Learning & Fun Online for Kids

Back to the Future

2012-01-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

I'm fresh back from a cyberlearning science conference in which games was one of the hot buzzwords. Games for education! Wouldn't it be great if we could harness the energy that goes into playing games for purposes of work and education? What's amazing to me is that people address this question as if it were new uncharted territory.

People have been playing for a long time. Playing hard. My parents warned me when I went off to college about how many of their friends at college got hooked on Bridge to the point where they practically flunked out of college. In my case, there was soccer and then some stupid hallway version of soccer with a fluffy ball that we played a lot. I mean a lot. We dreamed up incredibly clever rules and strategies and we worked out butts off.

Today, researchers are documenting that games are intellectual, that they light up and stimulate the brain, and that after the excitement and camaraderie of competitive games, people have trouble coming back to the hum drum of daily life. My point is that this is not new, it is an age-old phenomenon that the pure social and intellectual and adrenlin thrill of games is hard-to-match. Of course, with computers, these games can more indepth, are available 24/7, and they freak out a lot of people....more later.....

References: http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Broken-Games-Better-Change/dp/1594202850 - Jane McGonigal

Girl Scout Cookies - Another Teachable Moment

2012-01-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

I was walking through the mall this morning with my son and there were girl scouts selling Girl Scout Cookies. We went up to the booth and asked and learned the following (these are mostly the answers of a mom and daughter in a mall, they are not necessarily proper spokepeople or even right and regional differences are probable):

Q - Are they made with real girl scouts? A - Huh?

Q - Why do you sell cookies? A - To raise funds.

Q - For what? A - For a trip to Georgia.

Q - How much money do you make on each box (they sell for $4). A - $0.71

Q - Do you feel that the annual stuffing of cookies into everyone's hands greatly contributes to the problem of obesity? A - Huh? Probably not, we only sell them for three weeks. And mostly they're all eaten in a month.

Q - Whats the quota per girl scout? A - 200 boxes

Q - Who else makes money on the cookies? Who sells them to you? - A ABC Bakers and Little Brownie Bakers.

Q - What cute sounding companies. Are they really independents or just clever brand names for people like P&G, General Mills, or Nabisco? . A - Don't know. (I looked it up and their website appears to be one of a little company but they don't say one way or another if they are independent or not).

Q - How much? A - $4.00 a box (we took two)

Q - How many boxes of cookies get sold every year? A. Don't know. Our troop sells 2,000 boxes.

Q - Well how many igrl scout troops are there? Don't know.

I googled the question and wikipedia cites an estimate of 200 million boxes per year. At retail, this would be $800 million. I also saw this on the authoritative GirlScout.org site: The $700 million Girl Scout Cookie Program is the largest girl-led business in the country....

It was fun learning about the economics of the

Nag a Ram

2011-12-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

Nag a ram. Do you need to nag a ram? Probably not. Probably, if you arrived by search, you arrived since Google has put a little "search Easter Egg" or joke so that if you search for anagram, Google suggests that you might have wanted nag a ram. An anagram of course is a word or phrase that can be made from the original by rearranging the letters.

Some popular anagrams.

Dog, rearranged, spells god. Many animists and dog-lovers would see great meaning in this.

Other pairs:

pea, ape

arm, ram

looped, poodle

coal, salt

fries, fires

team, meat

soil, oils

FL- Highschool students must be online to graduate

2011-09-28T05:02:00.000-06:00

This is cool and a new rule for education. I'm trying to research this new law and not finding much.

I found Florida’s Guide to Public High School Graduation For Students Entering Ninth Grade in 2010–2011. It doesn't mention it but it is one year out of date. It does highlight how many choices and types of high school programs and diplomas there are. Three year or four year, normal diploma or IB. And I don't think it even talked about the different special needs ones.

I also found this interesting report on Florida Virtual Education but I can't find the part about normal high school students being required to take a course to graduate. There is lots on FLVS move to be a school district (is this again?) and the sanctioning of virtual FL charter schools. I'll read it more closely later today.

BTW, what an impressive but mysterious site this is: Liberating Learning. No about us, no contact info, no way to even see what cover and what they don't? Virtual? Charter? Homeschool? Magnets? Private? Who are these people?

VocabSpellingCity Aug Newsletter - My Favorite Site

2011-08-30T11:51:00.000-06:00

Welcome Back!

August 2011

Summer has been busy around here. Just in time for Back-to-School, you'll find dozens of enhancements throughout VocabularySpellingCity. Here are just a few:

Multiple Meaning Words for K-12
Upgraded servers to handle millions of new users
A brand new Crossword Puzzle
The ability to set student assignments (details coming next week)

We are particularly proud of our interactive crossword puzzle game. It is available to all users with any of ourTeacher Resources Lists. If you are a Premium Member, you can use the Crossword Puzzle with your own lists. Try it now!

John, Mayor of VocabularySpellingCity
info@spellingcity.com

VocabularySpellingCity.com

2011-08-24T04:35:00.000-06:00

I think this site (which I am affiliated with) should be on every parents and teachers lists of sites to use with their kids! Here's why:

Put any word list up on VocabularySpellingCity.com (for free!) and you get immediate access to use the words in engaging games such as Word Search, Word Unscramble, Hangman, and Handwriting Printables.

If you ante up for a $25 annual premium membership, you'll also get access to vocabulary tests, crossword puzzles, and Speedy Speller!

Go to the teacher resources section and you'll find lists ready to use for an amazing set of idtems:

Analogies - New!
Capitonyms
Compound Words - New!
Contractions
Dolch - Sight Words
Geography Lists
Homophones, Homonyms, etc.
Literature Based Word Lists
Math Vocabulary - Most Popular!
Monthly Holiday Lists
Multiple Meaning Words - New!
Phonics & Sight Word Curriculum
Possessive Nouns
Sample Lists By Grade
Science Vocabulary - New!
Sequential Spelling Program
Sound Alike Words
Syllables - New!
Word Abbreviations

Retro Educational Technology

2011-02-15T13:53:00.001-07:00

I'm involved in another blog which is one of may favorities, its about my collection of old educational technology.

I've been collecting for awhile. It started whne I brought the typewrite that I used in highschool into the office. I wondered at the time if it would useful for envelopes or something. As it turns out, its a huge conversation piece. Most of my colleagues had never used a real manual typewriter. Just to complete blow their minds, I bought some carbon paper which turns out to be another discovery for al of them.

Since then, the collection has grown, check it out. Tell your friends!
A few of the items featured so far:

Slide rules
typewriters
film strip projectors
record players

BTW, I'm looking for a mimeograph mahcine (circa 1960s or 760s) to compete the collection. Can you help me get a lead on one?

Tiger Mothering

2011-01-23T19:52:00.000-07:00

Amy Chua's book, a rebuttal of the politically correct gentle rearing of children in most American homes, serves as a wake-up call to parents who have smugly assumed that their kids need support, not challenges. They need encouragement, not a fear of failure. As some review said, Chinese parenting assumes children have strength that can be tested and grown, not fragility that needs nurturing. Quite simply, she demonstrates the power of a swift kick to the backside as a standard approach to child-raising.

OK, I made that last sentence up. In fact, while I've read several articles and listened to NPR's discussion of the book, I haven't yet read it. I do intend, as soon as I finish this post, to get download it on my Ipad.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about the parenting styles that I see around me.

1. Parent as partner. I know some kids whose mom is their partner in learning. At the end of the school day, each subject is reviewed along with upcoming assignments, projects, and assessments. The parent helps organize the homework plan and often with studying. The homework and approach to school is a daily partnership with the parent playing the role of organizing and supervising.

2. Parent as resource. This is where I tend to hangout. When the kids ask for help, I try to provide it. I often ask them about their homework but it's more episodic than systematic.

3. Parents uninvolved. Many parents just don't have the time or really focus on the kids grades and school work. When kids ask for help, their response is that they already got through school, it's now the kids turn.

4.Parents who focus on grades. There's a lot of this and it overlaps the others. Grades are considered by many parents to be the purpose of schools, its about getting credentials, particularly once you hit high school. Many parents consider (sometimes rightfully) to be the lessons taught in school to be irrelevant to "real life" and they equate getting good grades to "pleasing your boss" and something that kids need to learn to be successful.

I'm just starting to think about this area. Any help for me? What sort of parenting do you see in this regards?

Teaching: The Flight of a Butterfly or a Bullet?

2010-11-16T05:15:00.000-07:00

Wow, I just read a great article by Larry Cuban. I'll share some of it here:

The Flight of a Butterfly” or “The Flight of a Bullet”: The Impossible Dream of Transforming Teaching into a Science

According to many policymakers and researchers, teaching should be more like the “flight of a bullet” rather than the “flight of a butterfly.”* Using the latest social science findings, they are determined to re-engineer teaching to make it more efficient, less wasteful, and far more effective than ever before. Behind the current passion among policymakers and politicians for using test scores to evaluate teacher performance (and pay higher salaries) is the current “science” of value-added measures (VAM) that leans heavily upon the work of William Sanders. But these smart officials have ignored the long march that researchers have slogged through in the past century.

Before William Sanders, there was Franklin Bobbitt in the 1920s, Ralph Tyler and Benjamin Bloom in the 1950s, Nathaniel Gage in the 1970s and 1980s, and many other researchers. These scholars believed that teaching can be rational and predictable through scientifically engineering classrooms; they rejected the notion that teaching can be unpredictable and uncertain–”the flight of a butterfly.”

In How To Make a Curriculum (1924),Franklin Bobbitt listed 160 “educational objectives” that teachers should pursue in teaching children such as “the ability to use language …required for proper and effective participation in community life.” Colleagues in math listed 300 for teachers in grades 1-6 and nearly 900 for social studies. This scientific movement to graft “educational objectives” onto daily classroom lessons collapsed of its own weight by the 1940s, and largely ignored by teachers. Elliot Eisner told that story well. For the rest....

Compound Word Day

2010-11-09T19:12:00.001-07:00

I read about this school event and have witnessed it now a few times, what a hoot!
Compound words can be surprisingly fun for students to study. Don’t miss this opportunity to really engage your students. One school has annual Compound Word Day! Each student needs to come to school wearing at least fifty compound words! Sound impossible? I thought so too, but the proof is in the pudding. See the picture at the bottom of this page.

The average number of compound words in the first grade class was seventy-five! Think hairpin, fireman, shoehorn, keyboard, horseshoe, popcorn, and raindrop. A great hands-on learning activity to help kids see how compound words are put together is with images. For example, for the word keyboard you can find a key and a board and, by placing them together, the word keyboard is created!!

Constructionism

2010-11-02T14:45:00.002-06:00

Constructivism Definition

(thanks to Funderstanding)

Constructivism is a philosophy of learning founded on the premise that, by reflecting on our experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world we live in. Each of us generates our own “rules” and “mental models,” which we use to make sense of our experiences. Learning, therefore, is simply the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences.

Discussion

There are several guiding principles of constructivism:

Learning is a search for meaning. Therefore, learning must start with the issues around which students are actively trying to construct meaning.
Meaning requires understanding wholes as well as parts. And parts must be understood in the context of wholes. Therefore, the learning process focuses on primary concepts, not isolated facts.
In order to teach well, we must understand the mental models that students use to perceive the world and the assumptions they make to support those models.
The purpose of learning is for an individual to construct his or her own meaning, not just memorize the “right” answers and regurgitate someone else’s meaning. Since education is inherently interdisciplinary, the only valuable way to measure learning is to make the assessment part of the learning process, ensuring it provides students with information on the quality of their learning.

How Constructivism Impacts Learning

Curriculum–Constructivism calls for the elimination of a standardized curriculum. Instead, it promotes using curricula customized to the students’ prior knowledge. Also, it emphasizes hands-on problem solving.

Instruction–Under the theory of constructivism, educators focus on making connections between facts and fostering new understanding in students. Instructors tailor their teaching strategies to student responses and encourage students to analyze, interpret, and predict information. Teachers also rely heavily on open-ended questions and promote extensive dialogue among students.

Assessment–Constructivism calls for the elimination of grades and standardized testing. Instead, assessment becomes part of the learning process so that students play a larger role in judging their own progress.

Reading

Jacqueline and Martin Brooks, The Case for Constructivist Classrooms.

Theories about learning

2010-11-02T14:21:00.001-06:00

Our approach to science education uses the 5E instructional model and has been described as linked to constructionist learning. There are three main categories or philosophical frameworks under which learning theories fall: behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism.

(thanks Wikipedia)

Behaviorism

Main article: Behaviorism

Behaviorism as a theory was primarily developed by B. F. Skinner. It loosely encompasses the work of people like Edward Thorndike, Tolman, Guthrie, and Hull. What characterizes these investigators are their underlying assumptions about the process of learning. In essence, three basic assumptions are held to be true.^{[original research?]} First, learning is manifested by a change in behavior. Second, the environment shapes behavior. And third, the principles of contiguity (how close in time two events must be for a bond to be formed) and reinforcement (any means of increasing the likelihood that an event will be repeated) are central to explaining the learning process. For behaviorism, learning is the acquisition of new behavior through conditioning.

There are two types of possible conditioning:

1) Classical conditioning, where the behavior becomes a reflex response to stimulus as in the case of Pavlov's Dogs. Pavlov was interested in studying reflexes, when he saw that the dogs drooled without the proper stimulus. Although no food was in sight, their saliva still dribbled. It turned out that the dogs were reacting to lab coats. Every time the dogs were served food, the person who served the food was wearing a lab coat. Therefore, the dogs reacted as if food was on its way whenever they saw a lab coat.In a series of experiments, Pavlov then tried to figure out how these phenomena were linked. For example, he struck a bell when the dogs were fed. If the bell was sounded in close association with their meal, the dogs learned to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by drooling.

2) Operant conditioning where there is reinforcement of the behavior by a reward or a punishment. The theory of operant conditioning was developed by B.F. Skinner and is known asRadical Behaviorism. The word ‘operant’ refers to the way in which behavior ‘operates on the environment’. Briefly, a behavior may result either in reinforcement, which increases the likelihood of the behavior recurring, or punishment, which decreases the likelihood of the behavior recurring. It is important to note that, a punishment is not considered to be applicable if it does not result in the reduction of the behavior, and so the terms punishment and reinforcement are determined as a result of the actions. Within this framework, behaviorists are particularly interested in measurable changes in behavior.

