Here are a few links and resources I found for friends on the All Kinds of Learners list:

For a kid’s book and kit to build 20 electronic projects with the same type of chips used inside a computer and learn how a computer works, check out “Fun With Computer Electronics” by Luann Colombo. 

Books for kids:

The Internet (First Books – Science Series) by Kerry Cochrane

Home Page: An Introduction to Web Page Design (First Book) by Christopher Lampton

The Internet for Kids (True Books: Computers) by Charnan Kazunas

Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners 

   

To download Computer Systems: Gateways To Cyberspace and more advanced books in the “Professor and Pat” series, go to https://mathrider.dev.java.net/alm-process/2-ebooks/Programming%20newbies%20series/

 

A Google search for “Technology Skills Checklist” or “Technology Skills” will give you many pdf files that can serve as guidelines for different ages on learning to use computers.

  

For learning to use the computer see:

http://www.ctdlc.org/remediation/ 

http://www.bcot1.com/

http://spclc.themlc.org/curriculum.html 

http://tech.tln.lib.mi.us/tutor/welcome.htm 

http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/ctla/basic_skills/basic_skills.shtml 

http://www.ehow.com/topic_733_basic-computer-skills.html 

http://www.webjunction.org/220

etc.

 

for videos:

http://www.ehow.com/videos-on_5682_learn-basic-computer-skills.html 

 

I like this quote from Computer Systems: Gateways To Cyberspace:

“One summer afternoon Teacher and I were installing a sonar system on a boat at the lake. “Teacher,” I said “What is the secret to effective learning?” Teacher looked at me, cocked an eyebrow, paused and then grabbed me by the back of the neck and pushed my head under the water. Teacher’s reaction surprised me so much that I did not have time to take a deep breath before hitting the water and I was soon struggling. Teacher finally pulled me up and, after I had recovered somewhat, asked me what the thing I wanted most was when I was under the water. “Air!” I replied, “The only thing I wanted was Air!” Teacher then said “In order for your learning to be effective, you must want to learn the thing you are learning as much as you wanted air when your head was under the water. That which is learned without desire is soon forgotten. That which is learned with great desire, however, is knowledge that will be remembered forever.” (A modification of an old parable). Computer Technologists Must Be Motivated Self-Learners”

Well, at least 3 or 4 kind folks have responded. She is getting close to having the $175.00 she needs to make the reduced payment for gas so they can keep their heat on. She says she will worry about the rest later. Hubby’s doctor has told him to take temporary disability leave until they figure out what is going on and she increased his meds. Someone stopped by and left some puzzles for the 3 kids to play with, so that boosted their spirits a bit. Mom is hanging on. She says, “I so appreciate everyone helping the way they have. I never expected that at all. Just prayers. I am very grateful to everyone helping me, my 3 children and my husband so much.”

But all the agencies she has been in touch with are either out of funds or send her somewhere else. The new baby is due in about a month and this is hard on her.

Here is her latest update:

“Hello. Thank you everyone who is continuing to pray. We really need it.

He [hubby] has had several episodes. I don’t know if they all are petit seizures or if something else is at play. None are the same. All make me very nervous. I almost past out late last night when he had one. My nerves over took me and I felt very weak. Shook uncontrollably. I miss him. I miss having conversations with him. I miss how smart he is. I am just very sad.

My heart is broken.

Yesterday I saw my obgyn. I explained everything to her. She asked if I wanted antidepressants. I turned them down for now. She said I could change my mind and call her. I only have a month to go until baby arrives. I was trying to be strong but things are getting to me. The sicker he gets. I have no one to come help so I can rest without worry.

This is suppose to be a happy time and it isn’t. We should be planning the baby’s arrival. Instead I am dealing with so much stress. Sorry to complain. I am not trying to. I just feel as if I am breaking down. He is so different then he was 3 weeks ago.

The gas co. once a year will take 175.00. So, I am asking to use my chance now. The balance goes on to the next payment though. So, I fear that. Don’t know yet when they will send the next bill. Praying it isn’t for a while. I have over half of it. But I fear I will be too late. I believe tomorrow is the shut off date.

That is the most important bill. Then I have mortgage to catch up and the van to get fixed before baby comes, the garage door is still broken and our refrigerator is not working. We have a old one in garage but it is so cold, even with refrig. turned down, that everything keeps freezing. It just keeps piling up.

Yesterday the kids received homemade cards from a ladies two girls. Very sweet. The kids all loved getting them. Sadly there was no return address so they can’t make some back. Which they would have loved to do. I really appreciate people thinking to cheer the kids up. I am afraid I probably don’t do so well right now.

Thank you all for caring to read the updates. And for praying or holding good thoughts.

One day I hope to have good news and not be such a downer.

