DATE: Monday, September 8, 1997             TAG: 9709060360

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D5   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY MARK EDELEN, PILOT ONLINE STAFF 

                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

KEEP UP WITH YOUR KIDS' SCHOOL ACTIVITIES BY TAPPING INTO A COMPUTER

Now that the clothes have been coordinated, the book binders have been bought, and the kids have been shuttled off to school for a week (whew!), parents might want to take a break to see what school systems offer online.

All five major South Hampton Roads public school systems have Web sites, most under the umbrella of Anthology, a project of the Virginia Public Education Network to help the kindergartens through high schools create Web sites.

The sites offer news, calendars, information on individual schools, profiles of administrators and school board members, and e-mail contacts. Many schools, especially high schools and middle schools, run their own Web sites.

Norfolk Public Schools lists basic contact information for all high schools, middle schools and elementary schools. Several elementary schools also include recommended school-supplies lists in case you're still catching up on back-to-school shopping.

Several Norfolk high schools have their own Web sites - Lake Taylor High School's site is new and improved, with academic calendars, sports calendars, and photos of administrators.

Virginia Beach Public Schools operates an extensive site with information on emergency closings, breakfast and lunch programs, medication rules, numbers for the Homework Hotline and more.

If your child is stumped on his homework, you might also want to check out the sites' links to Instructional Resources - Web sites on topics from math, science, language arts, foreign languages, social studies and more.

The Internet Public Library, for instance, divides Web sites into a Reference collection that anyone who has ever visited a physical library can easily browse. High school and college students, check out an original guide on how to write a research paper ``without going totally NUTS.''

Suffolk Public Schools offers more than just the basics on its elementary schools - with faculty facts, school highlights and incentives, extracurricular activities, and what middle schools students will attend down the road. The pages were built by students at the P.D. Pruden Vocational-Technical Center.

Portsmouth Public Schools' Web site is largely under development, but four schools already have their own sub-sites, including William E. Waters Middle, Woodrow Wilson High and Churchland Academy Elementary.

Chesapeake Public Schools, along with the basic information on immunizations, dress code, absences and more, gives you a chance to speak to the School Board without going to a meeting. Five of the nine members have e-mail addresses listed.

On the athletic field, Great Bridge Football at Chesapeake's Great Bridge High has a Web site that could put some colleges to shame. Click for game stories, photos and previews; statistics and the schedule; and the roster. On Pilot Online

Pilot Online's Back to School special section always has links to these schools and more. You'll also find a survival guide for parents, school calendars, bus schedules, a school-scores database and The Virginian-Pilot's recent series examining the impact of changes in Virginia's Standards of Learnings and Standards of Accreditation.

The Virginia Board of Education offers the full standards online, including the changes to the accreditation standards unanimously approved by the board on Thursday. MEMO: Have an announcement about a Web site of Hampton Roads interest?

E-mail us at pilot(AT)pilotonline.com.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu