Techie Homeschoolers

My daughter enjoys her Didj.

A Didj is just a little handheld made by LeapFrog.

There aren’t too many game modules that I approve of (Hannah Montana, etc.), but she only has one game that she plays and it helps her with spelling skills:  Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Woodland Hills.

There is also the CD ROM that goes with it, which allows you to access the game downloads for extras and connect to the LeapFrog Learning Path.  You can customize your learning for each game and create your own Didji characters.

Mostly, my daughter uses the handheld without the software, just for the Nancy Drew spelling game.

I like that the Didj comes with a port for headsets (because the music can be a bit loud).  I don’t like, though, that the battery life of this system doesn’t last long.  The Didj eats through batteries FAST!  It requires I think four AA batteries, and when she plays it for about 45 minutes to an hour, four days straight, the batteries are depleted.  It can get pretty expensive replacing batteries once a week.  That’s why we love the Dollar Store (and probably also why our batteries don’t last as long anymore!)

Anyway, check out the Didj system here at their website, and for educational purposes, look underneath the “Skills” option to choose between Math, Science, Language and Literacy and Learning For Life.

Tags: didj, educational gadgets, educational software, leapfrog

For all of you online homeschoolers (and those of you who love to  use free internet sites to help your kids with schoolwork), here is a great site to help specifically with mathematics skills:

Chicago Gear Up Alliance

Here’s what the site says about their vision for improving mathematics in the community:

COUNTDOWN is a challenging interactive television math program which has engaged tens of thousands of students through broadcasts on cable television in Chicago. Capitalizing on the one on one relationship a student viewer has with television, COUNTDOWN makes math “work”. Each week the program introduces a different math concept through direct instruction and reinforces lessons with literature, manipulatives, activities and related computer instruction. Student viewers are encouraged to call a televised phone number to participate in the show by responding to challenges presented by the on-air educators.

More than three hundred different COUNTDOWN programs have been broadcast exploring topics many elementary students might not see in their classrooms such as logic, perimeter, area, probability, graphing, congruence, integers and much more. Focusing frequently on “under taught” concepts, COUNTDOWN shifts the target age for its audience from season to season to maximize the program’s reach. COUNTDOWN also seasonally adjusts curriculum to incorporate specific instruction students need to sharpen test taking skills.

The interactive component of COUNTDOWN’s broadcast allows active student viewers to respond to math challenges without the distraction and pressure of fellow classmates but with the benefit of parental involvement at home.(A non confrontational parent tutoring is an added benefit of each COUNTDOWN broadcast.) COUNTDOWN’s call-in format also allows physically challenged students to participate more equitably than is often the case in a classroom.

This site helps with mathematics skills and has tons of videos taught by Dr. Diane Schiller of Loyola University (and her colleagues).

I have already begun using the multiplication videos for my third grader who seems to be understanding the concepts better.

Tags: math

You may want to check out this site for some of your older teens who like to stay organized – Toodledo.com

I wouldn’t rate it MUCh better than your MS Office task manager, but it is free and it offers the following:

• sharing
• scheduler
• goals
• files
• notebook
• history
• booklet
• forums

Here are some of the connections this software can work in sync with:

• Connections to Iphone/Ipad/Ipod Touch
• Email import/export
• Twitter
• Mobile PHones
• Google Gadgets
• Firefox add-ons…

It is fairly simple to use, although when I signed up for an account it took me a while to hunt and find the “add new task” button.

It is very, very basic, though, for a task manager, and is just the nuts and bolts (unless you upgrade), and even then, you are looking at a pretty basic screen (white background, blue text, with a couple of tabs).  If I could recommend anything to this company it would be for them to snazz it up a little and make Toodledo more fun and interesting to work with.  Also if they could add the collaboration and sharing option for free (since most web 2.0 users are accustomed to free widgets and embeds), that would be a real plus for them.