Educational approaches such as applied behavior analysis, curriculum based measurement, and direct instruction have emerged from this model.^[1]

[edit]Cognitivism

Main article: Cognitivism (psychology)

The earliest challenge to the behaviorists came in a publication in 1929 by Bode, a gestalt psychologist. He criticized behaviorists for being too dependent on overt behavior to explain learning. Gestalt psychologists proposed looking at the patterns rather than isolated events. Gestalt views of learning have been incorporated into what have come to be labeled cognitive theories. Two key assumptions underlie this cognitive approach: (1) that the memory system is an active organized processor of information and (2) that prior knowledge plays an important role in learning. Cognitive theories look beyond behavior to explain brain-based learning. Cognitivists consider how human memory works to promote learning. For example, the physiological processes of sorting and encoding information and events into short term memory and long term memory are important to educators working under the cognitive theory. The major difference between gestaltists and behaviorists is the locus of control over the learning activity: the individual learner is more key to gestaltists than the environment that behaviorists emphasize.

Once memory theories like the Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model and Baddeley's working memory model were established as a theoretical framework in cognitive psychology, new cognitive frameworks of learning began to emerge during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Today, researchers are concentrating on topics like cognitive load and information processing theory. These theories of learning play a role in influencing instructional design.^{[citation needed]} Aspects of cognitivism can be found in learning how to learn, social role acquisition, intelligence, learning, and memory as related to age.

[edit]Constructivism

Main article: Constructivism (learning theory)

Constructivism views learning as a process in which the learner actively constructs or builds new ideas or concepts based upon current and past knowledge or experience. In other words, "learning involves constructing one's own knowledge from one's own experiences." Constructivist learning, therefore, is a very personal endeavor, whereby internalized concepts, rules, and general principles may consequently be applied in a practical real-world context. This is also known as social constructivism (see social constructivism). Social constructivists posit that knowledge is constructed when individuals engage socially in talk and activity about shared problems or tasks. Learning is seen as the process by which individuals are introduced to a culture by more skilled members"(Driver et al., 1994) Constructivism itself has many variations, such as Active learning, discovery learning, and knowledge building. Regardless of the variety, constructivism promotes a student's free exploration within a given framework or structure.^{[citation needed]}The teacher acts as a facilitator who encourages students to discover principles for themselves and to construct knowledge by working to solve realistic problems. Aspects of constructivism can be found in self-directed learning, transformational learning, experiential learning, situated cognition, and reflective practice and religious practice

McKay Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Program

2010-08-19T03:11:00.010-06:00

In Florida, the debate over school vouchers was resolved (I've heard) by the creation of the McKay schoolarships in 2002. This provides state money for ESE students to attend privately owned and operated schools.

The Florida Dept of Educational Choice website says: Florida's school choice programs ensure that no child will be left behind by allowing parents to choose the best educational setting—public or private—for their child. The McKay Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Program provided over 20,500 Florida students with special needs the opportunity to attend a participating private school during the 2008-09 school year. The McKay Scholarships Program also offers parents public school choice. A parent of a special needs student who is dissatisfied with the student’s current school may choose to transfer the student to another public school.

I also learned that there a vast amounts of used textbooks available through the Broward Book Repository. There's also Broward school news and such.

Other info: This McKay scholarship school, recently closed, used the following curricula:
Institute for Excellence in Writing
Videotext for Math
Create Courses for everything. Particularly liked their basic math.
Apologia for science.

When he say Time4Writing, he wished he knew about it since it's the best blend of world class video teaching of writing with interactivity and teachers that he's seen yet.

High School Diplomas - Many Flavors

2010-08-18T11:11:00.000-06:00

I learned from a visitor today that the high school diploma seems to come in a few flavors (I'm in Florida).

International Bacchlareate
Standard 24 credit high school diploma (which incidentally, does not qualify you for Florida state colleges. For example, the high diploma requires 4 English credits, Florida State require 5.5 credits).
ESE Option 1 - Student has supplemental assistance and has received multiple credits from the same course.
ESE Option 2 - A diploma usually earned primarily for "life skill" courses. These students are primarily "in the system" all their life.
GED - High school equivalency
Non-accredited diploma signed by anyone "awarding" a high school diploma. In the case of many local schools, the significant issue is that the high school has a matriculation agreement with the targeted school.
Homeschool diploma. Essentially signed by mom and dad that they homeschooled the student through high school.

Experimenting with a facebook like icon

2010-07-23T19:53:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to see how hard or simple it is to create a "facebook like" icon. I've gone to this page on facebook:

Then I clicked on a buncho on buttons. Here's the question.

Do you like SpellingCity? If so, like away (previously fan):

Teaching Syllables and Segmenting

2010-07-22T17:04:00.001-06:00

I just saw the absolute coolest online exercise that I've ever seen for teaching syllables and segmenting. Check it out. The lesson starts by explaining not just one but three ways for students to break up syllables. This really provides a chance for a deep understanding.

The exercise itself is also incredibly rich. First, the kid is asked (by a mouse!) to break words up into syllables. It's a great exercise. If the student needs help or asks for a hint, the game prompts him both by telling him how many syllables and by providing a specific hint for the segmenting of that type of word. For example:

Divide before the middle consonant when the vowel sound before it is short!

The only other place that I've ever seen such detailed help with phonics and syllables are in paid subscription programs

Ten Unprofitable but Scientific Strategies for Improving Reading Achievement

2010-05-18T19:49:00.001-06:00

Richard Allington has a chip on his shoulder. He has discovered that educational programs that benefit vendors get a lot of marketing support (from those vendors) whereas educational approaches that have no profit potential do not get championed by the for-profit sector. In Proven Programs, Profits, and Practice, he vents about this reality, reviews the Federal policy towards literacy strategies, and then highlights ten strategies that are overlooked.

Rather than talk about the system of balances against private vendors is supposed to work, I'd like to list his ten programs, I find it very interesting.

Writing, Sound Stretching, and Phonemic Awareness
Word Walls
Just Plain Writing
Extended Independent Reading
Discussion After Reading
Reading Aloud to Children
Appropriate Texts, Readers Theatre, and Other Fluency-Enhancing Devices
Choice Words
Motivation
Teacher Expertise

I wonder when he wrote the article what he would think of SpellingCity and Time4Learning's reading program. I wonder where he works / teachers?
(lets try seeing if we can get broward to the top for education with SC?)

New English language learning games

2010-05-16T22:00:00.001-06:00

I've been working hard on reimagining what VOCABULARY LEARNING FUN can and will be. I'm particularly impressed by the great new English Language Games In it's new version, we have great technology to build flash games and a network of teachers giving us input on wha they want with others helping us write it. Teachers take note: we are taking input on what sort of free learning games you want. So far, for example, we were told that there really weren’t any sites that allowed you to practice analogies, for example. So we built a great collection of analogies and put them in a full interactive online flash vocabulary game. Enjoy!

Analogy Games

Antonym Games

Compound Word Games

Contraction Games

Definition/Context Games

Foreign Language/ESL Games
Idioms in English or Slang English Vocabulary

Parts of Speech Games

Prefix Games

Root Word Games

Suffix Games

Syllable Games

Synonym Games

Word Play Games

National Geographics BioBlitz in Key Biscayne

2010-05-03T06:53:00.000-06:00

What's a BioBlitz? A BioBlitz (per Wikipedia) is a special type of field study, where a group of scientists and volunteers conduct an intensive 24-hour (or 48 hour) biological inventory, attempting to identify and record all species of living organisms in a given area. The area chosen is often an urban park or a nature reserve of some sort.

National Geographic organized a BioBlitz this past Friday and Saturday to conduct an inventory of the wildlife on Elliot Key involving the public, Park Service, and all sorts of scientists and students. I participated and it was a blast!

My brother, son, sister-in-law, niece and nephew spent Friday (yup, some people skipped school and others skipped work) on our hands and knees along a few stretches of rocky coast turning over rocks, looking in the shallow pools, and grabbing little critters as we saw them. We were led by some first class scientists. Very cool.

In addition to our sample gathering along the coast, we saw how they capture and release the birds, spent some time with scientists finding an array of beetles and ants in a fig tree, and spent a lot of time where the real work is done which is the preserving, cataloging, and analyzing of the samples.

The most interesting fact that I learned was when a small fig was cut open and a small male wasp was found inside. It turns out that this type of wild fig is actually an inside-out flower with the pollen inside the fig. The male wasp has already fertilized the eggs and is depositing them inside the fig as well as pollinating it. I also had an interesting discussion about the genus and categorization of fruits. It turns out that fruits and vegetables are really gastronomical terms. In terms of botany, fruits are a very large category which includes melons and nuts and everything that includes the seed. I ran out of time but I've always wanted to understand the cateogries, botanically, of roots (carrots, onions, potatoes) and leaves (spinach, lettuce). I've also wanted to figure out what's the difference between an herb (is it a leaf?) and a spice (pepper is a seed, salt is a mineral, mustard is a seed).

In addition to the significant scientific benefits of actually having an inventory of what can be found living in the park, the BioBlitz:

Exposes many K12 students and adults to what is involved in real science
Demonstrates how little we actually know about our environment in that many new discoveries of species and behavior can be learned through this events
Pilots a new way for the National Parks and public lands to serve as educational venues

Great time had by all.

Using Google Better. Ex Christian Homeschooling

2010-04-01T11:25:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to master some of the basics of being a better Google user. For instance, I keep forgetting how to search a specific site for infomation. Here is it, I just looked it up:

Search within a specific website (site:)
Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query [ iraq site:nytimes.com ] will return pages about Iraq but only from nytimes.com. The simpler queries [ iraq nytimes.com ] or [ iraq New York Times ] will usually be just as good, though they might return results from other sites that mention the New York Times. You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example [ iraq site:.gov ] will return results only from a .gov domain and [ iraq site:.iq ] will return results only from Iraqi sites.

So to query Time4Learning.com for anything about christian homeschoolers: [ christian homeschool site:time4learning.com ].

I'll try it....Found it: Christian Homeschooling. I find this description unsatisfactory. I'd like it to be extended to cover:

- the options for not using or excluding the science or social studies

- how to handle the "teachable moments" that a T4L includes

- the pros & cons for a Christian to use a secular curriculum

- the detailed Christian homeschool discussions on the parents forum about these topics.

Writing Essays - What are the standards?

2010-02-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

Without much thought, I mentioned in a recent forum post that the standard measure of writing skill in K12 is the five paragraph essay.

I shared the article with a real authority who took me to task on it. The problem is that I'm marketing-oriented and not that in-touch with the curriculum, curriculum designers, or teachers. Woops.

In any case, I thought I'd bring myself up to speed real quick. I'll start with the existing standards and then look at the new CCSSO writing standards. I'll look both at the types of writing and the rubrics. I'll start with a big state, The Golden State.

The California standards say: The CSTs in writing address the state Writing Application content standards for grades four and seven. In grade four these standards require students to produce four types of writing: narratives, summaries, information reports, and responses to literature. In grade seven these standards require students to produce five types of writing: narratives, persuasive essays, summaries, responses to literature, and research reports.
The tests do not include research papers because of the time constraint.

The CA document includes some interesting examples:
Writing Task - the Persuasive Letter

Directions: In this writing test, you will write a persuasive letter in response to the writing task on the following pages.

You will have time to plan your letter and write a first draft with edits.
Only what you write on the lined pages in this booklet will be scored.
Use only a No. 2 pencil to write your response.

Scoring:
Your writing will be scored on how well you

state your position on the topic
describe the points in support of your position, including examples and other evidence
address possible arguments against your position
use correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. You may include a salutation and closing, but the format of the letter will not count as part of your score.

Read the following writing task. You must write a persuasive letter about this topic.

Your school district is thinking about lengthening the school year by starting two weeks earlier. Do you think adding extra days to the school year will improve education? Write a letter to the editor of your school newspaper that will persuade others to accept your viewpoint. Be sure to address opposing viewpoints in your letter.

The Grading was in accordance with the Standard Writing Applications (Genres and Their Characteristics) Standards, excerpted here:
2.4 Write persuasive compositions:
a. State a clear position or perspective in support of a proposition or proposal.
b. Describe the points in support of the proposition, employing well-articulated evidence.
c. Anticipate and address reader concerns and counterarguments.
Grade Seven Focus
The best student responses to the 2008 writing tasks exhibited the following characteristics:

They maintained a consistent organizational structure. They contained an introduction that presented the points to be developed; a body that developed the points that were presented in the introduction; and a conclusion that went beyond a simple repetition of these points. They used effective transitional devices to bridge ideas between sentences and paragraphs.

When you write your letter, remember
to state your position on the topic
to describe the points in support of your position, including examples and other evidence
to address possible arguments against your position
to use correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. You may include a salutation and closing, but the format of the letter will not count as part of your score.

They presented a clear position with precise and pertinent ideas, details, or facts that supported that position. In contrast to the general and/or vague language that characterized writing at the lower score points, the best responses used concrete language that gave substance and individuality to the writing.
They demonstrated an effective use of sentence variety throughout the response. Sentences ranged from simple to complex to compound. The simple sentences often contained multiple nouns, verbs, and/or modifying phrases. Sentences began in different ways. Some sentences started with subject-predicate, and others began with a subordinate clause or transitional phrase.
They contained some errors in conventions, but these errors were those expected in first-draft writing in grade seven. The errors did not interfere with the effectiveness of the writing or with the reader’s understanding of the writing.

Writing Skills & Writing Curriculum

2010-02-10T07:11:00.003-07:00

I've interested in teaching and learning to write. For K12 students, we created Time4Writing.com to build writing skills. It's a traditional curriculum teaching to properly construct sentences, paragraphs, and essays based on the standards used in most school systems. Time4Writing relies on personal writing coaches (licensed teachers) to go beyond the automated approach to building writing skills (including grammar, spelling, and vocabulary) that is used in Time4Learning.com.

I have also taken a foray into new media and new approaches to writing with our blogging course for adults. This teaches creative writing along with some technology, writing skills, and self promotion (and protection) skills by helping people create or improve their blog. It's our most popular course in terms of student satisfaction (they love it) but our least successful course in terms of marketing it and making it profitable (It's turned out to be an expensive hobby for me).

