Little Bears - Homeschool Blogger

Technoschoolers part 2

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:59:00 -0600

OK, so following on from my previous post, I have been surfing the web and following rabbit-trails on technology and education.

Take a look at the following video, and consider these questions: are the issues being raised in the video relevant to home education or not (and if not, why not), if they are relevant, how do we address them? If our children are learning autonomously, how does that figure in - how and where do we draw the boundaries, keep them safe, ensure that if they choose to game, facebook, blog, twitter or whatever (and apologies to conservative grammatists there for my verbal use of 'game' and 'facebook' there!), that they are getting something educational out of it or should we be encouraging a balance between all this and learning in more traditional ways?

Technoschoolers

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:00:00 -0600

We've been amazingly busy of late, and I've been encouraged to get blogging again.

The UK is currently in the throes of what amounts to a very biased government review of Home Education law, and one of the questions that has been thrown into the pot is what is a suitable education for the 21st century.

I've been having an interesting conversation online with a real-life friend of mine who is a 'learning technologist'. She believes - with a passion - that today's schools prepare children perfectly for life - in the 1890s! She also believes that what is needed is technology, and lots of it! To be specific, social media - Web 2.0 collaborative learning & networking technologies, and among the best of these she suggests the following:

- YouTube
- Animoto
- Blogs
- Twitter
- wikis

Of course, homeschoolers in the US and home educators in the UK are already well connected through things like yahoo groups, curriculum forums, and the newer Ning communities such as the Homeschool Lounge, the Home Ed UK Network and so on.

But something I've been working on lately has been to try and encourage the home educated children themselves to get involved with collaborative projects such as wikis (I particularly like wetpaint).

As and when I get round to it, I'll try and re-do my links to include some of the social networks that I find most interesting and helpful.

But I'd also like to add a couple of resources to the 'must-have' list of learning technologies:

- VoiceThread
- Piknik

I've also heard good things about

- Moodle and
- Elluminate

but I'm not sure how appropriate these would be for children who are learning at home autonomously (as most UK home educators do), I would need to investigate further how these can be used.

I'm interested to know other people's views on technology, and what might constitute an education that would prepare children who are studying now and in the 2010s for life in the 2020s, 2030s and beyond.

And which technologies do you consider to be crucial, interesting or useful?

And next time, I promise to try and up-date you about exactly what it is we've been doing and where we've been going!

Ideas for a Greener Homeschool

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:49:00 -0600

I think that home-based education already has the potential of being automatically greener than travelling to school elsewhere: we don't need to drive to school, small 'human' scale operations tend to be less wasteful than big 'corporations', for example.

But here's a place to share and think about ways to become greener in our homeschooling.

Here are my preliminary ideas:

- Use both sides of paper, including using the other side of printed papers (recycle your unwanted post this way)
- Avoid consumables where possible (do your writing on whiteboards or chalk boards or maybe, if you're technologically up-to-date, on interactive whiteboards!) and / or get your children to give their answers orally rather than writing them down in consumable books - that way they can be used again.
- Sell, 'freecycle' (give away) or exchange any unwanted materials http://www.freecycle.org/
- Use second-hand books and materials where possible
- Use online materials that don't need to be printed where possible
- Use recycled materials for your arts projects, or non-recyclable materials that would otherwise end up in the trash (but better still, try to purchase less non-recyclable items)
- Go on nature walks (instilling a love of the natural world in your children is probably the best 'green' thing you can teach them!)
- Get involved with a conservation trust as part of your homeschool activities
-

Please add your own ideas!

In Memoriam ~ Goodbye, MamaSmurf

Thu, 2 Oct 2008 15:40:00 -0500

I am so overcome with sadness and shock of the passing of our dear friend and fellow UK Home Educator, Chrissy 'MamaSmurf', that I hardly know what to say, other than to say how very priviledged I was to have known her, and to convey my very deepest and heartfelt sympathies to her dear family. You will be sorely missed.

You can read MamaSmurf's blog, "Moving the Mountain" here and the news of her passing on the UK Homeschool Nations blog here

Narration

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:00:00 -0500

The current Charlotte Mason blog carnival theme is that of narration.

When I was at school, this was normally called "Comprehension", and usually involved telling back, in your own words (very important, and very difficult for a child to understand, sometimes, I think) your understanding of a story or non-fiction subject you've been told about by the teacher, or that you've read on your own. Comprehension can also consist of answers to set questions on the passage or subject - in essense, 'Comprehension' shows that a child 'comprehends' the story or subject.

Narration is one of the foundational instruments of a Charlotte Mason education, and unlike school comprehension, usually involves an oral retelling rather than a written one - at least in the early years, and unlike comprehension, narration does not usually use questions, except as a prompt in the case of a child who finds narration particularly difficult.

My understanding is that Charlotte Mason actually required a short narration on every piece of writing a child reads or has read to them.

Unfortunately, this is an area we have really, really struggled with, and cannot claim any degree of success!

However, re-reading Charlotte Mason principles, I realise that narration is such an important part of learning - a passage that a child narrates is much more easily and fully retained than a passage that wasn't narrated, that reading and listening without narration is almost totally wasted!

So I am determined to try to start this again. My trouble is that my oldest child is now almost 13, so I don't quite know how to encourage him to start doing something that he has for so long been reluctant to do. I think, with him (at least in the first instance) I will need to use questions to prompt him into telling what he knows and remembers, rather than expecting him to just narrate 'cold'.

I have 3 boys and one girl, and despite not wanting to impose or encourage cultural gender prejudices, I have found that the girl is much more keen on all the things one might expect a girl to be keen on, and narration is no exception. My daughter seems to be much more willing to tell me what she knows than any of the boys. None of my children write 'independently'. The 12yo who can chooses not to, and will need a lot of coaxing to improve that situation. For the 8yo I tend to write down her narrations, and she will occassionally trace over my writing. She just isn't a proficient enough writer yet to write for herself and would get frustrated that she can't get on to paper what is in her mind (which I think may have been my older boy's problem, at the root of his reluctance to write).

I haven't done any narration yet with the 6 and 5 year-old, so that will be another thing I'll be trying to start when we get back into our routine next week. What I might do is to start with the youngest, and ask each older child to add something to the younger children's re-telling.

I don't think I will require narration for everything - we'll just have to see how we go. Perhaps we'll just start with our main read-aloud which we'll be doing once a day. I'll let you know how it goes!