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Online Learning - What have I learned?
Jun. 4, 2009
Summer homeschooling in California
The budget woes have led to the apparent catastrophe of cancelling summer school in California. Looking on the bright side, lets see how resourcesful the people can be in becoming "summer homeschoolers". There are amazing resources available to people at very reasonable rates. For instance:
“The summer is a critical time for many students to catch up or advance their skills. The cancellation of summer classes by the State of California has created a large gap in the ability to do this affordably for many families and the Internet is a great alternative.”
Time4Learning offers two programs to address the summer school children’s needs; Time4Writing.com and Time4Learning.com. Time4Writing.com provides teacher-supervised online writing courses in eight-week courses for elementary, middle and high school students. This program builds writing skills through one-on-one interaction with a certified teacher. Parents have real-time access to view and monitor their child’s progress at anytime. At less than $12.50/week or $99/course, the program is extremely cost-effective compared to most teacher-supervised tutoring programs. Parents can view course material online at Time4Writing.com |
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Apr. 11, 2009
Better Communication - The point of this blog
When I started this blog years ago, I had several purposes. One was to have one blog where I collected my thoughts and received input on how best to communicate with the Time4Learning members. A second reason was to understand how homeschoolblogger worked. And more generally, to get a feel for blogging.
I think I'll take a quick inventory of my situation against these original goals.
Time4Learning continues to have good day-to-day direct communication with members. We probably received 100 phone calls per day and 250 emails. We answer them all in house and mostly, we end each day by returning each email. Additionally, we have rapid follow-up on issues that need to be escalated and we notice patterns so that if there is a technology issue, we find out about it sooner rather than later.
The Time4Learning parents discussion forum has grown to where it is a very pleasant and active community. I moderated it with Jen for the first six months. Then, we reached out to some active users and asked if they would like to be moderators. This has worked out very well primarily due to the really high quality people that we hooked up with. Also, frankly, it helps that we pay everyone always very promptly and as promised. I'm very old fashioned that way. I keep my commitments low and I ALWAYS meet them. We now have subcategories on the forum about Christian Homeschooling and how Time4Learning fits (or doesn't. We are a standards-based curriculum); special needs education discussion, Supplemental Resources, WAHMs, WOHMs and other Working Parents , and State by State Homeschooling Info .
We tried in a number of ways to have a periodic chat on the forum. We put up a great technology for it but never really mustered much of a response or crowd so we stopped it.
We've put putting together homeschool state reps for Time4Learning and it's been slow-going getting them selected with their information posted on our website. It should accelerate over the next 30 days.
As I look over the old posts, I use to think a lot about a chat service right on our website to ask questions and a formal customer relationship management system. In fact, we built our own database for tracking and emailing our customers so we didn't have to buy one. And we prefer having people call us to chatting with us. Frankly, we like to talk with the.
Bottom line: Situation is good. But I'll keep thinking about it.
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Mar. 3, 2009
Ed Mouse
Hi All, did you know that I have my own Ed Mouse Website? It's the least that I deserve as a premier cartoon mouse, don't you think? |
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Feb. 24, 2009
Learning the states - Games instead of drudgery
Feb. 24, 2009
Learning the states - Games instead of drudgery
Jan. 27, 2009
Local Homeschool Info Online
To help the new homeschoolers, T4L is putting together a directory of people who can help new homeschoolers access local resources.
A network of experienced homeschoolers to help new homeschoolers with local information and contacts. They are providing a list of homeschool contacts for the 50 states and a link toresources on the website where you can learn about key resources for homeschoolers in each state. These pages were compiled, in part, by Time4Learning's state reps who are available on the forum to answer questions.
For instance, for Oregon homeschooling info, their page starts: I am Kelly (my forum name is Hearthstone_Academy) and I have been educating my six children at our home in Oregon for the past twelve years. My eldest son is a homeschool graduate who has also graduated from college. The younger five are all still at home, although a daughter will graduate this year. My youngest turns four in a few days. Although he has special needs (Down syndrome), I have been working with him on some of the typical preschool skills.
Then, on their homeschooling forum, you can ask Kelly questions about Oregon homeschooling resources. |
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Jan. 27, 2009
Helping New Homeschoolers in North Carolina
New homeschoolers in North Carolina can get a lot of help from the new T4L page about North Carolina homeschooling resources put up by Topsy. And in case that's not enough help, they can ask follow up questions about homeschooling rules and resources in north carolina on the homeschool forum.