My heart is probably more in the idea that there is a lot of innovation that could and should happen in terms of teaching writing. So here's a quick summary of my thoughts in this area.

1. The traditional goal of K12 academic writing is to produce on-demand a tightly structured five paragrah expository essay. The essays are expected to demonstrate the basic writing principles of proper structure, an overall thesis introduced in the opening, paragraphs with topic and concluding sentences, and supporting detail. Content is often of secondary importance to structure and correctness. This type of writing almost never occurs outside of academia.

2. I've done some reading where people are critical of this approach, most notably Steve Peha of Teaching That Makes Sense (TTMS.org, great thinking and writing on that website, nice guy too). I'm not convinced that it's so ill-conceived. Here's how I think about it.

3. Writing skills are open-ended and building them provides a solid foundation for all types of writing. Lets use a sports analogy for a second. When basketball players practice, they do endless layups by themselves trying to execute an exact string of steps. Martial artists endlessly practice kata which are arcane and stylized. In both cases, the practice is not "real world" since in real games (or fights), there is almost a never simple layup to the basket (and of course, a fighter never ever never gets into a cat stance or a horse stance when they are fighting). Nevertheless, these forms of practice build skills, coordination, and control which can be applied to more complex situations at game time (or when the bell rings). Martial artists have for centuries practiced blocks (inwards, outwards, upwards, downwards) which are ultimately more like calistenics than real world paries. My point is that just like in sports, the practice simulates only a fraction of the real deal. And if students the writing skills to meet academic writing requirements, they have a solid foundation from which to learn to attack real world writing challenges.

4. Another thought is that the real educational problem is not just writing skills development, it's motivation. Students are often not highly motivated (yes, I'm trying for the understatement of the year award). Does the writing assignment have anything to do with how motivated the students will be and whether they will struggle to express themselves and thence build skills? Of course yes. A thousand times yes. But, it does not follow that writing prompts per se are necessarily demotivating. Bad writing prompts are demotivating, good writing prompts are inspiring. On the corner of my desk sits a book called Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt. He suggests that his greatest success as a language arts high school teacher might have come from when he had the students, an ethnically diverse academically-uninterested batch, read aloud their favorite recipes in class. One could argue that part of the appeal was that everyone knew it was something new, an experiment. Couldn't writing prompts, properly designed, provide the same appeal?

OK, time's up. I have people coming to my office. I'll conclude that this is an interesting discussion and probably, the closest that I could claim as a consensus view is that canned time-proven writing prompts are an inferior tool to a teacher, in touch with the students, designing prompts that inspire and challenge the students at that time. Creating a prompt involves many skills but mostly it has to do with knowing what matters enough to the students so that they'll struggle to really express themselves.

Looking forward, I'll probably do some cross over work taking new media techniques into teaching writing to K12 students (I just bought a slew of books on the subject) and I'm interested in adapting our Time4Writing materials to the problem of teaching some remedial writing skills to adults. I find many adults are embarrassed by their writing and they just need help:
- mastering some confusing words: their they're too two to your you're etc
- ensuring subject verb agreement
- mastering short expository sentences
- mastering effective paragraphing and essaying

BTW, below is an example of the type of lessons that we teach at Time4Writing (double click on it to see it full size)....

Date palindromes

2010-01-04T12:29:00.002-07:00

One of the great things about blogging is when I have an idea which I like but which none of my friends, or even my kids, seems to care about, there's always a blog ready for me....

The date on Saturday was zero one zero two two zero one zero. 01 02 2010!

I think that counts as a date palindrome. Don't you?

PS. Wikipedia says: A palindrome is a word, phrase, number or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction (the adjustment of punctuation and spaces between words is generally permitted).

Fan Videos, Professional Development, SpellingCity

2009-12-18T04:29:00.003-07:00

Many educators and parents now know SpellingCity.com, the site that went from nothing in early 2008 to the most popular word game and spelling website on the web by this fall. (disclosure, I'm professionally involved in it).

I was talking to an educator yesterday. Actually, I was listening. She explained to me:

SpellingCity is built so users can explore and easily find everything that they need plus all sorts of useful spelling and vocabulary resources. That's not optimal for teachers. Teachers don't have the time, skills, or inclination to explore. They need more explicit instruction. Where's the professional development section that tells them what to do and what there is?

I weakly explained that everything is easily found and that teachers could...Then I realized that she was 100% right and it was time for a paradigm shift on navigation and training for spellingcity. I'll start by doing a quick inventory of what previously was known as SpellingCity Tube with How To Videos and which will shortly be named, or subtitled, professional Development. It'll have a clear sequence of videos to watch to learn the site.

Getting Started (currently known as Taking a Test)
Grading a Test - need to review.
Saving Lists - needs to be made, mention parent newsletter
Learning Exercises - Overviews Test, Teach, 11 games/activities, printables
A Users Perspective - Overview
Premium Membership - In Development.

Summary of Ideas to Easily Follow up on
1. Reorg how to videos into Training with a sequence etc
2. Create pages by grade level, figure out menus. Pages will collect resources and games and lists appropriate to that grade. Example: K-2 will feature alphabetize and phonics lists and sight words. Fifth through eighth will highlight memorizing state capitals. Possessives will be in 3rd - 5th etc. (do same thing on LG4K & Vocab)

Plus much more.....

Custom Writing Courses

2009-11-09T10:17:00.002-07:00

My company provides Time4Writing.com, online interactive eight-week writing tutorials for students in high school, middle, and elementary school. They are a combination of interactive exercises and teacher interactions.

We are looking at whether we can use those same materials to improve the writing from our member support group. They write a lot of emails every day and while they are primarily templated, there is often a need for original writing.

So our support group is the client, our Time4Writing product group is the vendor, and the test is whether we can build and deliver a version customized for a professional work group. Stay tuned. In the meantime, here's some Writing Resources from Time4Writing.com:

Distance Learning: Why Online Courses Work
Elementary School Online Writing Instruction
Essay Writing for Standardized Tests: Tips for Writing a Five Paragraph Essay
Four Types of Sentences and the Effect of Punctuation
High School Writing Overview
How Graphic Organizers Help Students Master Writing
How Writing Rubrics Improve Writing
Middle School Writing Overview
Step-by-Step Guide to Writing an Essay
Paragraph Writing Secrets
The Writing Process: The Steps to Writing Success
Descriptive Essays: Tips for Writers
Narrative Essays: Tips for Writers
Persuasive Essays: Tips for Writers
Expository Essays: Tips for Writers
Types of Essays: End the Confusion
Understanding Writing Prompts
Writing Can Be Fun: Tips to Enhance Your Child’s Desire to Write
Writing Prompts That Inspire
Writing a Better Book Report

Early Elementary Educational Breakthroughs

2009-11-08T12:23:00.002-07:00

In honor of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street this week, I'm thinking about the great steps forward in kids educational materials. Here's a list. I'd love to see this written up as a full article.

Dick & Jane - These were the standards when I was little (I'm 51)

Dr Suess - The Cat in the Hat was exciting radical stuff when I was little. We loved it. Green Eggs and Ham and all.

Captain Kangeroo & Mister Rogers

Sesame Street

What else belongs on this list? Why?

One other thought. During the tech boom, a number of companies raised a lot of capital for businesses which were described as "Sesame Street for the Digital Age" or "Interactive Sesame Street". It fires the imagination and recognizes the vast impact that Sesame Street has had.

On the business side, I've always wondered about the reality of Children's Television Network. I assume that they're a non-profit. They probably get all sorts of grants and funding. Yet, the toy stores are full of yards of licensed products with Big Bird and Ernie. Isn't that a lot of money? Isn't it enough? Do they turn a profit? Who gets it?

Typing Courses

2009-11-06T06:40:00.003-07:00

When I was in high school, I took a summer school course in typing and learned to "touch-type." Today, the term seems to be keyboarding and the courses seem mostly automated. I'm on a mission to create or find the best keyboarding or typing course.

Google suggests

Good typing - 27 guided lessons to learn step-by-step from the beginning. Free. Teaches in many languages. Text-based, tracks what you do.

PetersOnlineTypingCourse - same as good typing. Modest interactivity. Text instructions

Learn2Type.com - another free site, geared for schools. $99 to get rid of banners.

Elye's ideas:
typetolearning.com - from sunburst. Entire range of products, some packaged, some online. Single user is priced at a whopping $79. Lab at $179. School & network $799.

Keybo - CD-based course: http://www.venturaes.com/index_new.asp?http://www.venturaes.com/heartsoft/

UltraKey from Bytes of learning.
Typing Games by LearningGamesforKids.com

http://www.talkingfingers.com/ read write type - combined interdisciplinary course

learning game websites

2009-10-23T07:05:00.003-06:00

Who are the biggies in this area?

There's:

PrimaryGames.com with their "Mondrian" design that fits so much advertising and content onto the page that it makes my head spin. I think they are very savvy commercially really working the revenue maximizing side of the puzzle. Their graphics suggest a younger kid focus.

sheppardsoftware.com is more aesthetic and cute. I can't tell whether they've selected topics by interest or for revenue. They have an remarkable structure of lessons and activities with different levels. It squeezes the maximum content and perhaps value out of the materials. I can't tell if it's databased or each one is standalone.

The LearningGamesforKids.com educational games website is very sweet. It's smaller and less commercial than the rest but only slightly.

CleverIsland.com is the most commercial of all. Want to see something interesting? Google free learning games and click on the CleverIsland paid advertisement. Give them your name and email so that you can see the free games. Use a variation of your real name. Then count how many people email you using that name variation. They're really aggressive.

To research:

funschool.kaboose.com
thekidzpage.com
learningplanet.com/
prongo.com/games
alfy.com/games/learning

funbrain.com

Gamequarium has collected all sorts of games and links. They are doing a little crowdsourcing with their add-a-link effort: gamequarium.org/cgi-bin/search/addurl.cg

BTW - Should I write a blog post for: learninggames.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/oer-in-games-sims-and-virtual-worlds

Peace Corps Volunteer

2009-09-09T17:40:00.004-06:00

Here's a piece of trivia about me...I was a US Peace Corps Volunteer 1980-82 in Cameroon. I was contacted this week by Wendy who is a currently serving volunteer who is trying to build 30 libraries in schools Cameroon and is looking for help. As in donations. I helped. Will you?

Books For Cameroon

I think this can make a world of difference to those kids.

Blogs vs Twitter vs Facebook for Promotional Purposes

2009-09-09T07:47:00.002-06:00

Blogs Can Still Drive Big Traffic - I thought this was a great post since in all the excitement about twitter and facebook, their limitations are overlooked. I received this from a colleague which I thought I'd share: Saw this in the comments of the post, and thought it was an interesting thought...

"Social marketing like 'twitter' and 'facebook' are not really business generators unless you sell/promote an event or an open day! These are more activity related results. Other business models get far more results from a good blog."

I think the idea there is that Twitter and FB are perfect for "fluid" content. Things that are changing/updating/moving/growing

But that static content can be better represented by a good blog post which offers the ability to EXPLAIN why a consumer needs this product.

My take: Facebook and Twitter are like cocktail parties, a good place to casually interact and exchange quick thoughts but no place for real conversation or information. Also, they're good for quick updates and questions like pools. But they're limited to snippets of info.

If I really wanted to learn about education, I'd go to an education forum or newsgroup.
If I really wanted parents discussion, I'd go to a parents discussion group.
If I wanted to find out about homeschooling, I might use Facebook to find a group but then, I'd go have real discussions on a blog or forum or newsgroup where the media allows for substance!

Free Giveaway from SpellingCity

2009-08-28T07:32:00.002-06:00

I'm "reblogging" or passing on this info. It's a contest that ends this Monday so enter it or pass it on quick:

Win a free SpellingCity account for student record-keeping!!!

Why not start the new school year off by winning a free SpellingCity.com account for the student record-keeping feature? Are you feeling talented and lucky?

How to Apply for the GiveAway. Write your best explanation of how SpellingCity has helped your students and you. There are four ways to send it to us:

- Post on the SpellingCity forum in the Features & Feedback category keeping your entry under 30 words.

- Send your writing to us using the SpellingCity Contact Us form keeping your entry under 30 words.

- Post on the SpellingCity Facebook fan page your entry keeping it under 30 words.

- Tweet it onto the SpellingCity Twitter homepage keeping it under 140 characters.

Please only apply once.

On Tuesday, Sept 1, the Mayor of SpellingCity will pick among the best entries. He'll award five free classroom licenses to teachers and five free family licenses to parents. Specifically, the Mayor of SpellingCity will select the top entries and declare them finalists. The final ten will be selected randomly from the finalists.

Background on Record-Keeping: SpellingCity has added automated record-keeping as a new feature. This allows teachers to instantly grade and record the students' spelling tests giving them a chance to immediately review the words and to take a retest. Traditionally, the grading of papers took a day, tied up a teacher's evening, and involved lots of hand-grading and recording. Automated record-keeping of spelling tests puts the results immediately recorded in the teacher's online gradebook.

The student record-keeping is a new SpellingCity feature introduced in August 2009. The cost for a classroom (30 student licenses) is $49.99. A family (5 licenses) is $29.99 per year. Click for more details on student record-keeping.

Questions, you can DM us on Twitter, Message us on Facebook, post in the forum or use our contact us form.

The Mayor, SpellingCity.com

Learning & Communication Technology

2009-08-15T14:38:00.004-06:00

When I launched my online learning venture a few years ago, a blog was the cutting edge technique for online communication. Forums and Yahoo newsgroups were well-established by then and the traditional internet list-servs and old-fashioned bulletin boards were waning.

Since then, Friendster and Myspace hit their peak and have declined. Google groups came and seem to have gone.

Podcasts arrived and claimed their niche as did wikis and Linkedin and blog communities. They aren't exactly taking over the world but they seem to have their spots.

Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook, on the other hand, are taking over the world. They have dramatically changed our personal networks of communication and how we get news and communicate. Amazing. Thrilling.

Time4Learning is trying to navigate these trends and find a balance of how cutting edge we should be. We do have a Time4Learning fan page on Facebook. We started it within the last month or so and are up to 600 fans. Is that good? I'm not sure. I try to compare it with the fact the Time4Learning parent forum has 3521 members who've joined and 28 users on the site right now (it's Saturday, 4:48, 7 registered, 21 just visiting) but I find that I'm trying to compare apples and oranges.