God bless you all and enjoy the happy moments in your families.”

This is a real situation, not a scam! My husband had a friend of his who lives near her check on the family and try to fix the garage door. Unfortunately, it is an old and unusual type and he was unable to fix it. If you can spare a few bucks, it would really mean a lot to them. We gave them some, but can’t do it all. See the post below for PayPal instructions and link. The money goes directly to her, not through me. I feel awful about the terrible situation in Haiti, but there are people suffering right here in the US who can be helped tremendously with far less money. If you want to have direct and meaningful impact on 5+ lives without some agency getting a cut, please help her!

I have never done this before, but this case is special and urgent. Homeschoolers tend to stick together and help each other out. I am hoping that in these tough times some of you will care enough and be able to help a deserving family.

There is a homeschool mom with three children and one on the way in 4-5 weeks who really needs some financial assistance. Her hubby has been having seizures due to an accident, and is unable to work. Since he got home from the hospital, he has continued to show signs of problems and must rest a lot. With a little financial help, she recently paid the phone bill so she can at least call for help as needed, but they have no money to pay electricity or car insurance, or anything else.  She is trying to sell what jewellry she has and is contacting agencies, but in the meantime she is broke, worried and in immediate need. The garage door broke and the tiny, recently purchased used car has no heat or defrost. She can hardly see to drive. Meanwhile, she continues to try to homeschool her kids and care for everything pretty much on her own. For the sake of the children, she has agreed to let me post this here.

A few dollars would mean a great deal to this family. If you can possibly donate even a little, it would help tremendously. Please go to PayPal and enter mamamillsof2@aol.com in the ” to” box, put in your PayPal ID, then click on “personal.”  There is no fee to send money from your existing PayPal funds or personal bank account. There is a very small fee for sending money from credit card, or she will have to pay it if you don’t. The money will go directly into her PayPal account and she can transfer it to her bank account to pay the bills. She promises to “pay it forward.” as soon as she is able.

I will try to keep you updated and thank you for any help you can see your way to give.

My 9 year old has a hard time getting excited about learning spelling or math, but you hand him some electrical components and you’d better get out of his way! He hates getting books for Christmas. I guess because we have a houseful already and he associates them with everyday life, or at least homeschool. But he got a couple of electronics books with kits this year that really pleased him.

He will talk for hours about spur of the moment robotic inventions and can tell you all about electronics components and schematics. So, I figure this is a passion that should be encouraged and fed. I am also hoping that he will learn higher math more easily and willingly when he sees he needs it for electronics. I have been searching the Internet for resources to help him learn. The problem is that once you are past simple circuits, there isn’t much geared to a boy his age that is both interesting and understandable and doesn’t use too much math.

I recently stumbled across http://makezine.com which is a great website for builder-types of all ages, and I subscribed to their free podcast as well as getting Dana a subscription to their magazine. Then they notified me about a fabulous book for learning electronics. “Make: Electronics –Learning by Discovery,” by Charles Platt is going to be Dana’s next textbook for science, just as soon as we finish “Real Science-4-Kids Physics Level I”. “Make: Electronics” teaches in a fun, hands-on way. As the back cover says, “You’ll build the circuits first, then learn the theory behind them.”  I love this book! You can find the book on their website or on Amazon.com. Better yet, you can download a free large portion of the book at: http://cdn.makezine.com/make/Make_Electronics_Excerpt_1.pdf

If you want more, check out the free downloadable article  “Teaching Some Basic Concepts of Electricity” by Laura Spoerri for the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. These lessons are designed to teach a few basic concepts of electricity to middle school students with experimentation, demonstrations, analogies, discussion, work sheets and vocabulary review. Handouts and a materials list are included.

If you go to http://www.tryengineering.org you can find “Get Connected With Ohm’s Law”, a lesson for ages 10-18

Then for high school age, there is “Electricity Visualized: The CASTLE Project,”  by Dr. Melvin S. Steinberg. CASTLE stands for “Capacitor-Aided System for Teaching and Learning Electricity.” It was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Dept. of Education National Diffusion Network. This course is a part of the New York State Regents Physics Core Curriculum. The student manual WAS free to download. There is a teacher guide, but I am still trying to get that. (Apparently the original paper has just dissapeared from the internet. It appears that Pasco has obtained rights to change/update it and include it in a kit with supplies which they sell for around $79.00. Since the original student curriculum was funded with federal money and specifically states that it is free and can be duplicated, I have placed links here for you to download the student  files. Go to the bottom of this post for links.)

For more advanced high school or beginning college/technical school level, go to: http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/ for a free series of six big textbooks on the subjects of electricity and electronics, revised in 2009, by an instructor who was not satisfied with available textbooks. He encourages full free printing and use (including revision).

