Interactive Learning Network: multimedia lessons for junior-high and high-school math and science. Plus online tutoring, reference materials, & more. Interested? Right now you can try ILN for a month, free! (Online Classroom).

We've reviewed online academies before, with teachers connected live via email, Internet Relay Chat, and other methods besides.

This issue, we have a new kind of online academy to cover: a "self-service" approach, with instruction presented in multimedia on a website, and teachers available simply to cover any questions that might arise from the subject matter.

The Interactive Learning Network (www.iln.net) is primarily for middle schoolers and high-schoolers who need to learn about mathematics and the sciences. Math courses go from upper-level arithmetic through calculus, and science covers physics, biology, and chemistry.

ILN is definitely a multimedia affair, full of graphics, animation, activities, and sound. For each subject, ILN offers a series of lessons, activities, Shockwave and Windows Media Player animations, and links to sites of interest. They're organized first by subject, then by main topic, then by lessons within that topic. Chemistry, for example, is broken down into topics like stoichiometry, atomic structure, molecular bonding, etc. Each of those topics has an introduction, followed by explanations of a number of its aspects. Usually there's an interactive Javascript activity, or an animation of some kind, to illustrate.

On top of the course material, ILN has a special feature. When you have a problem with something or there's something you need to know on top of what the lesson already teaches, you can send a message to an ILN teacher and get a response back. For example: "How do I figure out 2x2 + …