Her article starts: Homeschooling in North Carolina
Hi, my name is Kerry, (my forum name is topsytechie) and I have been homeschooling here in North Carolina for almost ten years now. I have two boys who have been homeschooled most of their lives with a couple short forays into private schools. We actually hadn't planned on homeschooling at all. In fact, homeschooling wasn't even on our radar until my oldest son came down with a serious illness just before starting kindergarten. Following his illness, he needed a lot of therapy and his immune system was quite weak, so a classroom wasn't really an option for us. Think of me as an accidental homeschooler. |
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Nov. 17, 2008
Web-based education Recommendations
I just read a great blog called web home schooling which had an article with some homeschooling website recommendations. And I quote:
My strong recommendation for those homeschooling and using the web is to check out the following.
Time4Learning’s web-based online curriculum. They have great interactive lessons for middle school, elementary school, and even preschool. It’s highly interactive and full of animation and multimedia. Whereas some curriculum are just lots of text with an occassional video or animation, Time4Learning is an interactive experience. All those tough math concepts seem simple when they’re explained in such alight-hearted manner. Who says fractions has to be hard? Their great multimedia lays it out so simply. Give it a try. Time4Learning is a great homeschool partner. They let you sign up month to month and start and quit at any time. Start by looking at their lesson demos.
Number 2 choice - Time4Writing. If you are like me, you find some subjects hard to teach. One of the hardest is writing skills, especially when the kids get into middle and high school. Expectations are so high. And my kids just don’t react well to my correcting their writing. Want help? This isn’t a “how to”, it’s an online tutoring course where they work directly with your student teaching writing skills every week and giving one-on-one feedback. You get the same tutor for the whole eight week course which the kids really like. It’s definitely worth taking Time4Writing’s writing classes. They have sentence writing, paragraph writing, essay writing (these are for writing tests and college essays), and research paper writing.
Number 3 choice - Fun Building Vocabulary. This is not really a curriculum choice but a fun collection of vocabulary games. Vocabulary is Fun is a leading vocabulary website worldwide with the best flash online word games. The vocabulary games include an online word search, an online crossword puzzle, and hangman online (their version is called HangMouse). Users choose the vocabulary list that the online word game will use in the word game. So have some Fun Building Vocabulary.
Number 4 Choice - Spelling City. This spelling program should be used by everyone. I would have put it first but I’m not a huge believer in the importance of spelling skills. Despite that, now that I’m using this site, I’ve returned to having spelling as part of our weekly routine. You know what’s really cool, check out how the vocabulary site’s science songs have put their vocabulary/spellinglist on SpellingCity.
Number 5 choice - This learning games website is really what it sounds like. But they have the best collections. For instance, they have keyboarding games, memory games, science songs (also integrated with vocabulary lists), and math learning games.
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Nov. 16, 2008
Blogging - Who's the greatest?
I'll tell you who is not the best blogger out there....ME.
I use my blog as a rough draft for my thoughts. Instead of putting a yellow sticky on my desk, an email to myself, or a note on a pad, I scribble it onto my blog.
Last year, I took a great blog writing course where I learned how to construct a blog worth reading and to collect an audience to read it. Great course. I highly recommend it. Check it out at:
Starting a blog by Time4Writing.com. It evolved from Black Belt Blogger. My personal blog was about earning a black belt at age 50. |
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Nov. 15, 2008
Automated Writing Course tools
I've always been amazed by spellcheckers and grammar checkers, especially the latter. I've heard about software that actually grades your papers called automated writing evaluators. I think that could be really cool.
Of course, they won't be perfect. Like homeschooling, we're not perfect. Neither is the alternative.
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Nov. 14, 2008
Others get frustrated too with bitdefender
| I just read a post about a frustrated guy who apparently has put a lot of time into trying to install his bitdefender. I've had the same problems. It's such a pain. |
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Nov. 14, 2008
Others get frustrated too with bitdefender
Here is a some navigation information for those looking for how T4L helps special needs kids:
Learning Difficulties & Online Learning
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Nov. 14, 2008
State by State Info
If you are interested in state by state info, here is what Time4Learning has started to put together.....