So, we'll keep trying to listen to our members and locate interested non-members where-ever online they seem to be.

Time4Learning.com on Facebook

3DLearning

2009-08-11T04:59:00.003-06:00

The concept of 3DLearners just popped up on a blog and it caught my eye. And I quote: There's been usage of the term 3D Learners as a category which includes kids with dyslexia and some other groups whose minds process less sequentially than is most common. It's a very clever term in thatthe imagery evokes the idea of being a visual learner.

I've often wondered if 3D was going to move from being a novelty to being mainstream on the web. Right now, it's big in some games and some niche uses.

I've spent a little time in 3D space in a chat system called IMVU and in the famous SecondLife world. My impression is that there are a lot of multiplayer 3D persistent web-based games. These range from the very juvenile and big Club Penguin to a huge number of MMORGs (massively multiplayer online role playplaying games) such as (and I'm just pulling this list from a blog post on 3D MMORGs):

1, Sherwood Dungeon
2, Club Marian
3, Earth Eternal
4Free Realms

But, I have a passing awareness of the game world and it looks like I'm pulling a somewhat obscure list since there's no big-name EA game on it.

Writing Prompts

2009-08-05T07:06:00.002-06:00

A writing prompt is the term that teachers use as as the writing assignment that they give to students. Literally, as what "prompts writing". Many adults will remember the traditional writing assignments of:
- Write a book report
- Write about that you did this weekend or over this summer vacation

Today, teachers and homeschool parents recognize that quality writing prompts inspire quality writing. I've just been reviewing articles about writing prompts and have yet to find one that comprehensive discusses the issue across a range of ages and reading issues. Here's a quick review of articles that I've found:

Internet4Classrooms - A list of writing prompts from popular textbooks.
Tips for Creative Writing Prompts - This article astutely notes that it's a myth that the youth hate to write, there is a discernable current of interest which educators should learn to tap into.
Middle school writing prompts -
CanTeach List of Writing Prompts -

Saving the World - Kenya

2009-07-23T07:15:00.003-06:00

I have a strong public service mentality. I was a Peace Corps volunteer long ago and actively contribute to: two homeless programs, some safe kids programs, several third world programs including one child, one laptop, and so on. My brothers are the same way. So I get emails like this:

More impractical grandiose ideas from your dreamy brother...

Today the news reported the completion of a undersea internet cable to
Kenya that is supposed to spur a huge jump in connectedness and
outsourced services in Kenya. I would call it the Bangalorization of
Kenya. It is also supposed to provide lots of online educational
services to galvanize Kenyan schools.

Is there some way one of your websites can capitalize on this? Free or
discounted subscriptions to computers located there? Some
way to help Kenyan education at the same time boost your reputation or
visibility or number of links? Could Kenyan schools also use SpellingCity?

Obviously, you would want to find a way to make money from this and not
just be pure charity.

There is an editorial column on page 7 of the attached by Nicholas
Kristof about the need to boost education in Pakistan, another
English-speaking chunk of the developing world. (Not to mention
Sangmalima (note - the town where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the 1980s) and the rest of Anglophone Cameroon!) But Kenya is obviously
a lot more promsing right now.

Just musings...

Education - tweeting & personal learning networks

2009-07-04T04:24:00.002-06:00

I'm surfing around. But not on the web. I'm trying to spend some time inside twitter to see what's going on. I read a Time Magazine (remember them?) article this week about Twitter which started with an insight that I totally agree with:

"One thing you can say for sure about Twitter, it sure makes a lousy first impression. Do you want a technology to communicate constantly with people in 160 characters or less? Of course not"

Yet, the article went on to describe that twitter has pretty much become one of the IT technologies because of it's high adoption rate. So I'm surfing around in Twitter.

To be honest, I'm confused. I've found some people that I would like to twitter with (no pun intended) meaning that I'd like them to be aware of the incredible SpellingCity.com website but I'm not sure how to go about it without being spamish and bad. So far, I'm only using twitter to find blogs or emails who I approach in my usual tongue-tied comment or email approach (..if its not too much trouble...and you're curious about such things....and if you have some time....but I don't want to bother you...I've worked really hard....in any case, it's called SpellingCity.com and I'd appreciate a look or review if you can.....if you can't, I won't take it personally and I won't mind.... MUCH!)

In any case, I thought I'd review some incredible websites by elementary school educators that I'm finding in case my tweets get lost.....

EraserTown USA, The New Primary Classroom by Maryann Molishus. My first thoughts, how did she get all those little Web 2.0 icons up there so small and organized and what are they? Her widgets and stuff are first rate as is her credentials...2008 Milken Family Foundation Award Recipient, Star Discovery Educator, Keystone Technology Integrator, Received 2007 Best Buy Teach Award, Member: ISTE, NAEYC, ASCD, Iditarod Trail Committee; Twitter/Plurk. My second thoughts are is EraserTown a play on kids with pencils and erasers or is it about the Eraserhead stuff. Does Molishus rhyme with delicious and is that her real name or just a fortunate coincidence? And lastly, why doesn't she do a little more with the blog like make review SpellingCity.com or Vocabulary Learning Fun?

Philly Teacher - Ms Hertz is a Computer Science teacher in West Philadelphia. Her blog is very active (as I think her tweeting is but again, I'm so confused when I go in there) and she's just too wired. For instance, in her most recent post, she's comparing different social bookmarking services (have I ever admitted that I never really understood Del.ic.ious?). She's comparing it with something that I've never before heard of...Portaportal. Other recent posts were about Shidonni (sounds very cool) and Jam 2.0.

I'll stop there... I want to go check out shidonni

PreK-3rd Education Advocacy Groups

2009-06-05T13:03:00.003-06:00

I just listened to a very nicely done YouTube video by Christina Satkowski done earlier this week. She is part of the New America Foundation, a group that I had not previously heard of. I found them through the Foundation for Child Development, another group that I had not previously been aware of.

States agree to share standards: huge shift

2009-06-05T12:41:00.002-06:00

Forty-Nine States and Territories Join Common Core State Standards Initiative

The Council of Chief State School Officers - CCSSO - led a Process to Develop Common English-language arts and Mathematics Standards. This was announced last week. It's amazing. Who would have thunk that the previously independent-minded states would sign up for a common set of standards? It's collaborative, it's efficient, it's sensible and it's about time. Bravo!

And I quote the release:

By signing on to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, governors and state commissioners of education across the country are committing to joining a state-led process to develop a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics for grades K-12. These standards will be research and evidence-based, internationally benchmarked, aligned with college and work expectations and include rigorous content and skills.

“To maintain America’s competitive edge, we need all of our students to be prepared and ready to compete with students from around the world,” said NGA Vice Chair Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas. “Common standards that allow us to internationally benchmark our students’ performance with other top countries have the potential to bring about a real and meaningful transformation of our education system to the benefit of all Americans.”

This means no more armies of people redefining the educational standards at each state level. No more need for state specific textbooks. An ability to use common tests around the country and compare results. But wait, there's more:

- They are likely to include science. Maybe social studies too.
- They are likely to include preschool.
- They are likely to define benchmarks that are observable and measurable!
- They are likely to remain consistent with international norms such as the international bac.

an online alternative to cancelled summer school classes

2009-06-04T17:55:00.001-06:00

This creates a lot of opportunity for innovative education a la homeschooling and the private sector. Tis indeed an ill wind....

June 5, 2009 - Time4Learning.com, a Homeschool.com top-rated online education software company, offers California parents an online alternative to cancelled summer school classes caused by the State budget deficit. Time4Learning.com provides award-winning, online Pre School to 12th grade education curriculum.

According to John Edelson, Founder and President of Time4Learning, “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.”

Ed Mouse Icon

2009-05-26T13:26:00.002-06:00

I'm having some trouble uploading my little avatar onto a forum so I'm going to put here here and see if I can upload him across the web.

This particular Ed Mouse is only 8KB! He's a GIF.

Maryland Homeschooling

2009-05-12T18:51:00.002-06:00

While the national debate about education is about coming up with a single national curriculum rather than fifty state versions, the debate that is not happening is about homeschool rules. Each state has its own rules and regulations about homeschooling. I think it's fascinating that these questions are too hot for any politician to handle. It's also interesting how dramatically different the Maryland homeschool rules are from say Alabama homeschooling rules.

If I've understood correctly, in Maryland, the families are required to meet with the board of education twice during the school year for a review of the program. As I've heard, while this seems scary, they actually send out very positive supportive well-informed people who seem to have a constructive relationship with the families.

In contrast, in Alabama, homeschooling is basically not allowed under that name unless the parent is a certified teacher. Families must join these bogus "cover schools" which are basically private schools organized to provide an umbrella or cover for homeschoolers.

For homeschooling in Florida, there are cover schools but many homeschoolers take the option of notifying their school board that they intend to homeschool and then fulfill the annual requirement of getting their child reviewed by a certified teacher or other formal annual review.

Geography Games

2009-05-08T04:05:00.001-06:00

Geography forms the basis for understanding our political and physical realities. Want to understand the challenge of global warming, start with understanding the basics of our world...of geography.

How about playing some great geography games.

A great deal of geography education can be effectively taught through geography games and map games. These geography learning games help form the basis for understanding our country, our states, our world. Play on!

Learning Games for Kids

2009-05-07T04:03:00.003-06:00

I'm going to run a series highlighting some of the most interesting learning games on the web. Today:

Dental Games - They provide great dental info through fun learning games. And I quote:

Come play and learn how many baby teeth we have and how the saliva gets into our mouth. Also, dental hygiene!

Would your kids like these games? Their best is called Molar Madness.

Summer School

2009-04-22T09:43:00.001-06:00

Summer school, do I have to?

I was just reading about a great idea for summer study. This is so much better than a traditional summer school.

Have you noticed how much your child enjoys using the computer? If you haven’t, you should. Kids are constantly surfing the web. Whether they’re checking out a video game or chatting with their friends, they are (without a doubt) online. So, it makes sense to turn to the web for a fun alternative to summer school. Time4Learning’s website offers just that. A web based summer learning program that they won’t mind using. In fact, they might even like it!

Learning Vocabulary

2009-04-20T20:43:00.002-06:00

I just learned that words taken from a person’s name are called eponyms. These include maverick, 'diesel, galvanize, zeppelin, watt, saxophone, bloomers, braille, pasteurize, nicotine.

Time4Learning has an incredible fifth grade vocabulary building program (in any case, that's where i learned this). Here is all the info that you might need on their programs for vocabulary:

first grade vocabulary
second grade vocabulary
third grade vocab
fourth grade vocabulary
fifth grade vocabulary
sixth grade vocabulary
seventh grade vocabulary
eighth grade vocabulary

thefreedictionary.com stuff

2009-04-13T14:58:00.004-06:00

Ok. It's a whole new ball game. I'm going to put up thefreedicationary.com's simple scripts for giving a page a simple definition for any term. It's free, simple, and probably won't work on this type of page with the awful implementation.

thefreedictionary.com//lookup.htm#script

A test of a cool new box

2009-04-13T10:30:00.003-06:00

-------------

Word of the Day

Word of the Day
provided by The Free Dictionary

Spelling Bee

Spelling Bee
provided by The Free Dictionary

Top Educational Sites per Quantcast

2009-04-11T17:19:00.004-06:00

I am manually reviewing the top sites on Quantcast to find the highest volume educational sites. While I need to refine my definitions, I'm focusing on K12. Data is monthly.

Merriam Webster: Do they count?
addictinggames.com 161
Nick.com 184th
Funbrain.com: 10 M people, 135 Million page views. 189th
Discovery.com 214
Miniclip 232
NationalGeographic 238
Gamestop 269
pbskids.org 310
bigfishgames 372
greatschools.net 425
enchantedlearning.com 448 2.9M people,
coolmath-games.com 541
primarygames.com 575
scholastic.com 586
virginia.edu 705
studyisland.com 732
edhelper.com 735
stanford.edu
christianbook.com 794
wonderhowto.com 795
agame.com 797
factmonster 865
starfall.com 892
nickjr 887
myiqquiznow.com 922
questia.com 984
....
SpellingCity.com 3050
ufl.edu

Research-based....bah hambug

2009-03-21T08:20:00.002-06:00

I received an email inquiry from a bright-eyed new teacher which somehow triggered this response from me....

Inquiry: I am trying to find out if SpellingCity.com is research-based. I am an undergraduate student. I am not working on research so much as finding the best resources to help a student that I am working with. I need the resources that I use to be research-based. As a prospective teacher, I am keeping track of good resources to use in my classroom someday.

My rant of an answer:

Here's my two cents on research-based. It is very expensive to get something properly researched. Consequently, the reseach-based concept is badly undermined. For instance, I might go through the effort refining and documenting SpellingCity.com as research-based. Frankly, I'm considering it. I could then promote it as research-based. People would look at the article on research-based and be comforted and be able to use it.

Research-based might actually mean that I hire a professor to write a report citing references that support this approach. And, perhaps, we take three groups of 3rd grade students, teach with SpellingCity versus some other approach, and document that their spelling improved.

So, how does that tell a tutor of a student, in a one-on-one situation, perhaps a child with APD or ADD or gifted or mainstream, whether this is a good list to use or not for that particular student's needs?

How does that guide a teacher who already has a superior approach to teaching spelling?

What about 1st graders? Fifth graders?

In short, I've generally seen research-based labels used to promote all sorts of things in all sorts of places when in fact, the research had next to nothing to do with the questions being asked.

Here's an intereting point: By restricting spending government money on research-proven initiatives, teachers risk losing confidence in their own judgement and common sense. And students in public schools are inevitably denied use of any new services or anything from a company that does not have extravagent funding. This is probably why charter schools, private schools, and homeschoolers have much better educational experiences than those students in public schools.

Keep thinking on your own to evaluate what's useful and what's not.

Math Facts

2009-03-09T02:18:00.002-06:00

The math facts start with addition and continue through addition. In addition to getting a firm conceptual understanding of what they mean, the kids need to memorize them. What are the best online tools for this?

Of note,

SmartTech's Number Cruncher

Time4Learning's Math Facts

Math Games

Math Curriculum

Do you know how deaf you are?

