Just some of the diversity in homeschooling co-ops and resources. .

1. Guide to the Best Homeschooling and Unschooling Resources - http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/guide-to-the-best-homeschooling-and-unschooling-resources/

2. http://www.homeschool-freesource.com/

3. How about i-Tunes University? http://www.apple.com/education/ipad/itunes-u/

An example of a homeschooling co-op. Has over 200 members. http://mtairyhomeschoolingcoop.org/

Worth exploring - just check out the courses being offered or had been offered in the past - http://mtairyhomeschoolingcoop.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Cumulative_MAHC_Classes.pdf

We are in the process of investigations of skipe lessons to China but everybody needs to take a valium.

University of Phoenix has very few grads although it is all on line. Virtual ed public and private is having a terrible time finding traction because the students most attracted to it are low achieving couch potatoes. 

Our teachers show You tube quick short videos all the time. It is beautiful for 10 min shorts on ‘the water cycle’ as an example.

Replace the teacher?

So far film, film strips, radio, educational TV, computers, the internet all were going to totally replace the teacher 1920 to 2014.

So far each has become an instructional tool in the hands of teachers

BTW did you see the Ipsos Reid poll in BC that said 15% believe teachers are overpaid?

CD Howe recently concluded that paying teachers more clearly improves results. Canada and USA were examples. Canada pays more and gets better results. 5 American states pay more than Canada and top American results. Alberta pays the mist in Canada best results.

(Ontario already has about 20,000 homeschoolers)And not only that there will be a lot less politicization of young, impressionable minds by the usual suspects associated with the teacher unions.For once we can be thankful that social justice and the rest of the education orthodoxy will be buried for good.

As usual Doug, is way behind when it comes to technology. Par for the course, when it comes to the K to 12 education establishment and their resistance to technology. The topic is on 21st century technology, and not the disappearance of teachers Doug. Classroom teachers are force to use the enclosed programs set up by the IT departments of school boards or education ministries. Not when it comes to apps like i-Tunes University or Chrome’s growing education apps such as Spell Up game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICm0at4N2OM

In the K to 12 schools, Spell Up would not be approved, If there is one thing I do know, the public K to 12 education system uses technology in ways that are not beneficial to students’ learning. Often rules/regulations and union contracts often prevent the new apps, software and new ways of using technology to benefit students’ learning. In one area alone, the K to 12 schools (really is the K to 12 establishment) are so determined to keep audio e-books, e-readers out of the hands of the struggling readers. When there is e-readers and audio e-books on hand, often the features are disconnected that renders the e-reader a useless tool for struggling readers. All made that much more difficult, when the K to 12 system will not supply the resources of e-books across the span of subject areas. Just to access the e-books, is a time consuming effort on the student, the teacher and the principal. The paperwork is unreal just to get permission to have access to the e-book material, and once access is given there is very little choice at all in the offerings.

The K to 12 education establishment treats the 21st century technology in trying to force the technology to work best only for the teachers, while restricting the technology to the students.

Well said Nancy, you are absolutely correct.  I know this post is on technology, but in keeping with your comments, it is also impossible to get by those school board consultants who like to sell their own products vs. those that might actually help students.  Our kids are at the whim of District staff and their cronies when it comes to resources.  I realize that this is a “public system”, and that we cannot ask for the very best of the best when it comes to resources, but at the same time, it is maddening to see all this money wasted on inefficient textbooks and programs which big marketing companies are pushing on schoolboards and education ministries.

Here in BC the idea of homeschool co-ops sounds very appealing given our current fiasco with the BCTF and our government.  Private school enrollment has been shown to increase dramatically with each job action the BCTF takes.  This is fine for some families, but out of reach for most of us.  However these co-ops are a viable option.  I will be curious to see if these co-ops will also start increasing as parents’ frustration has passed the boiling point and more of us are starting to get proactive despite what the mucky muks in charge want us to believe.

It seems that perhaps Mr. Doug is firmly entrenched in a world perspective similar to the leadership of China today. In China, we have Tienanmen Square being systematically eliminated from public memory.  In Hong Kong, we have another current example of a strong aversion of the powers that be for anything not invented in Beijing.

As in Hong Kong yesterday and for the next few days, if the masses can’t be convinced that they should bow to Beijing, then they shall be blanketed by mass denials of service to insure that they cannot express even their unofficial opinions online.  http://www.adn.com/2014/06/23/3530259/hong-kong-activists-push-democracy.html

Despite this unprecedented technical assault, the locals are turning out in huge numbers to physically line up to register their viewpoints in an unofficial poll. 

Perhaps Doug has been working for Big Brother too long to realize there could be an alternate reality which apparently by default has been erased from his memory.

One of the unintended consequences of the current structure of education is that the clients have pretty well been relegated to being firewood for the system operators.  Without the fuel of clients, what is the point of the system…and so it goes on…or perhaps not if co-ops took fire as an app and went viral…now that could never happen could it…let’s see Facebook is how old ?

The one thing that really bugs me the most, are the IT departments of the school boards and education ministries. It is the quality of the products that are in question. For the most part very user unfriendly, and a hex to any of the software programs operating for the SE students. I really do think that the K to 12 education establishment think the SE students can’t handle anything complicated. Oh my, watch what happens if the SE student wants something that will challenge them or improved the dictionary feature that goes beyond primary vocabulary. My youngest child got a program to help with her writing. After ten minutes, she told me it was crap, and after an hour of frustration, I agreed with her. To no avail, I could not get the education officials to change the software.

My youngest had to wait until she entered university, to get all the equipment and software that would aid her to overcome her reading and writing difficulties. I never thought my youngest would be in the same position as the American LD students where parents were warning other parents the steep learning curve to use software that does a very effective job and this was in 2007. In 2014, my youngest carries the i-pad Air. It does everything for her, including making phone calls. According to my youngest it is the best tool she has when walking into lectures. https://www.apple.com/ipad-air/features/

The technology alone, have the potential to shape students’ education on individual pathways. I always used the technology that I purchased for my youngest based on how it could be used for improvement and achievement in her studies. I feel like a dinosaur, when I purchased a touch screen wireless desktop computer when she was in grade 11. So she would have a computer to take with her when she went to university. The last time she was down, she said to me, ‘Don’t worry Mom, the touch screen is used all the time. It is my work computer.” She said it to make feel better , because the touch screen is so out of date compared to what is available in 2014. However my youngest still uses the free open-source software that I found over the years to aid her in her writing. No thanks to the K to 12 education system, who kept banning the technology in the earlier years, and by grade 11, it was the opposite anything goes, as long as the school board or school did not have to pay for it.

FRANK aren’t you a little off topic?

EDUBEAT I am happy to have anyone homeschool. They tend to be malcontents until they go. BTW the ones I know 50% are lefty granola types. I am sure they are teaching their kids how bad the tar sands are.