Time4Learning and State Information
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Oct. 14, 2008
Read a great comment on a Writing course
Kelly - a homeschool mother of five on the West Coast, wrote this:
I would recommend Time4Writing as a good supplement for any homeschool curriculum (including SOS, which we used briefly years ago).
Even if the curriculum you are using includes writing practice, it will lack the personal teacher feedback of Time4Writing. I can't tell you how valuable that feedback was to my children! Often, the teacher would mention something I had "nagged" my child about for years . . . but it was a little more credible, because someone ELSE thought the same thing.
For me, this clarified in my mind who much impact Time4Writing can have on a student's writing skills.
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Sep. 3, 2008
Virtual Schools
There are many types of homeschooling websites. My favorites of course are Time4Learning, the writing course at Time4Writing.com, and I lov e the vocabulary games at Vocabulary.co.il.
Here is more info on their vocabulary games (and I quote)....
A big welcome to those of you who have recently joined the Vocabulary.co.il mailing list! For the sake of you “newbies”, as well as all of you who have not yet learned to make the most of the site, we thought we would go through an overview of the terrific games that are available on our website to help you build your English vocabulary.
HangMouse: This is a “Hang-man” style game where the object is to guess the word by choosing random letters. If the correct letters are picked, they will light up in their proper places, and the mouse will be a little closer to stealing the cheese. But look out! By making incorrect choices, you come closer and closer to waking up the sleeping cat at watch. Hangmouse requires several educational skills such as sequential reasoning, phonetic order, and word attack.
Crosswords – Our version of online crossword puzzles lets you choose your category or topic and your skill level to solve a wide variety of vocabulary clues. There are even hints for when you find yourself truly stuck. And for classroom use, there is a print option. Crossword solving involves several useful skills including vocabulary, reasoning, spelling, and word attack skills
Match Game – This is an introductory reading level game that allows new readers to match pictures and words. Similar to games such as “Concentration”, Match Game builds both reading and visual memory skills. The words can also be clicked to be heard aloud.
Word Search – The word search puzzle, which has been popular in newspapers and books for decades has now been updated for the computer. Our online version includes hundreds of categories of vocabulary topics to choose from, and allows you to choose your skill level and a timed play option. Teachers will enjoy that almost every area of curriculum study is covered in our category options, and the games can be printed out for classroom use, as well.
Vocabulary Quiz – There is just something about taking a quiz on the computer that makes it more bearable - - dare I say, even fun! Vocabulary.co.il has a wonderful vocabulary quiz game to test your vocabulary knowledge. With two skill levels, two timer settings, and 16 fun topics to choose from, students and non-students alike will find themselves having fun practicing their vocabulary with our quiz.
Unscramble – Deciphering scrambled words has been a favorite vocabulary puzzle of many. These word jumbles appear in children’s books, newspapers, magazines, and activity pads. The object of the game is to take letters that are randomly scrambled and put them back into their correct order to create a word. Vocabulary.co.il turns this into a vocabulary challenge by providing specific vocabulary categories to choose from when deciphering words. Games such as Unscramble can help build spelling, phonics, and vocabulary skills.
Letter Blocks – One of our newest games, Letter Blocks, is a Tetris-style game for word lovers. By discovering letters next to one another that can be formed into words, the player can knock out rows of blocks, making room for new letter blocks to appear at the top of the playing board. The object of the game is to keep the playing board from filling up by consistently knocking out the adjacent letter blocks. This game requires skills in vocabulary, visual spatial reasoning, and quick thinking.
Clueless Crossword - This new challenging crossword puzzle game is tricky because there are no clues! By clicking on one of the missing letter squares on the game board, you will see all other places where that letter occurs on the board. Then you are able to guess the letter, based on where the missing letter occurs in each of the words. You can use the hint button to help you along, but it will cost you some seconds on the clock. This game builds skills in deduction, spelling, and visual spatial reasoning.
Games such as these can be more than just fun.
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Sep. 2, 2008
California homeschooling
There's been a lot of excitement about homeschooling in California this year. I gather the ruckus (I love that word) over legality has pretty much disappeared. Good.
California has a great California Virtual Academy. You might have to accept that not all online virtual academies are great.
There are different types of online distance learning programs.
There are learning services like Time4Learning and Switched on Schoolhouse.