2009-03-09T01:42:00.004-06:00

I've often thought an online hearing test could be a great service. Also a great business. Here's someone doing some work in this direction. They have an unscientific list of tones that go from 8Hz all the way up to 22,000Hz. It’s fairly common for people who are over 25 years of age to not be able to hear above 15Hz, so this will help you find out where your high frequency hearing cuts off.

Hottest Trends in Educational Choice

2009-03-04T08:01:00.001-07:00

I tried the other day on the back of a napkin with a friend who is also involved in education to try to summarize the current K12 educational choices and trends.

We have each read many reports on many pieces of the puzzle but at the end of the day, these are our impressions of what the nationwide statistics look like at the start of 2009. Would anyone care to share their data or opinions?

The red hot growth trend in K12 education is the public virtual schools which are approaching 1% of the K12 population. It is growing at a rate of about 40% annually.

Three growth trends that had their moment as the hot growth trends but which are just simmering at this point:

Charter schools - 1% of the K12 population growing 20% annually
Homeschooling - 2% of the K12 population growing 20% annually
Magnet schools - 1% of the K12 population growing 20% annually

Vocabulary Word Games

2009-02-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

Vocabulary Learning Fun is a free website that shares technology with SpellingCity.comThey recently added five educational word games that are worth bookmarking for regular use with your students:

Slang - a game that teaches common idiomatic English expressions

SAT Words - a vocabulary word game teaching a 1000 words commonly found on the SATs

Eight Letters in Search of A word - This is fun and educational to play in groups or alone.

MatchIt - This implementation allows you work your way systematically through the entire dictionary. It helps build grammar skills since there are various forms of the same word.

Letter Blocks - A great implementation of the word game where you form words from adjacent letters under time pressure to advance through levels.

Educational Conference Schedule

2009-02-15T00:36:00.002-07:00

BrainPlop Conference schedule

February 2-4, 2009 - Etech Ohio Columbus, OH
February 4-6, 2009 TCEA Austin, TX
February 9-10, 2009 PETE&C Hershey, PA
February 16-17, 2009 Mobile Learning Washington, DC
February 20-12, 2009 AASA San Francisco, CA - STEVE to attend?
February 23-24, 2009 VSTE Virginia Beach, VA
February 24-27, 2009 ICE St. Charles, IL
March 5-7, 2009 CUE Palm Springs, CA
March 10-12, 2009 CoSN Austin, TX
March 13-16, 2009 ASCD Orlando, FL - CONSIDER
March 27, 2009 Palm Beach County District Tech Fair Palm Beach, FL - REGISTER
March 19-21, 2009 NSTA New Orleans, LA
March 22-24, 2009 WEMTA Madison, WI
June 28–July 1, 2009 NECC Washintgon, D.C.
August 19, 2008 Houston ISD Houston, TX
October 6-7, 2008 ITiE Symposium 08 London, UK
September 14-16, 2008 EdNet Boston, MA
oct 13-15 Oct Handheld Learning London, UK
October 14-16, 2008 ILC San Jose, CA
October 14, 2008 NJAET Lakewood, NJ
October 17, 2008 Hillsborough County Elementary Vendor Day Tampa, FL
October 28-30, 2008 NSBA T+L Seattle, WA
October 30-November 1 National Middle School Association Denver, CO
November 5-7, 2008 GaETC Atlanta, GA
November 5-7, 2008 South Carolina EdTech Conference Myrtle Beach, SC
November 19-20, 2008 NABSE Atlanta, GA
November 24-25, 2008 NYSCAT Rochester, NY
December 8-9, 2008 TIES 2008 Education Technology Conference Minneapolis, MN
December 10-11, 2008 TETC Nashville, TN
January 14-17, 2009 BETT London, UK
January 22-24, 2009 FETC Orlando, FL

Audio Word Match

2009-02-08T06:51:00.001-07:00

SpellingCity just totally revised the Audio Word Match game which follows on the heels of a huge upgrade of their
The New Audio Word Match Game does exactly what Lisa D suggested: it shows each word for awhile after they get it right. Also, they seem to have switched to the more traditional matching game where there is only type of card.

Best of all, they've added a FULL SCREEN MODE which looks great on the SmartBoard Whileboard or Promethean ActivBoard!

One third more homeschoolers

2009-01-17T01:44:00.002-07:00

The homeschool population in the US grew by a third from 2003 to 2007 says the US Dept of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. The data shows that the homeschool population increased from 1.1 million in 2003 to 1.5 million in 2007.

Scarf Creativity - a point to launch from - - -

2009-01-10T08:09:00.007-07:00

If the truth be known, there is a big part of me that is a slightly reformed hippy. For instance, I'd love to live with about 80% less stuff. I know of what I speak since I spent years as a Peace Corps Volunteer and frankly, I didn't miss much of the stuff. I've lived at times for years with no television and thought it was fine. In many ways, I think life without so much stuff is more interesting.

I have a half finished idea for a book which explores how much education a family can squeeze out of deck of 52 cards (any serious low cost volunteers to help write such a book would be appreciated).

So I read Diane's post about scarfs with enthusiasm. It's about squeezing the most entertainment and fun out of the least, a simple scarf. She cites a friend, MaryAnna, a homeschool mom of three children, who helped compile the ideas for using scarves (and I quote a small number of her list)...

Play Peek-A-Boo! (of course!)
Scarf Parachute - Make a scarf toy parachute following these directions.
Scarf Knapsack - Make a knapsack.to carry your stuff by tying all four corners of the scarf together.
Scarf Blindfold – Use a scarf as a blindfold and play "Blind Man's Bluff."
Scarf Blankie - Use the scarf as a comforting "blankie" at home or on the road.
etc.....

Now, Diane is one of the best writers on homeschooling that I know. She might be the best.

But looking at things as I do from a blogging/marketing perspective, her post triggers some thoughts in me (Note, these are not ideas from my hippy side).

For instance, the scarves post could be a great kick-off for a meme? I think audience participation and creative discussion can be fun. Perhaps the audience might have some good ideas of what to with scarves? Perhaps it would be fun to challenge others to add to the list and then pass it on to someone else? Could we get this list to twenty-five? Are there fifty good ideas? Where could the wisdom and creativity of the group take that list?

If a meme is too involved, another idea would be to end the post in a way that encourages comments and onsite discussion. She ended with "Have fun". But how about, "What ideas do you have? Lets see who can come up with the best idea? Please add your ideas."

She could even have added that the following week, the readers will vote on the best idea suggested....."

I tend to think this way since I'm into blogging and have helped create the Blog Writing Course, which raises awareness about the possibility of taking these ideas into a new realm of audience involvement.

Bilingual Kids Books

2008-12-19T05:35:00.002-07:00

A huge percent of us are bilingual. Or we want to be. I've always thought it would be fun to read books that were written in the two languages that we know. So I was pleased when I read about Zooprise Party Fiesta.

Written by Joy Delgado of Puerto Rico, it combines English and Spanish. She is an exciting new author/illustrator who is intereviewed on Kathy Semke's blog.

Sadly, I speak English and French so I can't read it. But for my kids who speak English and French and are learning Spanish, it should be great. Thanks Kathy.

Sites that Work Together

2008-12-09T17:55:00.000-07:00

I like it when different sites figure out how to work together. Check out this clever connection. The Learning Vocabulary Fun website has some science songs. They are a great way to learn science.

They do use some vocabulary which can be challenging. So underneath the songs, there is a vocabulary list. And then, they have built links directly to the vocabulary and spelling games on SpellingCity.

It's cool. You should do the same from your classroom. Put together a vocabulary list and link it directly to that list on SpellingCity.

Have you ever lied to your kids?

2008-12-07T12:19:00.000-07:00

Have you ever lied to your kids?
This got me to thinking. I can't wait to see this discussion develop.....

OK. Lets hear it. “Have you ever lied to your kids? If so, how did it work out”. I’m going to start a discussion here and then send it around as a meme.

I’ll start off. Two lies. One was when we had a rat problem. I was baiting a mouse trap with peanut butter and cheese and my four year old daughter asked: “Is that so the rat can eat when he’s caught in the trap?”

Teaching technology to today's tweens and teens

2008-12-04T22:55:00.001-07:00

Teachers in schools are coming up with great ways to teach technology to today's kids, and, as one would expect, the kids are eating it up!

One great example is a teacher at the Randazzo School in South Florida.
She teaches a computer class to middle through high school kids. This class was impressive from the very start. Within weeks the kids were taking apart CPUs and installing hardware.

They soon moved on to learning Microsoft Word. Homework was done in Word and emailed to the teacher through the student's Gmail accounts.

Currently, this teacher who also works on the city of Coral Spring's website as well as the school's website, has started teaching her students to use Joomla. Joomla is a content management system used currently by forward-thinking web developers.
Her students are now researching and writing articles for the city web site's teen section CS-Teens and adding them to the website using this content management technology, a skill that is currently in high-demand in the web world.

Half way through their school year, I can't wait to see what they move onto next!

I want to join this class!

Homeschool blog with give-a-aways

2008-12-03T15:15:00.000-07:00

A friend just pointed me towards a blog that's doing a clever promotional effort: 7 reviews with 7 giveaways.

What I really liked about Shanna's blog was the December 3rd post: This counts as school, right?
Somehow, it captured the spirit of homeschooling at it's most simple and charming. And I quote:

All on their own, the kids decided to create a script, build a set, and act out their own lego film. They asked me to film it and put it on my blog. Well, how could I resist?

The give-away idea is good. It's effectiveness depends on how well promoted it is and whether the giveaways are significant enough to endear the visitors to the site. That's my $.02. (In any case, that's what I learned when I took my Intro to Blogging and Blog Promotion course).

Check out her site.

Twitter is Not a Waste of Time!

2008-11-12T06:24:00.001-07:00

I'm wrong again. It turns out, according to the latest research, that Twitter is Not a Waste of Time! And I quote a campus technology article:

David Parry (2008), an assistant professor at the University of Dallas, cited an example of a class in which one half of the students used Twitter and one half did not. He observed that those students who did use the technology were more engaged and connected overall with the course and that he, as the instructor, knew more about the students' understanding and progress throughout the course than with those who did not use the technology. Parry did note that there is something of a challenge not to over-engage with students but did propose that being relevant with students is a very real challenge in his view of teaching. The more that instructor can and does use current communication tools like Twitter with students, Parry noted, the more students will regard the instructor as relevant. When instructors do not communicate with students using these kinds of tools, according to Parry, students will likely regard those instructors as irrelevant.

In this article, I was also introduced to the term microblogging. Microblogging technology basically brings the concept of blogging into a more direct and immediate mode.

I would guess that microblogging includes:

twitter
facebook: wWhat are you doing right now.
All sorts of computer and phone based chat.

Geography Awareness Week

2008-11-10T16:38:00.001-07:00

Take students on a virtual whirlwind tour of the world this November with MyWonderfulWorld.org, a National Geographic-led campaign to give kids the power of global knowledge. During Geography Awareness Week (November 16-22), experience a range of geo-activities designed to engage kids in exploring their world while they become more informed global citizens. You can take a geo-tour of global hotspots on a virtual globe, including polar regions, coral reefs, and great cities. Explore earth's marine ecosystems as you pilot an underwater vehicle. Hear from young people living and working around the world.

Go to MyWonderfulWorld.org/gaw to see the world in new ways!

Free Spelling Resources!

2008-11-04T15:21:00.000-07:00

Free Spelling Resources!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Does Your Child Have The Spelling Gene?
By Diane Flynn Keith

Some people's brains are hard-wired for spelling - it just comes "naturally" to them. Others struggle endlessly with spelling drills and workbooks resulting in little progress and lots of frustration.

The emphasis on spelling in schools and homeschools as a critical language arts skill is over-rated. There are plenty of intelligent people who excel in every school subject including reading, who cannot spell well. They suffer the indignation of red marks on papers that scream, "You're stupid! You can't spell!" Somehow, these non-spellers graduate from school and college and go on to lead productive lives. Not spelling well doesn't mean you're condemned to dumpster diving for a living.

John Wells, a professor of phonetics and president of the Spelling Society in an interview with The Times Online said:

"It's time to remove the fetish that says that correct spelling is a principle mark of being educated. ...Text messaging, e-mail and Internet chat rooms are showing us the way forward for English."

The written language is evolving into a more phonetic and simplified form.
The Times Online also reported that research conducted by Anthony Monaco of Oxford University suggests spelling ability may be embedded in your DNA. He tracked the development of 6,000 children and identified a gene that helps guide brain cells into the cortex of the developing brain that may affect the ability to read and spell. We all have it, but about 15% of the population has a slightly different version of that gene that may account for information processing differences.

Science doesn't have all of the answers yet, but progress is being made toward understanding the difference between Spelling Bee champs and chumps.

So what can parents do to help their children in the meantime? Avoid judging your child's ability and intelligence based on whether or not they can spell well. This truly may be an inherited genetic trait. If spelling isn't their "thing" - give them the tools they need to edit their own work. Understand that every brain is different. Visual learners can "see" the correct spelling of a word in their mind's eye. Auditory learners will be better at sounding out spelling words. Explore multiple methods that will help your child decode the language in a fun and engaging way. Here are some helpful resources for those with and without the spelling gene:

SpellingCity.com is a terrific website that will help your children (ages 5-13 or grades K-8) improve their spelling skills for FREE. Spelling City includes:
Over 37,000 words, including plurals, contractions, future and past tenses.
8 spelling games! Students can play games with their spelling words that are automatically generated by a program at the website.
A REAL human voice that pronounces the spelling words and sentences making it easier to understand and learn.
A "Teach Me" function that spells out the word using both visual and auditory input to improve retention.
The ability for teachers and parents to enter and save their own spelling lists for their students/children.

Get the 28 Rules of Spelling - Free! from the Riggs Institute that sells spelling curriculum and workbooks.

Scripps National Spelling Bee - For those who have the spelling gene, get free resources, study suggestions, spelling word lists that include parts of speech, language origins, pronunciations, definitions, and sentences for thousands of words.2009 Spell It! - This is the official study resource of the Scripps National Spelling Bee from Merriam-Webster. You'll find plenty of free tips and activities to improve spelling.