To cap this off, here is a great free computer program. For hands-on computer learning for the visual learner who likes to try stuff to see if it works, I recommend that you download Yenka at http://www.yenka.com/en/Free_Yenka_home_licences/  Yenka is a powerful piece of software for learning, which lets you use – and edit – an ever-growing library of free lessons for mathematics, science, technology and computing. It is used in schools, but they specifically encourage homeschoolers to download it for free, as long as you will not use it in a classroom (co-op) setting, etc. My boy tried working with the lessons on circuits already and certainly knew more than I did about the circuits and about how to use the program. Once we exploded a light bulb and it was fun – with no danger or mess to clean up.

Also, check out WatchKnow videos on electricity. And for knowledgeable comments and suggested teaching resources, click here.

Electricity Visualized, The CASTLE Project (Capacitor-Aided System for Teaching and Learning Electricity) Student curriculum. To download the pdf files, right click on each file name.

Intro.Student.09     Section.1.Student.09    Section.2.Student.09    Section.3.Student.09    Section.4.Student.09    Section.5.Student.09    Section.6.Student.09    Section.7.Student.09   Section.8.Student.09    Section.9.Student.09    Section.10.Student.09    Section.11.Student.09

Pages can be paused and individual photos can be enlarged and then reduced if you click on them. Be sure to watch the funny video at the end of our dog chasing a Weazel Ball.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Spelling phrases with Algodoo

 The other day it was time for Dana to write some dictated phrases for spelling (and handwriting), but all he wanted to do was work on Algodoo, (his engineering/physics program that I have mentioned several times). Then he suggested that he use the “brush” in Algodoo to write his phrases on the computer screen, so I agreed. He certainly had more fun writing his spelling work and the letters were each in a different color. There were no lines, so they aren’t perfectly even, but we did work on things like writing an h that doesn’t look like an n, and proper spaces between words and he was able to easily correct mistakes. Well, he corrected some letter writing mistakes. I didn’t want to find too many things to be corrected, and using a computer mouse is not exactly the same as using a pencil. It was certainly an interesting way to do spelling and writing! Once he took a short-cut and “mirrored” a letter b to make a d and moved it to the right place, so I know he has no problem with incorrect letter reversals. His spelling and handwriting skills are far below his other abilities and knowledge, so I was happy to encourage a fun way for him to practice. 

Talk about creative homeschooling approaches for the right-brained learner!

Why is there so much controversy over what is taught in our public schools? A recent Google search for “textbook controversy” yielded 2,040,000 entries, and a search for “curriculum controversy” found 2,080,000. 

Currently there is controversy in California (again). This time it is not over which approach should be used to teach math, nor is it about how Hindu history is taught, both having apparently worn themselves out. This time it is over a second grade library book about two real male Chinstrap penguins that, like many other male penguins have done, hatched and raised a young penguin. On Amazon.com, this book has an overall reader rating of 4 out of 5 stars, with 77 ratings of 5, 16 ratings of 1, and 25 in between.

 “And Tango Makes Three,” by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, does have the zookeeper state that “They must be in love.” And that’s where all the trouble starts. Some parents are upset that this book is included in reading material used in the mandatory curriculum designed to teach children concerning bullying, respect, and acceptance, including awareness and acceptance of alternate lifestyles. Having three people who are very dear to me who fit into the community of LGBT, I am very much in favor of anything that might help reduce the horrible abuse they are subject to, but I have many friends whom I respect in many ways, who do not agree.

A short while ago the news was full of the never-ending battle over the teaching of evolution in science and attempts to at least add creationism to the science curriculum. I won’t go there.

Various special interest groups continuously advocate that more or better or no information about one topic or another should be taught. To find out what is wrong with American history textbooks, I heartily recommend that you read, “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” by James W. Loewen. 

In the article “The Textbook Controversy,” Charles Cummins, recognizing the ever-changing face of history as it is taught, wrote,” In order to understand the debate over the portrayal of history in textbooks, one must first be clear on the influence of education, textbooks, history, and politics over nationalism…Bringing ‘official’ interpretations of the past to the student, ‘textbooks typically function as nationalist primers that selectively highlight elements of the past to limn an ‘official’ story and etch the lineages and myths of contemporary patriotism.’”

This controversy has been going on for a very long time, probably since the first public schools were built. Although, perhaps there was a time when citizens more readily accepted that the government knew what was best for them.

The reasons for controversy over curricula or books used in schools fall into several categories. The texts may have too much or too little “political correctness”: they may be perceived to be in conflict with certain religious beliefs; they may be politically or ideologically slanted (in history, nearly always, to some degree), or they may be factually incorrect. Ironically factually incorrect texts stir up relatively little complaint. Perhaps it is hard to get passionate about teaching facts correctly. Occasionally, the question is actually about what is the best way to teach the subject to students. I have never heard of much public controversy over what is the best way to teach to students with different learning needs, though, unfortunately.