But if you are trying to teach your teens to manage their time, this is a good, beginning (and free) software that can help them learn to organize their day.  I imagine you can have them schedule their homeschool tasks and study time, after curricular activities, chores, volunteer or paid work, and free time.  Any tool that helps them be better managers of their time, is worth the try.

Tags: organizing, scheduling, task management

When I found Free K-12  Homeschool in 2009, it was just what we needed to get us through the school year.  We’d had a busy schedule, and I was needing a break of sorts.

Here is an overview of what they provide. Their site quotes:

Free K-12 gave me a semester to breathe.  I enrolled my oldest daughter in several of the classes (Grade 2 Math, Science, Social Studies, and Health). A year later I enrolled her in Grade 4 Art and Music and Grade 4 American History.  I mainly used these courses as supplements to other curriculum I was already using- but these programs were meant to stand alone as well.

In this program, you have your child read (or you read outloud) the text for each class page online.  Another option is to download a free text to speech software like Sayz Me.  I preferred having my child read it aloud to me.  Each lesson is presented in a way that is colorful and fun for children, with lots of breaks in text and pictures to make it more interesting.

At the end of each lesson is either a response question to answer online, an activity to do at home to support the lesson, or a video to watch from the video CD provided for the course.

Yes, you will receive video CD’s for each course, and many times a course e-book is provided as well.  These video CD’s are a high quality compilation of education video resources that Free K12 has compiled onto the CD’s for you to use for your child’s learning reinforcement.  Typcially (and depending on the class), these are free of charge along with registering for the class (with a shipping fee of about $5.00 per class material).

Overall, I would say we had a wonderful experience with Free K-12 HOmeschool.  It is a very flexible program, and, again, if you prefer to use the courses as supplements to your homeschool (as opposed to a full program), you may do that as well.  Additionally, if you prefer to be more hands-free of the actual teaching, you can upgrade to the instructor-led program so that your child is participating in an actual virtual course with other children as well.

This is a wonderful, online educational resource that I would recommend to families either just beginning homeschooling or those who wish to add some additional resources to your homeschooling program.

Tags: free k12 homeschool, online hoemschooling

We started using Sense-Lange Typing last year when my oldest daughter was seven.

It’s a neat typing program, completely online and absolutely free, which helps our kids to learn to type.

There are quite a few typing tutorials here.

Everything is pretty much laid out in order for you.  First thing you should do when you get to this site, is to read the Instructions.  That is the first link option when you arrive at the site.

Once you’ve read the instructions to your child, I would go ahead and choose between the Typing Tutorials or the Keypad Tutorials.  I would start with the typing, since that is the most important initially when your child is learning to type for writing or grammar classes.

Then have your child play a few typing games just for fun.    This will help cement the idea of the typing pad’s key lineup and help them remember it better.  Lastly, maybe wait after a few more typing tutorials later in the week or so, but finally give them the typing test.  The test will tell them how many words per minute they type, how many mistakes they made, and how many words they typed correctly.  There is a success percentage score given, and you can use this to keep up with your child’s progress in typing.

Overall, a pretty good typing program online.

Tags: homeschooling typing program, sense lange typing review, typing free online software, typing program for kids, typing tutorial

If you haven’t already noticed, I haven’t blogged here in a few weeks for 2 reasons:

1. My domain name had expired!  I can’t believe I let that happen…but I did…and thankfully, I caught it and got it fixed before I lost the domain for good.  And…
2. because I have moved my homeschooling blog over to:Natural Homeschool Mama.

Visit my new homeschooling blog when you can, to find all my older posts.    Meanwhile, I am in the process (as you can see) of changing this website into a tech/web 2.0 information and review site for homeschoolers.  I will keep a few of the tech-related posts here, because I think they fit where I’m trying to go here.

I also have some other projects up my sleeve that may change the scope of this site for good… and I am really excited about that.  So in the wake of all of my shifting, changing, moving, and growing pains, I hope that you’ll grow with me!!

Thanks for hanging in there.

Okay, don’t shoot me.

But remember my last post about the homeschooling web project I was thinking about starting?