Free Homeschool Spelling Course - When you get to this commercial website you'll find a FREE 30-lesson homeschool spelling course for students in grades 6- 8. It includes printable spelling rules and step-by-step lessons. The idea here is that if you like the spelling course, you may be motivated to purchase their other courses in grammar and punctuation.

Free Spelling Worksheets - Get free spelling worksheets for elementary grade and remedial students including spelling rules like "silent e", consonant blends, plurals, suffixes, prefixes and even word search games to reinforce spelling.

Play Games To Improve Spelling! Here are some suggestions:

Spelling Hangman - This classic kids game helps hone spelling in a fun and engaging way.

Word Safari Game - Practice spelling while playing a fun online video game.

Alphabet Soup Spelling Game - Try this arcade style game that will challenge your spelling skills.
Spelling Games - Play and learn with these games based on the Dolch Sight Words list.
Catch the Spelling - This site was designed for ESL students, but can be used for grades Pre-K through 8 (approximately). Players use the arrows on their computer keyboard to move "the catcher" to catch falling letters in the correct order to spell out a designated word. Younger children and non-readers will need parental help.
Scrabble, Boggle, and UpWords - These terrific board games from Hasbro improve spelling skills. Click on the link to play the games online for free.
Funbrain: Spell Check - Need a little drill and practice work? This site offers an easy and hard spelling test. There are 20 sets of 4 words offered in each test. The Spell Check game is designed for 4th grade through Middle School. Younger children may find the Spellaroo version of the game on this site a little less difficult.
Copyright 2008, Diane Flynn Keith, All Rights Reserved.
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE, BLOG, OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: "Diane Flynn Keith publishes the rave-reviewed Homefires Ezine with 5,500+ subscribers. If you're ready to save time and money, ease your anxiety, and learn how to have fun homeschooling, get your FREE subscription now at http://www.Homefires.com."

Online Learning

2008-10-30T03:40:00.000-06:00

There are many types of learning. One type of learning, important to me, is about learning seo. I've started a new blog on that topic.

Have you voted yet? I voted yesterday.

I just voted!

2008-10-29T07:44:00.000-06:00

In Florida, where I live, they changed the rules and the early voting opened this morning at 7am. I got in and voted this morning. You should vote. If you need help deciding, I have opinions that I'm willing to share...privately. Go vote. And encourage friends and family to do the same.

From Online to in the flesh - Campaigns are multimedia

2008-10-20T17:49:00.000-06:00

Today, I went to a political rally. It's actually the first political rally that I've been to since I was about 20 (I'm 50 now).

I won't share my politics with you but I will say that it really made me think about the process and people as I stood there in a crowd, a very mixed crowd, in the sun at mid-day.

There were old and young, mostly old. Many volunteers. Some children. I assumed that they were homeschoolers since it was a school day.

It's 15 days to election day and being in Florida, we hear A LOT of political ads on the TV and radio. It makes sense to me that in addition to enormous amounts of online work, they hit the crowds and radios, and the TVs and the newspapers. There is no mor multimedia effort than a presidential campaign.

English is so weird.....

2008-10-11T04:51:00.002-06:00

The English language is so weird, I marvel at the fact that we seem to love it despite it's absurd lack of logic...

Goose, geese,
Moose, .....mooses

Mouse, Mice
House,.....houses

Swim, swam
Trim, ....trimmed

I'm thinking about learning english and vocabulary because I'm back to one of my favorite pastimes, designing games. In this case, I'm looking at Learning Vocabulary Fun, a site with vocabulary word games, trying to figure out games would be popular and useful for building vocabulary. Also, which ones would be within my means to build. As I looked around, I read some of Avko's comments on Crazy English....

Reasons why some people think English is hard to learn. Or, reasons why other people (like me) think English is great fun to learn.

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

Coming soon on Learning Vocabulary Fun, new games dealing with idiomatic expressions.

Can My Child Handle A Time4Writing Online Class?

2008-09-28T13:30:00.000-06:00

This was such a good article that I thought I'd repeat some of it here. It could be used for any topic...

Can My Child Handle A Time4Writing Online Class?
If your child has never taken an online course, and you are concerned about their ability to handle one, here are a few things you should consider.

Can your child read at at least a first or second grade level? Most of the teaching and instruction in the Time4Writing course is given in writing. If your child can’t yet read the lessons, they might still be able to take the course, but you would need to either sit with them and read the lessons aloud, or use some type of text to speech program to guide them through the coursework.

Does your child feel comfortable with a computer? If your child is just now building mouse skills, and hasn’t had any keyboarding experience, he or she might find an online course overwhelming. But if they are already spending time on the internet, and can at least hunt and peck on a keyboard, they will probably do fine with an online writing course....continued..... Can My Child Handle A Time4Writing Online Class?

Five Great Websites

2008-09-25T15:48:00.000-06:00

The best online homeschool curriculum is from Time4Learning.com.

The best site for spelling words is SpellingCity.com.

The best new article site on homeschool materials is homeschool city.

The best homeschool directory site is homeschool.com.

the best homeschool forum for online discussions.

The hurricane song

2008-09-05T07:12:00.004-06:00

The hurricane song is too great. Thanks Time4Learning for keeping this alive.

del.icio.us

Learning Experiment...not just for the kids...

2008-08-27T22:03:00.000-06:00

I think this is so cool and such a clever idea. I know that one side effect of this group blog course was the creation of the Blog Writing Course. And I quote from the web home school blog.....

I’ve been asked by a few people about the purpose and status of this blog so I thought I’d write up a quick summary of it’s history. We will probably relaunch this blog soon as some new variant. If you have any suggestions or would like to participate, you can contact us at Time4Learning.
This blog was started by Time4Learning as a learning experiment.
We asked half a dozen parents (actually, all moms) of students using Time4Learning to write on this group blog about the details of their homeschooling program. What their days were like and what they worried about. And were happy about.
More specifically, we wante to know what was working for them and what wasn’t in terms of their use of online educational materials.

--- it continued for awhile and concluded with......

What did we learn? We learned a lot of details and about other products that are used in conjunction with us. We learned that most homeschool curriculums are a home-made eclectic mix optimized for each child. And that there is different mix of planning, routine, and spontenity for each family. We were stunned to find out how unique and useful our service really is. My favorite posts:
The gifted child, with autism, with Time4Learning
How the Internet changes everything….for homeschoolers
T4L - How it helps everyone. Mom too.

del.icio.us

Homeschool Literature

2008-08-08T06:20:00.002-06:00

I wonder yet if there is a body of good homeschool literature. By this, I mean homeschool fictions. Books and stories written in which the setting involves a homeschooling family. Or some or all of the characters are involved in homeschooling.

I've found a few books, but not that many.

Pictured left is an excerpt from one of a few kids books written by Scott Stroud. I've read a review copy of Baby Kong. First rate. He has a second one which received awards but I haven't seen it. If you are looking for gifts, give him a look. He had a great publishing-website name too: HomesCoolKids.

Here are a short listing of homeschool literature that I found on a site called HomeschoolOnline.org

Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie Tolan. Kids literature. Fine.The Applewhites book starts with a traditionally-school adolescent who is having alot of problems. He is sent as a foster kid to a rural homeschooling “unschooling” family full of some stereotypical characters. The cityboy “comes of age” through his experiences on the farm and with the family. For a review of the Applewhite .

Schooled by Gordan Korman. Kids literature. Bad. The homeschooled boy is a terrible representation of being a social misfit-homeschooler. The middle schoolers at public school are horridly behaving. The hippie homeschooled boy is basically tormented in school to the point where it would be impossible for the reader not to pity him. (excerpted from a review of Schooled by ChristineMM)

The Adventures of Lil’ Wolf, Twinkie, Toes, and Flower Girl in the Homeschool Forest by Jacqueline R. Campos. Editorial description from Amazon: Come and join in all the fun of the Wolf Family as they share their homeschooling adventures with you! It is never a dull day in the Homeschool Forest, with the gentle Flower Girl, lazy Toes, fun loving Lil’ Wolf, and the very clever Twinkie.

Other suggestions?

del.icio.us

Science education - need a new approach

2008-08-03T17:16:00.000-06:00

The general approach to science in our schools is a bust. It doesn't attract enthusiasm or many students. And our need as a society for a scientifically fluent citizenship and for scientifically-strong professionals is vital.

The curriculum for science continues to get short-changed as the schools increase their focus on the more testable math and language arts. Starting in middle school and in high school, the science labs continue to get back due to budget cuts, lack of teachers, and the perceived danger of actual science labs with acids and bases and fire.

Fortunately, there is a solution: computer-based instruction. This can be personalized which will solve the problem of students progressing in science at dramatically different rates. We can do simulations of experiments with amazing capabilities. It can be inquiry based and socially relevant.

So far, there are bits and pieces of great curriculum but no consensus. Right now, I'm reviewing the Jason curriculum from National Geographic to see if it can be used as the basis for some sort of "Time4Science" (ie an online interactive science curriculum)

del.icio.us

Learning to Blog

2008-06-21T05:17:00.005-06:00

While anyone can learn to blog, for many it is a lonely frustratingly-long time before you are writing a quality blog and have an audience. Why not take a short cut and ride along with us?

You can, of course, learn about the key skills in blogging by reading articles and through trial and error. Or you can take a fun course. BlogWritingCourse.com offers two online courses. One, Get Ready to Blog, is a free automated course that anyone can sign up for and take at any time. It's for total beginners, a precourse to get students ready for Blogging 101. In the precourse, you'll start with the very basics about how much it costs to start a blog (nothing) and the different approaches to blogging and setting up your first blog. BlogWritingCourse.com also offers Blogging 101, an 8 week online course with a teacher which you take as part of class. The course teaches you the skills you need by having you practice and get feedback. There are some reading assignments but the heart of the course is learning by doing with guidance and support and feedback.

Blogging 101, the learning to blog class runs intermittently. There are generally eight students in each session and a teacher. Black belt mama, the teacher, has a masters degree in creative fiction and is a successful blogger. She's also a total charmer, students love working with her.

In the first section of Blogging 101, students compare blogs to see what distinguishes the best ones. They learn about how to form a coherent combination of topics, the visual look, and the identity of the blogger (the "about me"). In the second section, they apply these rules as they set up their own blogs, define their writing identities, and write their first posts. Students get feedback and explanations including help with technology and graphics. Issues about personal safety, privacy, and copyright are covered. In the third section, students start to react to comments (initially each others), keep writing their blog, and are given some assignments to help build an audience through posting on similarly-focused blogs and forums. In the last section, the students learn to use the promotional tools such as technorati and the different blogcatalogs and groups.

What many students like best is that by starting their blog as part of a group, they have readers, feedback, and comments from the start. And long after the course has finished, they have their initial classmates who have become their first group of online friends that they can learn from and shares experiences with.

The students are a diverse group. From the recent alumnae, there's Topsy Techie who writes about her Unconventional life of a homeschooling family and is well on her way to becoming a famous bloggger. The students range from the Daily Grind of kooky caffeinated JavaMama, the ultra fit Spin Diva, the aging but still eager BlackBeltat50, the trials of Renovation Girl redoing her house and starting a family and of SheParent wrestling with her 11 year old, the life of one BBW (big beautiful woman), and there's the more senior Grey Haired Geek.

Come sign up. The free automated precourse is a total no brainer for anyone thinking they might like to start a blog and want to get a basic orientation. And Blogging 101 sessions fill up quickly so you should move quick. The Blog Writing Course just announced that the summer session starts July 7th and the fall session starts September 8th. Reserve your place now.

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other paragraphs.....

Writing a blog successfully is way different than writing an article or an essay. In a blog, readers engage not just because it's a collection of good articles but because there's some continuity. Also, most readers want to be learning something. In fact, most blog readers say that they read blogs on subjects that they are trying to learn about or stay current on but they choose which blog to read by how entertaining the author is. Most blog writers find that they want to mix elements of their personal life with commentary on some subject in which they have interest and expertise.

So the readers expectations and writers plans are a great fit which explains why blogs are becoming so popular. But with thousands of blogs being started every day, how do you make sure that your effort is fun for you and popular with readers?

Writing blogs is also very different from writing traditional novels or even newspaper columns. The key difference is that the writer is expected to interact with the audience and to create a community experience. This requires a combination of traditional writing skills (grammar, point of view, characters, vocabulary), social skills, and technical skills.

Safety and My Online courses

2008-06-20T02:48:00.000-06:00

I run an online learning service which has thousands of students (Time4Learning.com). It's automated and there have been no teachers so all of our security issues have been of the technical type so far.

We started recently a new service teaching writing (Time4Writing.com) in which we provide an 8 week writing course online which is led by a teacher. I'm looking for some feedback on our approach to safety:
1. All parents (who must sign up students) and students are informed that all of the class communication should happen thru our online website (moodle is our learning management service). No email and no phone calls.
2. 100% of the communications are saved, monitored, and reviewable.
3. We review about 20% of them on an ongoing basis.
4. No private student to student communication is allowed.

My new big question (as we expand past teachers that I personally know or who are onsite) is about teachers.

I only hire "accredited teachers" which means (in the modern era) that they have had a full background check with fingerprinting etc. Since I intend to hire some of these teachers over the internet, I also conduct a webcam based interview (although so far, we don't use that technology in the classes). My reason is so that I can visually verify their identity against the documents that they've sent me (including a driver's license) to make sure that the person is who they say they are. (I'm worried about identity theft and approving "borrowed" credentials)
Anybody got any feedback on this approach?

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Time4Writing is alive and useful

2008-06-04T18:12:00.000-06:00

Time4Writing has courses that start every week! This is made possible since most of the 8 weeks courses are built to provide one-on-one instruction from a writing teacher to your child.

The courses are online and require about two and half hours per week. They really help the kids' writing. The feedback is provided the day after each assignment is turned in and the feedback is specific and useful

Help your kids learn to write.

And I quote.....Online Elementary, Middle and High School Writing Courses.
8 Week Sentence, Paragraph and Essay Courses

For many students, learning to write well is difficult.
Time4Writing provides online 8 week writing courses that help students build writing skills. Students learn through one-on-one interaction with a certified teacher.


	Schools rarely have the resources to provide the detailed, systematic feedback that students need to maximize their writing skills. Time4Writing helps students build writing skills for general communication, self-expression, and high stakes writing requirements such as SATs and college entrance exams.

