Prestwick House Free English Lessons

We are all about free around here – as that is the hallmark of 21st century homeschooling. It doesn’t have to cost much anymore. But at the same time, we want to troll through all the options and find you not only free but quality materials available online.

That’s what you will find at Prestwick House — monthly free English lessons to download and use with your high schoolers. Here’s a link to a list of all that are currently available:

http://www.prestwickhouse.com/articles.aspx?id=5

 

Also, browse around the site, and you will find a generous supply of sample pages from their publications that can be used in your English program,too.

WatchKnow Organizing the Web’s Educational Videos

Here’s a site to bookmark:

http://watchknow.org

This organization, headed by Wikipedia’s co-founder Larry Sanger, is creating a compendium of educational videos on the Web. Right now they are beta testing, but they already have an impressive collection of videos to watch. What WatchKnow is bringing to the party is an excellent organizational system that will allow students to find helpful videos on the precise topic they need.

Free American Literature Course Guide

At www.America.gov you will find some great e-books to use as an outline for a high school course of study or as an actual text in the class. Here’s an excellent 180 pp. overview of American literature that can serve as a guide for a course of that name.

http://www.america.gov/publications/books/outline-of-american-literature.html

Does growing up in the country improve learning?

Here’s an interesting finding: City life decreases emotional control and cognitive capacity. Does this context, in part, explain why children growing up in our urban core lag behind their middle class peers? And what does the net effect of less time spent outside by school age children predict for the future?

Homeschooling families can offset this trend by making the most of green spaces near at hand ( if not an actual backyard, then a city park) and allowing plenty of time for recess.

Academic Earth

Here’s a site to bookmark and peruse. I’ve been surveying the open content available on the Web for homeschoolers and just this morning I thought, “I wish there was a site where users were rating these lectures so I didn’t have to spend so much time trying to find the best ones.” Well, if you can think of something that ought to exist on the Net, then it probably already does. A recommendation on the Yahoo Groups:homeschool2college granted my wish: Academic Earth is the site which consolidates many of the open content lectures scholars are making available free of charge. Registered users can grade the lectures. Top ranked courses and lectures appear on the home page.

www.academicearth.org

Greetings from Budapest

I’m currently spending some time with Share Educational Services, based in Budapest, Hungary.  I’m learning so much about the challenges of educating kids abroad.  It’s fascinating to find out how missionaries and expatriates network with each other and come up with solutions on the fly for meeting their kids needs.  Homeschooling is growing internationally, but so are attempts to squelch this option in Europe.  There is an opportunity here ( and a great need) for homeschoolers in the States to consider helping organizations like Share provide services and resources to families living in very remote regions of the world.  If you’d like to look into what Share is doing, then check out their website: shareeducation.org

I will keep you post on what I’m doing.  Sunday I head to Greece for a conference there.  Tomorrow, I get a walking tour of Budapest.  Love having built in tour guides where ever I travel.

How to download videos to your computer

YouTube and other Internet sites have tons of content you might want to use in your homeschooling, but, frequently the surrounding content is offensive. So, here’s what to do — download those video clips to your computer and keep them on hand for later use. Don’t want to load up your hard drive with these large files? Then, keep an external hard drive close at hand ( I carry one in my purse.

Here’s a link to a blog I follow with the instructions for downloading these files and even changing the format:
http://www.lytebyte.com/2007/04/24/how-to-download-video-not-just-from-youtube/

The World Your Kids Are Entering

21st Century Homeschooling

Here are the handouts from my workshops at FPEA this past weekend.

 

http://groups.google.com/group/debrabell?lnk=iggc

Welcome

This past weekend I had the opportunity to speak at the FPEA conference in Orlando, FL.  Here’s the YouTube clip I showed during my session on 21st Century Homeschooling.