The Home Education Blog Blog

We found this to be spot-on:

5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do

HT: The New Unschooler

ParentalTech alerts us to the existence of Open Culture, where Dan Coleman (Director & Associate Dean of Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program) and Ed Finn (graduate student in Stanford’s Department of English) catalog and write about:

cultural and educational media (podcasts, videos, online courses, etc.) that’s freely available on the web, and that makes learning dynamic, productive, and fun. We sift through all the media, highlight the good and jettison the bad, and centralize it in one place.

A mere couple of examples of the sort of content Open Culture provides:

10 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube
Links to intellectual/educational content on YouTube, including academic programming from UC Berkeley, Nobel Prize lectures, TED Talks, and more.

Online Courses
Includes list of 75+ lectures downloadable as Podcasts.

Deborah Markus, editor and publisher of Secular Homeschooling Magazine and creator of The Bitter Homeschooler’s Wish List, is thinking about printing up Wish List posters. She wonders which would work better: the full, original text or a pared-down version?

Because (contrary to what the babblings of various interested parties and their strange bed partners might lead one to believe) homeschoolers really don’t all think with one brain.

Really.

Homeschoolers For … 

Speaking of The Way Life Works, I am so kicking myself for not thinking until too late of donating a case of them to the TOS/HSB homeschool blog awards. It would make a great homeschooling blog award prize, because I just know the average nominee over there would enjoy it every bit as much as my family would enjoy, say, that book about the Grand Canyon, or, gosh, practically any of that stuff from Vision Forum.

Oh well, there’s always next year, right? Plenty o’ time ’til then to think up a whole bunch of terrific, family-friendly prizes to donate!

Got any suggestions?

Update: Turns out it wasn’t quite too late on their end, but I decided it was too late on our end, at least for impulsiveness on that kind of scale. Barring unforeseen circumstances (at either end), will be percolating something along these lines for next year.

I’d like to tell you about a biology book we’ve been especially pleased with, called The Way Life Works: The Science Lover’s Illustrated Guide to How Life Grows, Develops, Reproduces, and Gets Along.

It’s the product of a collaboration between molecular biologist Mahlon Hoagland (best known as the co-discoverer of transfer RNA) and illustrator Bert Dodson, and arose out of their “shared fascination with the unity of life.”

I have a low tolerance and set a high bar for cartoon-style illustration. I find that Mr. Dodson’s wonderful illustrations stay well this side of annoying and are the perfect accompaniment to Dr. Hoagland’s lively text. The result is an introductory biology book that is enjoyable and accessible for learners of all ages.

(There is also a textbook edition designed for use in schools, titled Exploring the Way Life Works: The Science of Biology. That edition appears to have the text and illustrations of the original with the addition of end-of-the-chapter questions and what strike me as somewhat textbookish photographs. (I prefer the visual consistency of the original, and we happily find other sources of photographic imagery for further exploration of the topics.) What I like so much about the edition we have — and part of its approachability and appeal, in my opinion — is that it doesn’t come across at all like a textbook, but if that’s what you’re looking for, this would be one to check out.)

Added 12/14/07: I only just now noticed the price on the textbook version, which it turns out goes for quite a bit more than the original version (but note that used copies are readily available for considerably less than the price of a new copy). So then I looked at the number of pages, and found that the textbook edition is half again as long as the original. Additional material that I found on the publisher’s website suggests that the additional pages comprise the chapter questions and the additional photography, plus some sidebar-style material. I’ve ordered a used copy of the textbook version and will post an further update after I’ve received it and have had a chance to review it. 

Tammy Takahashi writes:

MIT has had its college level open courseware available for a while. Now, they are introducing a new set of online self-paced courses for the high schooler, or adults who would like to brush up on high-school level material.

We’ve added both to our Resources link list.

Tammy Takahashi has going a Why Do You Homeschool? poll that’s a major improvement over the usual.

She’ll soon find herself freed up for more toe-picking and photograph-taking if this becomes a trend.

The always-eloquent Carlotta at Dare to Know apprises us:

The argument from the DCSF seems to be that because home educated children are not necessarily seen regularly by statutory services, that they are therefore necessarily at risk.

…

Is this the future for home educating families everywhere in England? It would seem a little unfair when you consider that the only statutory service that school children necessarily come across is their school. The idea here is presumably that teachers will reliably be able to spot abuse.

…

Perhaps social work departments shouldn’t just be picking on HE families. Perhaps they should go knocking on the doors of every family in England.

That it could one day come to that doesn’t seem much of a stretch.

If you’re curious to learn more about home education and children’s rights (not to mention civil and privacy rights) in the UK, the Dare to Know archives would be an excellent place to start.