Home School Online

In a sense, all parents are homeschooling during preschool. Sure, many kids go to schools for a few hours but the bulk of their development and education is in the hands of the parents (OK, there are some that are in full time programs or whatever, I’ll not deal with that here).

 Homeschool Preschool - What approach should the parents have?

I listened to a dad explain to me about rules the other day. He kept explaining to me that just as he had learned to do with the dogs, we must do with the kids.  The guy had two huge extremely well-trained dogs.  But then dogs have limited intelligence and a basic instinct to obey.   They are quite different from say sheep or horses or pigs.  Would he be bringing his kids up differently if had different mammals as pets?

He seemed to have alot of answers.  Me, I have alot of questions.  Maybe there are two different types of people in the world: those with questions, those with answers.  In short, he knew exactly what sort of preschool education his kids needed and oh my gosh, was he ever strict.  Just like with puppies, he felt that consistency and strictness were the key. 

 What a nightmare…..

NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing by the Writing Study Group of the NCTE Executive Committee, November 2004
1.  Everyone has the capacity to write, writing can be taught, and teachers can help students become better writers.
2.  People learn to write by writing.
3.  Writing is a process.
4.  Writing is a tool for thinking.
5.  Writing grows out of many different purposes.
6.  Conventions of finished and edited texts are important to readers and therefore to writers.
7.  Writing and reading are related.
8.  Writing has a complex relationship to talk.
9.  Literate practices are embedded in complicated social relationships.
10.  Composing occurs in different modalities and technologies.
11.  Assessment of writing involves complex, informed, human judgment.Writing Resources / Materials

The information communication revolution continues. 

The web started out as an amazing way of providing info. Websites with basic info and email and some ecommerce dramatically changed shopping and research and communications in the 90s.

Soon the incredible in the 90s became the norm.  Encyclopedia were obsoleted. All info and data are immediately accessible. Everything can be bought/sold virtually. And multimedia turns from painful to fun as we start listening to music and watching video across the net.

The latest revolution on the web is people as info sources and communities of a whole new type. Forums and blogs and massively multiplayer games and newgroups and group blogs and social networking are hallmarks of this rapidly evolving situation.  Is their a blorum yet that combines the best of both? What would a combined blog forum look like?

Traditional magazines need to shift from print to virtual as they find their users migrating. Some such as the Old School House Magazine succeed by adapting and providing a slick website complete with ecommerce an email list and free blogs for all who want them.  And of course, the OldSchool house magazine now gets to sell advertising around user-created content.  Its great!

 New competitors pop-up who only exist as online entities such as Rebecca’s http://www.homeschool.com and Pat Wyman’s HowtoLearn (an amazing collection of insights into today’s learning issues covering a variety of significant health issues) . 

And some traditional players such as the Homeschool Link Magazine and Mary Pride’s  Homeschool World struggle to make the transition. 

 Some traditional curriculum suppliers add an online version (switched on….)

And new online schools and learning services such as eagles peak  homeschool charter school and time4learning (homeschooling online)emerge.