Texts or teachings that are considered discriminatory may overlap several of the above. Differing beliefs, philosophies and views of scholars, the government, society at large, various different religious and special interest groups can trigger debate. 

Critic and poet Matthew Arnold in 1864 called for “disinterestedness,” or objectivity, in the search to “know the best that is known and thought in the world.” Unfortunately this may be impossible. As Jane Austen wrote,”Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.”

So, is controversy over what is taught in schools a bad thing? I would say it is not. While it may be tiresome at times, and costly, it does bring errors to light, make people aware of different points of view and make the public more aware of what is being taught in schools. Unfortunately, even when a democratic process is followed (or maybe because a democratic process is used), authoritative scholars and others are called in, or laws are invoked; there is no guarantee that the right decision will be made. Hopefully, logic will prevail, but it is not likely that the final decision will stand as eternal truth. And it will never be accepted by all.

My biggest concern is that students are not allowed to learn about and from the controversy as a part of their education. Textbooks, teachers and parents generally assure them that “all things are for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds,” so you really don’t need to think about it. In fact, if you just memorize what we tell you, you won’t have to think at all.

Of course, homeschoolers get to choose their own sources of information according to their own personal biases, and we all have them. The problem is that we often do this based on one or two limited criteria, and may end up unknowingly choosing pap or sadly inaccurate materials. When you throw in the fact that we try to choose material presented with just the right approach for the specific needs of our little learners, it gets even more complicated. Fortunately, we can supplement in any way we choose, to fill in the gaps. However, it is quite a challenge. That’s one reason why so many homeschoolers end up living in a library they call home.

How textbooks are written and published is a whole other depressing story.

On my “technology” page I told you about the free physics-based program called “Phun.” Dana has had so much fun with “Phun” and created some amazing stuff, so when he found out they had a “new and improved” commercial version, I finally broke down and bought it for him. It seems the physics graduate student who created “Phun” went to work in his advisor’s company to produce a marketable version called “Algodoo.” It has some new capabilities and has fired up Dana’s engineering creativity again. He has built numerous versions of elevators and vehicles that pick up, haul, and dump stuff. Now he is working on new versions of pumps using three-tooth gears instead of the vanes shown in the one on the “Technology” page. He says they pump more efficiently. First he made the “water” black and said it was ink. Now he is working on making variations of hot chocolate pumps. I understand that the next addition will be a spout to fill a cup from the reservoir. He has also created a water powered vehicle.

 

The self-directed discovery learning, problem solving and creativity encouraged by this program makes it a worthwhile investment for him. As he gets older, I expect the projects will become increasingly complex and probably have more direct relationship with the real world. But the fantasy creations also must work using the same principles and limitations (unless deliberately set differently) as real-life objects. So the basic knowledge gained through direct manipulation will carry over.

For more ideas, there are many, many free “phunlets” which can be downloaded to the program and used as-is or manipulated to suit. There is really nothing quite like it for the budding engineer type kid (or adult) who loves to invent and fool around building and experimenting with no mess or danger, and no cost for materials.

Dana has started taking Kenpo Karate lessons once a week. The instructor and his school were recommended by several people in our community, including his counselor. But why Karate?

Many authorities on parenting and teaching children on the autism spectrum highly recommend martial arts as beneficial in many ways. The classes help fill the needs of these children in three areas: meeting the preferred style and method of instruction; teaching social skills and character development; and providing beneficial exercise that promotes improved coordination.

 The structured regimen and clear moves learned by imitation of visual repetition, along with clear class behavior expectations are ideal for them. Tangible and visual recognition of achievement is provided through the levels of colored belts. Self control/self discipline is emphasized and expected.

According to William Stillman, in “The Everything Parent’s Guide to Children With Asperger’s Syndrome,” martial arts instruction “promotes making slow, deliberate, and methodical brain-body connections in order to be conscious of how all parts of one’s body move and relate to one another.”

Also, according to one source, there is evidence that a workout that builds up a sweat can help their ability to stay organized and focused for the rest of the day. This can also be attained (as can many of the benefits listed above) through other non competitive activities, including swimming, which is a favorite with my boy. Swimming or playing in the water also provides sensations of buoyancy, overall pressure and solitude.

Dana is already beginning to improve his ability to focus attention, show respect, maintain self control, and have self confidence. It is also helping him develop better balance, muscular control and how to focus his energy. Most importantly, he likes it and is very proud of himself. After one difficult day of homeschooling, I reminded him how extremely well he had done on the day of his karate lesson. He said, “Well, if I had karate every day, I would have great days every day.”