Review of Home School, Inc PER (3.5/5) or "Another Crack at the Planner"

As you know, the Moodle thing was a no-go for our family.  Again, not through any fault of the program, it just didn't seem to be able to scale back to the single Middle School student.  For the past month I have been auditing the completely FREE planner at Home School, Inc which is completely internet-based (you can reach it from any computer).

To get started, you will need to register a school login with Home School, Inc.  Then you will register another user for the teacher/parent, and a user for each student.  This process is a little irritating and I would recommend using a single password for the school and for the students.  Each time your student logs in, they will first log in to the school and then select their name and log in AGAIN to get to their account.  Depending on the ages of your student, this can feel like a lot of passwords to remember.  Fortunately, most browsers support saving the school username and password which should be relatively safe if you are using the same computer at home.  

Once you, the teacher, are logged in click on the link for the "Planner" and get started.  There is some very easy to follow set up dialog for your School Info and School Term.  Here my recommendation is to keep the terms SHORT, five to ten weeks at max to allow for changes in interests or schedules.  It is very easy to copy the courses from one term to another so keeping the terms short actually alleviates extra work instead of creating it.    Once you have a term and at least one student, it is time to set up those courses.  You can use the "Make A Plan" interface which will guide you through the process or go straight to "Courses at a Glance" for a faster interface.  

Creating a Course is self-explanatory.  You should select a grading method.  - for us it is usually complete/incomplete - but, if you use a grade-driven curriculum or have a child that thrives on numbers, do what feels right to you.  Even if you choose the complete/incomplete options, you will have an opportunity to grade specific assignments or record comments on a topic.  You will also need to choose a time for each course, this really doesn't mean that you have to do it then; however, you should really estimate how long each topic takes in a day so that you can get an accurate picture of the time spent in school (especially if you live in a state with an hourly attendance requirement).  Most of our core subjects take about an hour +/-.  Once the Courses are created, you will add coursework and assignments to it (again, this is where shorter terms will be easier).  There are good Template "tricks" for making incremental lessons or repeating the same task each day.  When all your courses are ready to go, it is time for the student(s) to take a crack at it.

The student will again log on to the school account first.  From there, they should click the link for the "Planner" and then select their username from the list and enter their password.  The student will be taken directly to their "School Today" screen.  This terrific screen allows the student to see what their tasks are for the day and "Do Work".  Clicking on the "Do Work" tab opens a dialog box for that subject and once they have completed their tasks for that subject, sends the work to the teacher/parent for review.  This screen also shows the student any past due work from earlier days and what work is still awaiting teacher review/grading.

Again as the teacher, you will log in and see work that is needing your review.  If you have set the course or assignment as requiring a grade, you will fill this in as you complete your review.  You can also make other comments in this dialog box or review your student's feedback.  "Bad handwriting", "Only 12 minutes to complete timed worksheet!", "Read from p.394 to 437", "Boring video, Mom" are some of the comments that we have left for each other on our assignments.

Overall review of Homeschool Inc PER is 3.5 out of 5 stars.  I like the interface, the dual log in thing is irritating though, especially for younger students.  It is FREE which is a plus, but that comes with the big MINUS of ads which are continually scrolling around the right hand side of the screen making the program sluggish at times.  The internet based planner can be used from a Mac, PC, or *Nix computer which is a real draw in our family, but I'd also like either an offline syncing interface or export with iCal or some mobile app.    There are also many customizable reports, Skip-A-Day, and Field Trips which were simply too much to cover in this post (so I will cover them next time in a couple of weeks).  

Nothing Personal - Why Moodle didn't work out for our homeschool

I really liked Moodle. It was highly organized and powerful; but it just wasn't for us. I found my son still wanting a paper planner. He was going into Moodle and printing out his calendar daily which seemed like a complete waste. Since most of our assignments were offline (with the exception of the Science Wiki that we collaborated on in Moodle), he just would not get in the groove of going to Moodle to check his assignments.

What I can see from our Moodle experiment is a sense of the real challenges of classroom management. As homeschoolers who live and work with our students 24/7, I think we often poo-poo the amount of work it really takes to be a teacher in this age. The amount of work that went into designing the course, making the assignments, setting up the quizzes, then recording all the grades was overwhelming with just one student - I really couldn't imagine 25 students of varying abilities all needing this level of attention. I see now why Moodle is used heavily at the university and high school levels, but rarely earlier - to design and maintain 6 courses yourself in the online environment is nearly impossible.

I am glad I did the Moodle thing for a while. I enjoy learning new things and I can see uses for Moodle beyond the classroom - I can imagine offices using the powerful Moodle elements to set their Employment Handbooks and Continuing Education in an internal server. I plan to revisit Moodle, deploying in an external server, with some of my math tutor students; but, for now, this homeschool is going back to the paper planner in hopes of finding something simpler to administer for the single teacher/student.