	Homeschool parents often find that teaching writing is difficult. They feel that the editorial process is subjective since, of course, there is no answer key. Writing courses provide the editorial feedback that helps students improve.

Will your children benefit from Time4Writing?

	Do your children need help in developing their writing skills?
	Would your child benefit from regular writing practice and detailed feedback?
	Do your children have upcoming reports or timed assessments?
	Is your child writing with joy and confidence yet?

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Hooked on Phonics

2008-05-21T16:29:00.000-06:00

Hooked on Phonics - Remember them?

Hooked on Phonics was hugely popular in the eighties and nineties. It provided parents a way to help their kids learn to read. HOP's television marketing campaign made Hooked On Phonics a household name. It was reportedly one of the most successful direct marketing campaigns in history. It ran on and on and on.

While it seemed a whole generation used Hooked on Phonics to learn to read, it's popularity has declined as new technologies, approaches, and services have emerged. Today, children increasingly respond to more interactive, online resources. I would recommend Time4Learning is the modern equivalent to Hooked on Phonics.

Their learning games are digital online interactive and fun. Their phonics games are fantastic.

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Learning to Blog

2008-05-20T04:24:00.000-06:00

Bloggers aren’t usually writing for the benefit of their health (although who knows what new research may turn up in next week’s health headlines). They are writing to share their knowledge, their insights, and their feelings with others. The hope is that other people will read what they have written, and interact with it, in the form of blog comments, quotes, and forwarding that content to others who might be interested. One of a bloggers best friends is his or her blogroll, which highlights other blogs they are following, and often that are following them. And thus, a community is born.

My blogging community started with a small group of folks who were taking the online blog writing course with me.

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Online Spelling Program

2008-05-07T17:54:00.000-06:00

SpellingCity (which I am affiliated with) is the coolest online spelling program. They (we) keep adding cool new features. What do you think of free printable handwriting worksheets generated using your spelling lists?

With tools this good, there is just excuse for not doing your spelling practice and getting perfect scores on every spelling test.

Also, it should be easy to integrate spelling and vocabulary with your studies since there are so many lists available. Just go to FindaList and type in 2nd grade or SATs.

Here are some vocabulary lists extracted from Classic Literature.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Call of the Wild, Canterbury Tales, David Copperfield, Diary of Anne Frank, Frankenstein, Gulliver’s Travels, Kidnapped, Old Yeller, Pride and Prejudice, Red Badge of Courage, The Prince and the Pauper, The Scarlet Letter, To Kill A Mockingbird, Treasure Island, and Wuthering Heights.

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Teaching Writing

2008-04-26T14:34:00.000-06:00

Many parents are disappointed by the writing skills of their children. However, they find that teaching writing is difficult as the kids don't necessarily recognize the parents' authority in this area.

Most schools just don't have the resources to give the children lots of writing assignments with appropriate feedback. Without the practice and instruction, students' writing skills do NOT improve.

Many parents look for help to teach writing. Time4Writing provides that help. It's a set of online eight week courses which gives weekly writing assignments followed by in-depth personalized feedback on the writing. Students can take courses afterschool, during the summer, or for homeschool families, whenever it fits into their schedule. Classes start almost every Monday.

Prices are terrribly reasonable for the amount of personalized instruction that each student needs. The course requirements are simply an Internet connection and a browser. The writing is done on an online system so a word processor is not even required.

In middle and high school, a methodology called Four Trait Writing is used. The first course on Four Traiting Writing is available from Time4Writing, which provides online writing courses. But there are likely to be books and other courses promoting this methodology in the near future. Time4Writing conforms to the NSTE approach to writing.

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Spelling Tests

2008-04-10T10:11:00.001-06:00

If there's one common educational principle through the entire US educational system, it's the tradition of the weekly spelling test.

Public schools, private schools, parochial schools and homeschoolers all seem to unite around this principle. Somehow that amuses me. Has anyone ever studied the actual benefits of a weekly spelling test to education? Fro teachers, it's a simple routine time-filler. For most students, it's their first introduction to graded activities.

I do believe that if you organize your spelling lists well, you can achieve significant educational benefits. For instance, in the kindergarten through second grade, students are learning phonics which is best done through word families. Spelling tests that are organized in support of this principle (cat, rat, fat, hat, bat etc) are useful reinforcement. Similiarly, at these ages and into third grade for script, combining spelling list practice with handwriting practice is probably a very efficient way to go.

Practice spelling tests in later grades can deal with concepts like compound words, word roots, vocabulary by subject areas, country of origin, and what not.

Do you have any original ways to combine spelling tests to make them useful?

How do you spell: John Chow?

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"The H* with Spelling" Time Magazine article

2008-04-10T02:28:00.001-06:00

"The Hell with Spelling" Time Magazine. And I quote:

In the course of a congressional hearing on U.S. economic policy, a witness casually mentioned the importance of education to the future of the nation. That was enough for Vermont's plain-spoken Republican Senator Ralph Flanders, 76, who proceeded to sound off on what has obviously become one of his favorite topics.

"Our education system," said he, "is a shambles. I have, for instance, four grandchildren in high school . . . Three of them are writing rather good theses and essays but are not corrected in spelling. They communicate; that's all that is necessary. The hell with spelling.

"Furthermore, the leading citizens of the town in which I live, Springfield, Vermont, were hypnotized into signing a statement of educational policies which includes this: that examinations shall be student-based and not subject-based. In other words, it is of no great importance whether a child really understands the mathematics so long as he is working hard at it. If so, he gets a good grade. But as to whether he has achieved a satisfactory degree of proficiency is not of any particular interest to the school."

Here's my questions, what is this about?

As far as I can tell, the position of standardized tests measuring skills and achievement is very strong in this country. NCLB has vastly increased their importance and impact. So what is he going on about that the lack of testing is the problem with our educational system? It's true that spelling has lost some ground in academia due to the increased use of proof-reading and spell checkers and word processing.

Remember, my generation went to school and we drafted our writing by hand. One did not make endless revisions since each one could mean copying over the entire document. Instead, we doodled up an outline, wrote a draft, proofed it, and then wrote a final version in pretty distinct stages. Now that we have word processors, we tend to do our brainstorming on the keyboard rather than in our head and doodling. So more typos and misspellings occur. And we get sloppy since the spellchecker fixes most of them correctly so some great bloopers get through.

But this is hardly a sign of our educational system going to pot.

Frankly, there haven't been that many great tools to make spelling time, a fun time. But there are now...try SpellingCity.com

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Learning games - they don't get better than this

2008-04-07T18:23:00.000-06:00

I'm so impressed.

Check out the PestWorld Learning Games by the National Pest Management Association.
They're great flash games. And I quote:

Archibald Ant is a very fussy odorous house ant who must find food for his colony and stay out of harm's way. Help Archibald complete his mission to locate and plunder the legendary sugar bowl on the far-off kitchen counter. And he needs, help, too, because he would rather stay outside.

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Big Small World

2008-03-20T06:55:00.000-06:00

The internet is amazing. While is connects us all, it does not deal with the underlying cultural differences. I'm thinking about this since I just wandered across the website of an old friend of mine. Did I mention that I was in the Peace Corps in 1980-82 in Cameroon in West Africa.

Emmanuel, who I knew well back then, has emmigrated to the states and teaches cross cultural communications as well as some language work. He also has some games, one of which caught my eye: Yan-koloba the Game. And I quote:

Yan-koloba is a character education activity whose roots reach back in the cultures of Africa. It is an intellectual and highly participatory tool for character and multicultural education. Players learn the concepts of compassion, respect, tolerance, trust, responsibility, interdependence, leadership, in a fun and very relaxed and enjoyable environment.

The purpose of the game is for players to develop great concentration and move wooden blocks simultaneously, rhythmically and continuously to their neighbors within a closed circle, at a given speed while chanting the accompanying song. The game starts with each player holding a block in hand. The leader gives the signal to start the game, and calls players' names incorporating them into the song.

Check it out. And say hi to my kumbi....

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This post sponsored by Vocabulary Builder software.

Curriculum Mapping - Concept mapping

2008-03-19T07:29:00.000-06:00

Many school systems are involved in "curriculum mapping:. Quoting Heidi Hayes Jacobs, the guru of curriculum mapping and president of Curriculum Designers, Inc:

Curriculum mapping is a procedure for collecting and documenting the operational curriculum anchored in the actual school calendar. Each teacher in the building enters critical information about the basic elements of the operational curriculum—that is: what has actually been addressed via content, skills, and assessment.

I've seen schools and talked to teachers who found the curriculum mapping exercise, when they review what the students are learning in the previous years and what they are expected to know before going to the next year, to be a very fun and productive exercise. BTW - any time that you get teachers EXCITED about doing something that is related to administration and curriculum, it's really special! I think it's partially that they get to think holistically about their students' education, it's partially that they have a very focused way to discuss curriculum with their colleagues.

BUT, in all my experiences working curriculum, the problem of the underlying "language" remains. Are we talking about performance standards, learning outcomes, or benchmarks? Are we using our state standards as "primitive"? I for one, have found the state standards to often be confusing to work with.

I saw an interesting different approach this week. A company started looking at the high stake tests (FCAT and AP exams). They studied how children did on the practice tests. The results were then mapped back to mathematical concepts. A single question on a test could map back to several math concepts.

They build a database for each student of the right/wrong answers and which math concepts they map to. Then, for intervention, they build a list of the concepts which would be most useful in improving performance and teach. They start teaching on the concepts that would have the most impact on test results.

I'm now looking at the third grade math curriculum trying to figure out how I would map some little part of it, just getting my feet wet.

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6 out of 10 Americans Cannot Locate Payless

2008-03-17T06:15:00.001-06:00

(this post turned out to be a farce) woops

WASHINGTON—An alarming new study conducted by the Department of Education has found that 60 percent of all Americans are unable to locate the major retail outlet Payless Shoes when presented with an ordinary shopping-center map.
The study, which surveyed 200 consumers, has raised a number of troubling questions about the public's grasp of basic mall geography, its ability to identify key regional chains, and its awareness of the diverse brands and logos that make up today's world.

Dr. Howard Saunders decries the nation's lack of basic shopping-center knowledge.
"Not only did a majority of Americans fail to find Payless Shoes on the map, but, more disturbingly, many didn't even know which floor to look on," said Dr. Howard Saunders, a cultural studies professor and the study's lead researcher. "To see countless men and women point to the outline of a parking garage and call it the largest footwear retailer on earth—well, it makes you wonder about our priorities as a society."
Saunders, who stressed that knowing the location of various stores is one of the most relevant real-world skills Americans can possess, said he was deeply discouraged by the study's results. Of the 60 percent of participants who struggled to find Payless Shoes on the map, nearly 30 percent seemed to be guessing at random and 20 percent reportedly confused the shop with the similar-looking Foot Locker. Another 5 percent searched for assistance, but were unable to figure out how to get to a nearby information desk.
Even more shocking, Saunders said, was the inability of many Americans to pinpoint their own location, despite it being accompanied by a bright green star and the words "You Are Here."
"These results are far worse than we could have anticipated," continued Saunders. "It's almost as if these people had never traveled outside of a JCPenney before."
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who personally monitored the study, said that the United States ranked behind 130 other nations when it came to mall-map comprehension—an embarrassment considering one-third of the countries surveyed didn't even have shopping center

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Education should teach people how to live or how to make a living

2008-03-16T11:25:00.000-06:00

"Education should teach people how to live or how to make a living" said John Adams.

Roger Schank: "Our schools do neither. They teach how to pass tests about meaningless knowledge that never comes up in real life."

I would agree that today's curriculum and our understanding of what education is and how to go about it are way overdue. Of course, the current national debate has only to do with how testing and the whole NCLB method fit into today's model. Sigh.

As long as I'm here, I'll plug two a few of my more successful efforts.

Why do I blog?
Vocabulary Learning Resources
Expand Vocabulary
GRE Vocabulary
Increase Your Vocabulary
Power Words
Vocabulary Builder
Vocabulary Software

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News Stories to Study History with

2008-02-21T04:23:00.001-07:00

I read an article on a homeschool curricula blog and I'm intrigued. It takes a news story and discusses using it as a lesson play to teach with. I'm going to pick up on this and hopefully, build an entire website and educational effort around it. Anybody think this would be interesting? Of course, it's probably much more useful to homeschoolers than their standards-leadened school bound counterparts.

News story from earlier this week: Kosovo Breaks Away: Province declares itself sovereign; Serbia says it's illegal. Kosovo's regional parliament declared independence Sunday

Questions for discussion and research:

Has anything like this ever happened in American history? Two likely answers, the American Revolution and the Civil War.

The American Revolution was punctuated by a Declaration of Independence. Did Kosova issue a declaration of independence? If so, how did they justify their actions? In fact, lets revisit the US Declaration - What was it's purpose? How did we justify our acts? When the Confederacy declared it's independence, did it issue a declaration? What justification did it give?

Who in Kosova declared independence in terms of what organization? What claim do they have to speak for Kosova? In America, what organization did we have that declared independence and what claim did it have to speak for the colonies? And what organization was there in the Confederacy?

What do we think the Serbs will do? What did the British do when the US declared independence? What did the Union do when the Confederates declared independence? What will decide whether this will be called a War of Independence or a Civil War?

When Kosova declared independence, the US recognized them as a nation. Any idea why? The US recognition, is it important? Did anyone recognize the US as a nation after our July 1776 declaration? Why did they? How much and how did they help us (Answer; France recognized us and sent $s, generals, soldiers and support. Mostly to hurt their rival the UK). Did anybody recognize the South?

Anybody want to talk or research other efforts for independence? Anybody want to talk about the Kurds in Iraq? The Mexican war of independents? How about the Declaration of Independence by Texas (from Mexico).

This post brought to you by: online kids learning, where you get website info on reading comprehension, and math help, for home school.

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The Paradox of Proverbs

2008-02-17T07:32:00.001-07:00

I've long been fascinated with proverbs. Not just how they sound, which is comforting, but also by theparadox.

While proverbs are great at encapsulating a point of view, they are useless at providing guidance. In fact, worse than useless.

Proverbs are frequently used by people to justify really stupid decisions when they don't feel up to really thinking about it.

