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BJ Pinchbeck's Homework Helper
Father-son Net surfing leads to an award-winning educational site! By Alicia M. Bartol SCR*TEC |
 wo years ago, in
April of 1996, BJ "Beege" Pinchbeck and his dad, Bruce Pinchbeck, started an
impressive homepage called " BJ
Pinchbeck's Homework Helper," which linked visitors to about 100 very useful
educational sites. Beege had just turned nine. Now on the verge of his eleventh
birthday, he is a celebrity in his own school, and he gets anywhere from 20 to
30 e-mails a day, from teachers, students, parents, and fans. The Pinchbeck site
has grown to include roughly 450 of the Internet's best educational resources, and has won
over 100 Internet awards!
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 Beege and his new dog Tia, whom he searched for on the Internet. |
 eege's
dad, Bruce, passed his fascination of computers on to his son at an early
age. When Beege was about six years old, he began using his dad's laptop.
"My dad taught me how to use a computer, because he always thought it was
kind of neat," says Beege. Just like many people who get interested in the
Internet, Beege had a specific research need which led to his self-education.
Beege says, "I was trying to look for a dog on the Internet, and that kind
of got me into it." As Beege remembers, "there weren't many homework sites that could help you out; it was mostly game sites and video sites." |
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also remembers wandering around Cyberspace at first, trying to find what
they needed. As they discovered, there were some good educational
resources out there. "As Beege and I were doing surfing, we found them and
we bookmarked them; and then we just decided, why not put these bookmarks
on a homepage?" Of course, they had to figure out some HTML first. Neither
of them had made any Web pages before, but that didn't stop them. Bruce
says, "One day we were surfing, and we saw a site that had an HTML editor,
so we decided, 'Well, let's download this and see if we can use it.' The
next thing you know, we just kind of got addicted to it, so we created our
own homepage." It took them about a week to work out the kinks and make
it really nice. |
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publicize the site, Beege and Bruce contacted schools by e-mail that they
found using Yahoo. They weren't out for profit, but simply to help other
students who were searching for help on the Internet. From that point on,
word spread like wildfire. Neither Beege nor his father anticipated the
huge response they would receive. Nearly 600,000 people have loaded the
site in the past two years. Beege says, "We just expected it to be something
small, and we just came out I guess." |
 tudents
and school teachers are not the only ones who benefit from the Homework
Helper. Parents who home school their children, as well as newcomers to
the Net, write Beege every week with questions and compliments. The questions
range across every subject. "Once we had a question about ear wax!" says
Beege. Apparently, someone's curiosity got the best of them, and they just
had to know what ear wax was made of. Although the Pinchbecks probably
didn't expect the number of assistance questions they get (about one quarter
of their e-mails), they encourage people to write them with their comments.
Beege and Bruce "try to honor their requests," says Bruce, but they may
not always write back the very same day. With over 200 e-mails a week, sometimes
they get a few days behind. Given the size of the site, it is no wonder
that so many people want to compliment Beege and Bruce on their work. Small isn't exactly a word to use to describe the site. Not only are there hundreds and hundreds of some of the Internet's safest and most educational links, but the sites also cover a wide array of subjects. For example, there are pages listing links to pages in music, art, foreign languages, computers, history, current events, math, science, social studies, and English. These pages are useful for all ages. The reference page alone, loaded with dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopediae, and directories, is a virtual library covering everything from acronyms to U.S. legal code. There are even pages that link to good search engines and search tips. According to Bruce, "two of our favorite search engines, that we 99.9 percent of the time don't go wrong on, are Metacrawler and Profusion. |
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eege
spends a lot of time surfing the Web, learning new computer software, and
answering e-mail. Although his dad got him started, Beege is a quick study,
and a safe surfer. Bruce says, "I don't need to supervise him, not that
much, you know, because we find that you really have to be looking for [questionable]
sites to find them. I mean, I've done tons and tons of searches, and rarely
do you come up with something by accident. Sometimes you do, but it's not
usual." If kids ever do come across sites that make them uncomfortable,
or seem too "grown-up," they should show the sites to their parents, and
skip it if their parents decide it's not an appropriate site. Naturally, it has taken time and practice, but Beege and Bruce have become very good at using the Internet. Their expertise has been a great help to the hundreds of thousands of people they have assisted. As Bruce explains, many newcomers to the Internet, "don't know how to search for information, so they go from one site to the other," not finding what they need. For many people who write Beege, this site simply helps people find answers. |
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