond. With 92 locations-including research and branch libraries-throughout the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, the Library offers free materials, computer access, classes, exhibitions, programming and more to everyone from toddlers to scholars, and has seen record numbers of attendance and circulation in recent years. The New York Public Library receives approximately 16 million visits through its doors annually and millions more around the globe who use its resources at www.nypl.org. To offer this wide array of free programming, The New York Public Library relies on both public and private funding. Learn more about how to support the Library at nypl.org/support.
About Brainfuse
Brainfuse is one of the nation’s leading online tutoring providers, serving a diversified client base of libraries, school districts and colleges/universities for over 18 years. With Brainfuse, users receive real-time tutoring from instructors via our proprietary online classroom. We serve hundreds of library systems throughout the country, including the New Mexico State Library, the Suffolk Cooperative Library System, the San Francisco Public Library, the Sacramento Public Library, The Free Library of Philadelphia, and North America’s largest homework help program through the Chicago Public Library. Learn more at: http://home.brainfuse.com/
For more information about Brainfuse services, please contact us at info@brainfuse.com.
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