Using Moodle in the Homeschool Environment Part 1: Installing Moodle

The new school year is upon us and I am always trying some new trick to get organized and get my son working more independently. Recently, some of his homeschooled friends have switched to the online public charter school K12. While that environment is not for us, I do see some advantages in the child's ability to work at their own pace but still have obvious assignments and deadlines.

What Moodle can Provide:

1. A detailed schedule (even for the whole year)

2. Deliver online content (videos, webpages, worksheets) all in one place

3. Record the student's activity and progress.

4. Exposure to the system that most colleges use for their online content delivery.

What Moodle won't do:

1. Plan the classes for you. For most homeschoolers this amount of planning may feel labor-intensive unless you'll have more than one student in a class.

Step One will be to install Moodle on a computer connected to your home network. I installed on an older machine running WinXP Professional. I will likely migrate to a Ubuntu server later and I'll let you know how that goes when we get there.

1. Point your browser to http://moodle.org/.

2. Click the Downloads icon (lower right hand side).

3. Download the appropriate packages. In this case, Moodle for Windows.

4. Follow the standard download instructions.

5. Extract your packages someplace easy to remember (the Desktop or My Documents perhaps)

6. Within the extracted folder double-click the icon labeled "Start Moodle"

7. Follow the initial set-up instructions, usernames/password assignments etc.

8. Open your web browser and type http://localhost, again follow any set up instructions.

9. Now you have your Moodle Server. From the local machine you will be able to type "http://localhost", from remote computers it will be the IP address of that machine (in my case 10.181.46.102 - yours will be different).

10. Start customizing your experience. There are lots of links to the left - Appearance, Accounts, Courses - start experimenting and have fun.

I think that most of the controls are fairly easy to understand and inputting the course information is relatively simple; however, there is a lot of planning to be done. So, crack open your child's textbooks and think about how you want the school year to be divided. All of our courses have been assigned a weekly period so far, but I may change to "by lesson" for Math in particular.

Stay Tuned for Part 2 - The Student Experience.

Danger: Unschooling rubs off on Kids

I have persisted under the myth that Unschooling is my son's learning style, but recently have discovered that it is really more my teaching style. Pursuit your interests, find out all you can, and I'll hold your hand and provide some basic infrastructure. But ask me to amble through a workbook for 45 minutes on stuff no one cares about and I pretty much shut down to (or worse head off on some tangential topic and still never get the "work" accomplished.

Nowhere has this been more evident to me than in Sunday School. Last summer I was asked to "teach" a break-off class of older elementary kids whose parents were complaining that they just weren't learning anything in the multi-age class. The pastor and I went through mounds of curriculum and finally decided on a very interactive (and expensive) curriculum where the children would have their own workbook/magazine. It was very comprehensive and though I had to buy some supplies here and there, everything I had to say was scripted and easy to follow. But I couldn't. I was bored, the kids were not engaged, and again we were right back to them not really learning anything. Oh sure, they memorized some verses and were able to spit back some information for a week or two - but genuine life integration simply was not happening.

At the end of the season, I placed the options in front of the students. Four choices - continue with the current curriculum, find a new curriculum, go back to the multi-age class, or vote on individual topics and research them. Not surprisingly, in a class where all but one child (mine) is a public-schooled student, the children were eager to be in control of their own spiritual education. Last week as we studied the parables, discussion turned to the necessary conviction to defy the law to do what you know in your heart is right. We discussed the Underground Railroad and the people who would risk their own lives and liberty to free others. Then discussion turned to the Holocaust, and only my son knew about the persecution of the Jews (he is fascinated by all things war). Another boy in the fifth grade said, "they don't teach us anything like that at our school. I feel like I never learn anything".

I looked into sad eyes, and said frankly, "Whose job is it to 'teach' you anything? It is not their job to 'teach' you - but it is your job to LEARN; just like it is not my job to 'tell' you what to believe. It is our job to read for ourselves, discuss, and make our own decisions. You have all the tools you need to learn whatever you want. Now you need to make a choice, to wait for someone to feed you or to go hunt for yourself!" The next week, I noticed a copy of "The Diary of Anne Frank" in his bag and smiled at him knowingly. He made a choice to be responsible for his own education.

Prayer & Email

Do you check your email more than you pray? What about Facebook, Twitter, CNN, gossip sites?

Over the last few months, I have noticed a lot of my friends asking that I pray for them in one endeavor or another; and without missing a beat I say, "of course". Then I try to remember to incorporate the request into my evening prayer. However, some nights I fall asleep before I get to pray and then it is the next day and I am struggling to remember who I told what and why did I write this name on the back of my church bulletin!

I am at my computer so much of the day, what I really need is a prayer list right on my computer. That is where Xiphos Bible comes in. Many of you are familiear with my penchant for free and open source software. You know that I haul my little netbook with me everywhere I go and that I use a Bible application on it that allows me to quickly jump through 5 - 8 different versions of the Bible. I frequently use this in Sunday School so that we can look at different interpretations of the same verse. Well, turns out that Xiphos has built in prayer lists available (monthly, weekly, and daily can be set up). What's more, Xiphos works on Windows as well as Unix systems.