They're useless because there is contradictory folk wisdom for any point of view.

You want to move quickly without considering the implications and you justify it with:
"He who hesitates is lost" and Strike while the Iron is Hot".
Well, what about: Look before you leap.

A penny saved is a penny earned. You need to spend money to make it (OK, not as good an example but I'm in a hurry to get my run in).

The point that I want to make in my opus on proverbs has something to do with following your own internal compass, not the wisdom of others.

BTW, while you might have noted that my use of the word opus is self-mocking, this is a project that I've thought about for years. Be careful, with just a little support, I might pursue it. For instance, I just bought myself a pair of domains (proverbparadox.com and proverbsparadox.com). It was just 15 months ago that I dusted off another old project and created my spelling web site. My point is that I might just dive into it.

Readers. Please help. Can you come up with some pairs of proverbs that express opposing points of view? I'd appreciate the help.

I got into this today when I read a "just keep churning" story with some folk history supports it. Beth, the just keep churning lady, had a teaching story by Paramahansa Yoganandato to support her quest: to get a motivational call from Diane Sawyer (I'm not kidding!). Apparently, she has long idolized Diane and this would be meaningful to her.

My instinct was to remind her that a definition of insanity is to keep trying the same thing over and over and over again and expect different results. Perhaps, better goal setting would be a good exercise for her? For instance, motivational calls by Ed Mouse are amazingly effective and they come with a complementary coffee cup. Plus, they can be arranged quikcly so that she can get on with her life. Or, maybe, she should stick to her guns (note, all paradoxical proverbs contributions gratefully accepted but without any right to attribution, royalties, or other moral rights in my opus)

Education, learning, & homeschool
Here are three more educational directory sites that might benefit from a little goosing...Reading Comprehension is one of the major goals of education.We all need more help with math.And, while school seems like the place to learn and make friends, the homeschool world is fast showing how false that can be.there's also the big homeschool world website.

By simply listening, a mother helps her child learn

2008-02-13T07:45:00.000-07:00

This is so obvious (to me) that I'm amazed and pleased that somebody took the time to validate it. I also think that it's the tip of the iceberg (which I'll explain below) And I quote:

“We knew that children learn well with their moms or with a peer, but we did not know if that was because they were getting feedback and help,” Bethany Rittle-Johnson, the study’s lead author and assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of education and human development, said.

“In this study, we just had the children’s mothers listen, without providing any assistance. We’ve found that by simply listening, a mother helps her child learn.”....

Although the researchers used children and their mothers in the study, they believe the same results will hold true whether the person is the child’s father, grandparent, or other familiar person.

Personally, I believe that anytime somebody revisists some recently-learned materials and tries to express or explain it, they reinforce the learning and broaden their understanding (making new connections) as they strive to articulate it. This is, I believe, the basis behind book reports. If you think about and try to explain what you've read and what it meant, you will build your understanding of it.

The article continues: “The basic idea is that it is really effective to try to get kids to explain things themselves instead of just telling them the answer,” she said. “Explaining their reasoning, to a parent or perhaps to other people they know, will help them understand the problem and apply what they have learned to other situations.”
The research is currently in press at the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Rittle-Johnson, along with co-authors Megan Saylor, assistant professor of psychology, and recent graduate Kathryn Swygert, set out to determine if 4- and 5-year-olds learn more when they have to explain the solution to a problem to someone else. They were shown a series of plastic bugs, and then had to say which bug should come next in the series based on color and type of bug, a problem that is challenging for 4- and 5-year-olds. The children were told to explain the solution to their moms, to themselves or to simply repeat the answer out loud.

The researchers found that explaining the answer to themselves and to their moms improved the children’s ability to solve similar problems later, and that explaining the answer to their moms helped them solve more difficult problems.

“We saw that this simple act of listening by mom made a difference in the quality of the child’s explanations and how well they could solve more difficult problems later on,” Rittle-Johnson said.

The researchers also found that children experience the benefit of explaining a solution at an earlier age than previously thought.

“This is one of the first studies to examine whether or not explanation is useful in helping children under 8 apply what they’ve learned to a modification of a task,” Rittle-Johnson said. “We found that even 4-year-olds can use explanation to help them learn and to apply what they’ve learned to other tasks.”

I'd like to know more, I think I'll google Rittle-Johnson , Megan Saylor, and Kathryn Swygert. I think this might be one of the keys to why homeschoolers get such a great education. They talk about it.

How to Build a Homeschool Program for Your Child

2008-02-12T21:28:00.001-07:00

The Internet can dramatically improve education. Homeschoolers take full advantage of the educational use of the net. In the discussions about the growth of homeschooling, the impact of the Internet is often overlooked.

The general population of course, would be surprised that "those backward homeschoolers" are benefitting to a greater degree than their school-bound counterparts. But arguably, one of the root reasons that homeschooling is growing so fast is the role of the Internet in providing educational resources to homeschoolers, the simplified shopping, and the web-based homeschool communities and support groups.

“Kids like using the computer to learn and to develop their skills. Time4Learning's educational teaching games gives students independence as they progress at their own pace.” - Time4Learning

When starting to homeschool, many parents’ first instinct is to go shopping and to buy a year's worth of curriculum. This is one of the most common errors that new homeschooling parents make. When a parent begins homeschooling, they must first understand where their children are academically. We recommend that you start out with two weeks of working with and observing your child across all subjects while you consider your choices in terms of curriculum and programs. You could borrow textbooks from the library or purchase new or used books for this effort. Time4Learning is a simple low cost resource for this exploration period. After a few weeks, you are in a much better position to start making curriculum commitments.
Also, parents should get connected. Find some mentors and friends. Try to find some like-minded homeschooling families and ask them what they do and recommend. Try to find local families with whom you can share ideas and activities on an ongoing basis. Be aware that the homeschool world is a collection of many strong-minded people with a range of views. There will be plenty of people who have widely divergent views from yours. Expect to have to meet ten families to be sure to find two to three that you will consider "like-minded".

Use the net! The Internet provides an amazing ability to find people with similar situations. Are you looking for secular curriculum for children with reading difficulties but gifted in math? Are you looking for interactive curriculum appropriate for a Christian family or for attention deficit children with aspergers?

You can find collections of people with just a few hours searching on the net. On the Time4Learning homeschool forum, there are moms with decades of experience homeschooling, ready to answer questions on all sorts of topics. Discussions include questions like how to set up kid-safe email and how to blend Time4Learning with other curriculum.

Learning State Capitals

2008-02-08T06:04:00.000-07:00

I watched my daughter try to memorize all the states capitals last night and this morning for a test today. I remain annoyed at these efforts. Very stressful, time-consuming, and of unclear benefit to me. While it's fun to be able to rattle off (Maine-Augusta: Maryland-Annapolis) the names, I'm not convinced that it's worth the time and effort. While name recognition is pleasant, I feel that it's a hollow exercise. But it's an effort made by most schools and most students. When I was small, my brothers and Dad used to take great pleasure in learning them and firing them back and forth over breakfast (including mottos: The ShowMe State?)

American Colleges: Their Branding

2008-02-05T11:26:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows that MIT stands for brilliant engineering. Stanford represents the highest academic standards in a very tight symbiotic relationship with Silicon Valley. Harvard and Yale also have clear brands.

What about The University of Texas, the University of Oklahoma, Notre Dame, and lots of other schools? They are known for their football teams. They are not known for student fitness or a high level of excellence. They are known for their football teams and the general giddiness and celebration around their teams, the games, and their campuses. These are schools with a big Greek system. I mean fraternities.

I just spent a few days with a friend of mine who had been at a conference with some major university presidents, Fortune 200 Presidents, and public education people. One of the university presidents was particularly outspoken on why this country is over-reacting to the threat for leadership from China and India in the future. He had recently visited China and saw universities with shoddy construction and poor facilities which, compared to his well constructed campus, seemed lame.

I hear this and worry for tthe future. Our educational system is our future and the universities are dominated by a corrupt dysfunctional alliance with sports. With semiprofessional sports. I feel that these schools have sold their soul. In terms of the future, here's a simple summary.

Our big schools are about the prestige of big time sports, the associated parties and drinking, and the fraternity partying system. Our professors all know this and are very cynical as a result.

Their schools are about education, national competitiveness, and a chance to get ahead. We have frats, they don't. They'll win. And they deserve to.

Christian Homeschool

2008-01-29T09:26:00.000-07:00

Many Christian parents who are just beginning to homeschool start out seeking a curriculum that not only meets their learning needs but one that also fits in with their Christian beliefs. As time goes by many of those parents find that their homeschool curriculum is really good at one... or the other... but not both.

As Kerry from North Carolina says in her article about Homeschooling as a Christian "We are Christians, but aren’t really homeschooling for religious reasons..." and I suspect the difficulty finding curriculum to handle both concepts may have had a hand in making that decision. Either the religious content is first priority and the educational content suffers or vice-versa.

Religion is personal. Your education is something you will show to everyone you ever come in contact with. When it comes to homeschool curriculum and religion, I see them as completely different animals who should be contained in two separate cages for the sake of the trainers (parents) and the audience (students).

Educational Reform - Higher Education Thoughts

2007-12-30T06:04:00.000-07:00

While my eldest is just in 8th grade, I have alot of friends whose children (and families) are going thru the ordeal of applying to and selecting a college.

I'm struck by the fact that while elementary and primary school education are in a period of wild-change, I'm unaware of any dramatic re-engineering that is going on at the college level.

For primary and secondary education, the great waves are:

A major new vote with their feet by 4% of the population to homeschooling
An attempt from above to control and impose rigor by No Child Left Behind
An attempt to privatize with school vouchers and school choice
A massive investment by parents in supplementary education materials and services
Much attempts to move to magnet schools, centers of excellence, and other choices within the system and away from the large high schools which supposedly provided resources for everyone (but turned into a scary environment for everyone)

At the college level however, it seems to be business as usual. Anyone who lives near a large state university campus can tell you that education appears to be the last thing on most students' minds. The professors all know that undergraduate education is the last thing on their mind as they compete to publish and for perks. But the budgets of so many families and states are built around providing four year access to these institutions of "higher learning". In the case of most schools, this expression is a joke.

Shouldn't this be on the agenda? Any politicians want to step up to the plate?

Kumon

2007-12-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

I just read an old article about Brian's experience working at a Kumon center: "Educating Ali". Basically, while inside the Kumon machine, he found a child who needed a little focused one-on-one attention and gave it to him.

I think it makes the basic point that with a little special help, many children's education can be greatly improved.

It struck a different cord with me. It was while sitting in a Kumon Center that I decided to launch myself as an entrepreneur. I was there with my 6 year old son and was very impressed by how crowded the waiting room was. Parents were lining up in droves for Kumon. I looked Kumon up in the almanac and found it was the single largest franchise in the US (in terms of number of centers).

A Kumon Jr. session for my son consisted of him sitting at a low table with 3-4 other kids and filling out simple worksheets while a para-professional watched and encouraged them. Then, the kids were given a large number of worksheets to fill out at home with the parents during the week along with a reading book.

For this, we were paying $250/month. There was nothing magic about the worksheets. They looked identical to the free ones on the net or the ones that you can get in a 200 page book for $4.99 at a discount store.

I asked myself why were all these parents paying so much for so simple a product. After considering a few possibilities (we were all dumb...?), I concluded that the answer was that it's not the worksheets per se, it's the fact that the kids get the right worksheet at the right time along with a motivational system that makes it valuable and effective. It was when I realized that and I looked at all these parents lining up for help. And I thought about all that driving and parking and followup by us parents at home that I decided to make the plunge and start Time4Learning.com.

For a little more info on the Kumon philosophy, here's a quote from Brian's blog...

Regular school maths usually seems to involve the children working through only a few rather hard problems. Kumon makes them do many more much easier ones. Instead of hoping that they get, say, about half to two thirds of their stuff right, Kumon says they must get nearly everything right. At the heart of the Kumon method is the difference between a child painfully working out that seven plus six equals, er, thirteen? (anxious glance at face of teacher), and knowing with real certainty that seven plus six equals thirteen, with no doubts or hesitations. The usual educational emphasis is on "understanding". The Kumon literature talks of "mastery".
Each child does a clutch of sums selected for him or her personally (there is no everyone-in-the-class-does-the-same-stuff rule) each day, which are supposed to take about twenty minutes to complete.

Or, as Time4Learning.com puts in (quoting from a page comparing Time4Learning & Kumon)

It provides a service for children and parents alike, based on the philosophy of repetition and self-motivated learning. This after-school program works primarily toward enrichment and a mastery of the basics through a standardized approach of workbook completion. The Kumon workbooks consist of several pages of sequential math or reading content. Students complete one workbook while at the Kumon Center. In addition, students are required to complete a workbook at home each day they are not in attendance (including weekends). Workbooks range from two pages a day to twenty pages a day, requiring a degree of parental supervision.

2007-11-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

I watched a family member a few years ago, spend an hour per week in speech therapy. He was young - 6 years old - but his language skills were developing properly. We all noticed that his speech was hard to understand. Once he was tested, his vocabulary (understood and spoken) turned out to be small.

In therapy, there was a long series of exercises with his mouth and tongue to build muscles and habits to improve his enunciation. There were alot of flash cards and exercises to build his vocabulary.

It was all very pricey and, since the problems went away, we were pleased with the results. I was struck at the time by how technology-void the therapy was.

I've just seen an article which points out that some of the free online word games provide the type of therapy that many families pay for. Take a look at the article on games for word retrieval therapy.

Computers for Learning for Everyone

2007-11-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

At Time4Learning, our mouse says: "It's Time 4 Learning. And Fun!". At times, we like to add : "For Everyone!".

If only this were true. Usually, we think of inclusiveness in terms of how our program works for special needs learning.

This thanksgiving week, we gave a thought to those who don't have access to computers and are on the wrong side of the digital divide.

We donated to Nick Negaponte's One Laptop one child...

Thank you for participating in the One Laptop per Child "Give One Get One" program. Your donation of $399.00 will bring education and enlightenment to children of the developing world. $200 of each $399 "Give One Get One" Donation is tax-deductible (your donation minus the fair market value of each laptop you receive). With Shipping and Handling, the total charge to your credit card is $423.95.

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