Well.  I started it.

And I am having a BLAST!  Finally, I feel that I have freed myself to work on a project that I am fulfilled with online where I can not only help myself (as I learn more about home education myself), but help other homeschooling families.

So that is exactly what I am doing over at Start Homeschooling Easy.

I checked my subscription stats in Feedburner for this blog…and even after about a year being up, I still don’t have more than about 15 subscribers or so…not tremendously big at all (slight understatement)…

So then I don’t feel QUITE so badly about moving.  Once I move officially, I will probably have this site redirect and use the techiehomeschoolers.com domain name for another web project in the future, so it is not a complete loss.

If you want to bookmark my new site and blog, follow me on over to this URL (for the blog):

http://blog.start-homeschooling-easy.com/

Let me just tell you this as a sneak preview (it is going to be even better than this blog – oh, I really hope!!!!).  Here’s why:

• YouTube videos of me and my family homeschooling in action.  Wow.  Can’t get much more personal than that.
• All prior posts and comments from this blog should be shifted over to the new one…so you shouldn’t miss anything (all techie stuff plus other homeschooling topics rolled into one!)
• Lots of different homeschooling topics.  Curriculum reviews (you provide them, in fact! — or okay, I can provide some too…)
• Contests
• Hopefully a PODCAST to come.  I hope, I hope, I hope. That all depends on participants.  Who wants to be on my podcast?  If you’re a homeschooling mama, give me a holla and I will interview you.
• A newsletter. ..and maybe a chat room to come soon.

So, there is more in the works (if I can pull this off)…and why do I want to do this?

Ahh…like I said in my last post, it is a project of a lifetime.  I enjoy meeting people and helping people online – whatever that entails.  For a season in my life it meant website design or helping others with techie projects, or it meant praying with others who met at my christian women’s site.  This is just a new season and a new opportunity and I want to embrace it.

Will you please join me?

Here is the site URL again:

http://blog.start-homeschooling-easy.com/

Hope to see you there.

I found a resource that will be valuable to our home school this next upcoming school year:

ClickSchooling.com

I love that they embrace the idea of using so many of the FREE educational resources online.  I am surprised I haven’t found this site sooner.  If I had known about this site, I would have signed up years ago and may have happily homeschooled with these suggested resources alone.

It’s never too late.  Thankfully, I’ve signed up and well on my way to having an abundance of online resources for educating my 3rd grader right at my fingertips.

Here is what they have to say about the services they provide on their site:

Get 1 FREE, Web-Based Curriculum Idea Every Day — Monday Through Saturday!

ClickSchooling brings you daily recommendations by email for entertaining websites that help your kids learn.

This leads me to another topic for another post…

Tags: click schooling, online homeschooling

So you don’t know what to do with all those digital pics?
We have that problem in our home…and for school it’s a huge deal for us.
Since we love to digitally snap anything in sight and archive what we are doing at the spur of any moment, having a way to archive all those digital pics (besides blogging) would be a real plus.

So, here is a free online tool anyone can use to create video montages of your photos and pics. Simply upload pictures, add music and effects, and voila. You have code to embed in your blog and share with family and friends.

Check out One True Media on creating these videos.

Here is an example of one I created:

Tags: create online video, create video montage, homeschooling technology, video tools

Read/write web is making a lot of progress.  As Google is becoming a prominent leader in the web 2.0 industry, we see them taking over our typical productivity tasks- such as spreadsheets and word docs.

No longer can we just say to our students, “Go ahead and open up Microsoft Word to type up your report…”   At least not when there are so many FREE applications available on the web- like the headway Google is making with Writely.

It’s the epitome of the read/write web phenomenon (web 2.0).  It’s not just about creating content, but being an active participant and developer of content along with a team of other like minded individuals.  It is virtual team building.

Take a look at this google video which shows a scenario of a teen that has a VERY important question to ask someone he really likes.  He needs a little help from his peers, using the Google doc which they all share and collaborate on together.

View Google Writely Video

Tags: writely