I am going to be trying this out for the next few weeks and I'll let you know how it goes. What I'd really like is a Facebook App that would pop up every so often - who knows, maybe I'll just have to write one.

Fantastic Family Camp

Recently, we were able to drag the camper up to Unicoi State Park for their 2nd Annual Family Camp for All Ages and we couldn't have had a better time. We made some wonderful new friends, had an opportunity to go camping at a beautiful (and shady) spot, and learned some new outdoor skills - all at a very reasonable price. The stay was $110 for 5 nights at a site with electric and water. The camp was $50 for all three of us! There were "door prizes" everyday and no one went home empty-handed. The children had an opportunity to complete their Junior Ranger badges and spend time with their families in the great outdoors.

It got me to thinking, why is it that all GA State Parks don't toss the old "Junior Ranger" camp model and focus on this new style of family camping? Our son did a Junior Ranger camp last year at a park more local to us and he had a great time; however, they were limited in the age range for the week to 6 - 9 year old children. There were 16 kids (the max enrollment was 20) and 3-4 adults to manage them. A second week was offered for children 10 - 12, presumably with roughly the same ratio of children to adults. The camp was 4 hours long and most parents left while their children were at camp, either returning home or to work while the 1 - 2 kids in the limited age range attended camp. Perhaps a few families were camping at the park during the week. I do truly believe that all the children became fast friends and felt a great bond during the week; and yet at that age, their exchange of personal information was limited, so whatever bonds formed during the week of camp were lost once the children returned home. Also, though the children were very active for a few hours each day, most returned home to TV, internet, and AC.

In contrast, Unicoi's Family Camp had an enrollment of 15 families and nearly 60 people. All but 1 - 2 families were staying at the state park. Most were staying at the park for about the same rate as stated above; however, two families had rented cabins which were approximately $500 for the week. The camp activities were approximately 3 hours each day with three rangers and one manager-in-training completely dedicated to the program for the duration. Some adjunct rangers, staff, and volunteers were used throughout the week for different programs. At the end of the camp day, families spent time together outdoors hiking, fishing, canoeing, building campfires, and enriching the bonds of friendship (nothing makes for fast friends like eating chocolate-covered crickets - thank you Ranger Jessica!).

There are obstacles to this family-style camping, of course. Many families simply cannot get away for a week and the traditional Junior Ranger day camp provides those families with a much needed outlet for their children during an otherwise hectic summer. Keeping programs fresh enough for adults to want to get involved and still be simple enough for children is not always an easy task. Yet in a time when so many programs are being cut from the state park budget, we need to explore those financially sound opportunities which can generate revenue for each park. With the traditional Junior Ranger day camp (20 campers x $25/ week) + (2 families camping x 110/ week) x 2 weeks = $1440; now consider the salaries of 4 staffers (even at minimum wage) for two weeks $1820. A minimum net loss of $400 before the park has even issued supplies for the programs! At family camp the ratio of staffers to campers can be far less since it is presumed that parents will (and do) take care of their own children. The cost is $20 per adult and $10 per child, so let us average the (58 campers to $15/each x 1 week) + (11 families camping x $110/week) + (2 families at cabins x $500/week) = $3080; now assume 6 staffers at the same $5.75/hr = $1380. A possible revenue of $1700! **I am sure that neither of these staffs make minimum wage nor am I implying that is their worth, just that I needed a baseline for the math.

In addition, there is money spent at camp stores and gift shops at the park. In particular, Unicoi has a terrific buffet at their restaurant that was the highlight of many campers' week. Not all state parks have the amenities that Unicoi has and thereby might not be able to profit so clearly; however, they certainly would come away with more than they can with the traditional JR Day Camp model. I encourage each state park to look closely at this program and consider adding it to your 2010 line-up. I am sure that Rangers Ellen, Jessica, and Smith would be happy to share their experiences with your staff.

Further, what the families take away is an experience of being together all day without the distractions of work, TV, and internet; of being able to form lasting friendships for children and adults; and the anticipation of returning year after year like the sleep-away camps of our youth. I am encouraged that our family has not left camp behind and returned to our old routines. Just this weekend, the boys went kayaking; something they had not done before family camp. I encourage each person to find this unique and enriching opportunity at a state park near you; and if there isn't one - campaign for it.

The Great Tent Adventure

The other night our 9 year old son watched Survivorman on the Science Channel. It is not the first time that we have seen the show, nor even that episode; yet, somehow it struck a chord. Within minutes he was outside piling sticks and striking two (albeit granite) rocks together. Within an hour the tent was dragged outside and all of the accoutrements to spending the night on his own in the backyard. After the rain clouds moved in, though, he told us that Les had said that you could get "thermia" if you got wet in the backcountry; so without a fire to protect him, he made the decision to move the tent indoors. Now the tent has become the ultimate play place!