Home School Online

I read with great interest two items: Technology Literacy and Sustained Tinkering Time and 88 Generalizations about Free Voluntary Reading.  Both posts make the case that…that student choice, plus time for unstructured access to lots of different computing experiences is crucial to developing…

The Free Voluntary Reading is a handout by Dr. Stephen Krashen. It summarizes the research and benefits to literacy of Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), also called Free Voluntary Reading (FVR). You give kids books, and time to read them, and they read. Dr. Krashen is an activist for giving students more access to books, more time to read, and less coercion to do so. His credentials are impressive: professor emeritus at USC, a linguist and expert on literacy, language acquisition and reading. He’s in the International Reading Association’s Reading Hall of Fame.

The other item is a blog post by Sylvia of Generation Yes, a for-profit company that doesn’t seem to have yet declared what they are going to do. They make the point that computers in education have the greatest power if you give the student the time, the space, and the environment to use them. 

As Sylvia puts it: It struck me as I looked at this list that it’s a lot like what I believe about children and computers: that student choice, plus time for unstructured access to lots of different computing experiences is crucial to developing literacy and fluency with computers. My vision includes a teacher or mentor modeling passion, collaboration, interest in the subject, and offering experiences that challenge students without coercion, tricks, or rankings. If I had to come up with a catchy acronym, I’d call it Sustained Tinkering Time (SST).

Sounds to me like they’re discovering the concept of unschooling….

Here are a few questions:

1. What are you doing to turn the inauguration into a learning opportunity?”

2. Are you integrating the inauguration into your curriculum?”

3. Are you treating Inauguration Day as a holiday? Why or why not?

4. What are your personal feelings triggered by the transfer of power?

This last one is more personal and, political feelings aside, I’ll share my thoughts.

I can count nine transfers of Presidential power in this country that I can remember. The first one was following the Kennedy asassination. Specifically, I have four memories:
- the next door lady crying on her front steps
- my parents watching the TV, Mom crying, and me watching
- attending the funeral (we were on the White House lawn)
- asking many questions about how Johnson actually became president: “How did he know that he was to be president? Who was in charge of making him president? Did Johnson become President when Kennedy was shot? When he died? Or only when the Judge made him president?”

Even then, I was curious and awed by the transfer of power. I remain fascinated by it and I don’t take the process for granted. Johnson to Nixon was a simple election. Nixon to Ford was not simple and more than a few people feared that Tricky Dick might interrupt our centuries of nearly seemless rule of law by trying to hold onto power.

But, his and Agnew’s resignations ultimately went smoothly. Then, Ford to Carter, Carter to Reagan, Reagan to Bush, Bush to Clinton, Clinton to Bush, and then oops, one of the bigger problems in our history of successions…a disputed Presidential election. The Bush-Kerry election of 2004 with a recount that, if continued, could have swung the election the other way. Massive intervention on the political, legal, and arguably, from the streets with the crowds. In any case, the moment passed and a decision was reached. I was more struck than others by that moment as one when the rules were not clear and the transfer of power was not a given. I’m proud that we reached a decision and moved on.

And now, the transfer is happening again. Whatever your politics or perspective, it is truly an awesome thing when the presidential power is transferred from person to person. The American President controls so much power, it’s spine tinkling to me to watch the baton get passed with a sense that for all the flaws in our democracy, this fundamental operation works.

A national priority for decades now is to improve our STEM education. STEM means science, technology, engineering, and math.  The reality is that our country churns out students who are subpar, on an international basis, in these areas which puts our nation and our citizens at a disadvantage.

There has not been any dramatic improvement in STEM education in the elite or general population. I’m curious what other homeschoolers think: any idea how to improve STEM education? I’m particularly interested in ideas that deal with starting improvement in the K8 population.

I started thinking about STEM for the rest of us when I read a new blog on the topic. I found that the STEM term was not that useful to google since I ended up in the stem cell research area. Science for the rest of us produces a suggested science reading list,  a social networking site where we can self publish our science articles (huh?), and a funny glossary illustrating what pseudo scientific jargon actually means.

What I mean by “science for the rest of us” is education that affects not just the small minority that are very scientifically oriented but the general population that is being educated or at least, the population that is college-bound.