There are private schools paid for by students like Keystone, BJU, and the (one in Baltimore).
There are the virtual schools that are public schools such as Florida Virtual school which provides education for kids of a variety of sorts, but including Florida home school students who are homeschooling in Florida. |
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Aug. 23, 2008
Educational TV blogs
The Build Vocabulary website has an amazing vocabulary blog. It's one of my favorite subscriptions.
It can if it is tuned to PBS this fall! In an exciting development, The Public Broadcasting Service is bringing Susan Meddaugh’s "Martha" book series to life in order to build young children’s vocabulary skills. In the popular books, Martha the dog swallows some Alphabet Soup and begins to speak, and hilarious hijinks ensue.
In this fall’s new animated adaptation of the books, Meddaugh’s Martha character will talk her way through two stories  in every show episode. According to the Martha Speaks website on pbskids.org, the goal of the show is to "increase oral vocabulary, the words we use when we talk." The hope is that by teaching kids to recognize new words when they hear them, they will also more easily recognize them when they read those same words. When a new reader’s oral vocabulary is limited, it is more difficult to make sense of words when attempting to sound them out.
Each episode of "Martha Speaks" will have a theme. PBS.org suggests that parents watch with their child and help them locate every word that fits with the theme of the show. Making connections between words in categories is one of the key ways of building vocabulary. They also suggest using some of the words from the show in your future conversations with your child, so that they continue to hear the words in context.
Here are some other favorite blogs:
Parent technology
Homeschooling curricula |
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Aug. 22, 2008
You don't appreciate it until it's gone...again
You don't appreciate it until it's gone...I had a go around with a difficult member recently. Now please understand, we have over ten thousand members and days and weeks and months go by without any problems. But, for the first time in over a year, I found that one customer was making my staff really upset.
This lady had spoken in the space of two days with three different staff people and had made one of them cry. This never happens. My staffer said that no matter what she said, the lady on the phone twisted it around to mean something else different. And ridiculous. And that she had yelled at her.
So, being the boss, I picked up the phone and called her. I explained, extremely nicely, that she had upset a few of my support ladies who try really hard to be nice to everyone, if she had some unhappiness with our service, she should talk directly to me. In the space of a few minute conversation, she pointed out some weaknesses in our science and social studies program (which we all agree with. We have a great language arts and math program and we provide science and social studies as a "free bonus", as in, it's very good but way short of being a complete program). And, she yelled at me and twisted my words.
At one point, after she said that I had called her a liar, I clarified that "no, I expressed a difference of opinion but you have just demonstrated to me what my staff person said when she said that you twisted her terms.". I told her that I would refund all of her money for her previous months and it would be better if going forward she used some other service. She said that would be fine. And hung up.
Shortly thereafter, we received a short polite email asking if her daughter could continue with the program. Apparently, even with our flaws, we're very popular and useful. So she's still using our online homeschool curriculum.
Read all about homeschool curricula here.
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Jul. 30, 2008
Intellectual property rights
We've created a doozy of a new site: SpellingCity.com . Tonight, we got a call that one teacher feels another teacher "stole" her published list. Yikes. Do spelling lists have owners? Is their ownership a copyright-type ownership or just a moral-type ownership. I read great interest one view: (And I quote from http://www.ailla.utexas.org/site/ipr.html )
What is a copyright? Copyrights are property: they can be sold, given away, or inherited. The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 limits copyright to "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression."
What is an original work? This is intentionally vague, and can ultimately only be decided in court. It is easiest to give examples of things that are not original: facts, like the population of Mexico City; ideas, like the idea of the internal combustion engine; systems; titles or short phrases. Things like morphological paradigms and word lists are not likely to be considered original. Things that are likely to be considered original works are poetry, prose (fiction or non-fiction), computer programs, artwork, songs, musical notation, a web page, architectural drawings, photographs, recordings of music and songs.
I've contacted the writer of that to see how he feels about me quoting it, whether he thinks he is an adequate authority (or had truly researched it), but still, that doesn't resolve all the IP issues around a site like spellingcity.com.
I did improve the copyright page removing some totally irrelevant bunk that the marketers and operatiosn people slipped in there such as: Time4Learning is used by children who also use A Beka , instead of Kumon, or who might have, in another era, used Hooked on Phonics.
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Jul. 18, 2008
Learning Languages Online
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