Start the New Year Smarter with Online College

Here are a couple articles about online courses available for free on the web. You get lectures, homework and tests, but no interaction with the professors and no college credit. They're great for homeschoolers, lifelong learners or students at other college who want the information. High schoolers can verify learning and possibly earn credit with CLEP, AP or SAT subject tests (although these classes are not specifically keyed to these tests, so reviewing specific study guides would also be necessary).

Internet Opens Elite College to All by AP Education writer Justin Pope

Education-Portal.com

What Do You Need to Know Pre-AP English?

Fabulous, very detailed chart listing the skills that are needed prior to taking an AP English class. Covers 7th through 10th grade but can be adapted for any grade.

Pre-AP Skills Progression Chart

Stanford's Online High School, the First Year

There is a nice, long article in the LA Times about the OHS, Stanford's new ultra-rigorous online high school based on the high school classes they offer through EPGY. You can see the complete course schedule here.

We talked about enrolling Klaus in OHS last year but decided it would be better to invest the $12K tuition for college. Klaus' interest have skewed toward the soft sciences lately (anthropology, psychology) so that was probably the right idea for him. But from the article it sounds like OHS is an excellent program for the primarily math/science inclined.

Attn: College-Bound High Schoolers!

According to EdWeek.org, "a study released today highlights the gap between what high schools are teaching in the college-preparatory courses and what colleges want incoming students to know." The survey, by ACT, Inc. (the testing people) "found that college professors generally want incoming students to have a deeper understanding of a selected number of topics and skills, while high school teachers in all content areas tend to rate a far broader array of content and skills as 'important' or 'very important.'"

Specifically, "In writing, postsecondary instructors tended to value the basic mechanics of writing (such as sentence structure and punctuation) more highly than high school teachers did. High school English teachers rated topic and idea development as the most important set of skills.

In mathematics, postsecondary instructors rated being able to understand and rigorously apply fundamental skills and processes as more important than exposure to more advanced math topics. High school math teachers tended to view the latter as important. Postsecondary instructors also placed far more emphasis on being able to understand new material by reading a textbook.

In reading, the survey found a general lack of reading courses in high school and a decline in the teaching of targeted reading strategies after the 9th grade. In contrast, college instructors of remedial courses rated such strategies as very important and reported devoting a large percentage of time to teaching them.

In science, high school teachers consistently rated content as more important to student success than science process or inquiry skills, in direct contrast to both middle school and postsecondary science teachers."

What does this mean for homeschoolers? I believe it gives us an edge over public school students in that we can more easily tailor our kids' education to what the colleges want, without having to overcome institutional bias.

Curriculum notes to myself:

Make sure the boys can write a grammatical sentence, create an outline with a strong thesis and write a persuasive essay following that outline, preferably in less than an hour. (Yes, I know that is a run-on sentence. ;-)

Make sure they can read and understand challenging literature.

Focus on fundamental math skills, no matter how much Wolfie complains. (Learning on their own from a textbook is pretty much standard procedure, isn't it?)

Continue to skip the make-work labs and "activities" in the science texts in favor of cramming more information into their little brains. Only do experiments when we genuinely don't know the results.

Let's Abolish High School

Interesting commentary in EdWeek questioning the need for high school by Robert Epstein, a former editor in chief of Psychology Today, a contributing editor for Scientific American Mind, a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego, and the host of “Psyched!” on Sirius Satellite Radio. His latest book, The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, was published last week by Quill Driver Books.

He concludes:

"A careful look at these issues yields startling conclusions: The social-emotional turmoil experienced by many young people in the United States is entirely a creation of modern culture. We produce such turmoil by infantilizing our young and isolating them from adults. Modern schooling and restrictions on youth labor are remnants of the Industrial Revolution that are no longer appropriate for today’s world; the exploitative factories are long gone, and we have the ability now to provide mass education on an individual basis.

Teenagers are inherently highly capable young adults; to undo the damage we have done, we need to establish competency-based systems that give these young people opportunities and incentives to join the adult world as rapidly as possible."

[EdWeek is having an "open house" until April 15, 2007, so anyone can read this online through that date.]

Cool Little Resource for Visual Teens

I just picked up a copy of The High School Learning System. It's an interesting package--multimedia presentations on English (with ebook texts), history (US and World), math (pre-algebra through calculus) and science (mostly biology) with Q&A and quizzes assess learning (if you want to do that). The presentation on the French Revolution lasted about 20 minutes of narration with period background music and pictures. They included a good amount of detail, covered the various governments between 1789 and 1799 and offered a 101 question online "quiz" (sounds like a test to me!) at the end.

I was less impressed with the math section. I noticed on their website that they have a stand-alone math learning system product, so that may be why this section is less comprehensive.

I have the 2006 version, which I bought on ebay for $13 (2 DVDs and 1 Spanish-English online dictionary). The 2007 version costs $40 and includes:

"• All core subjects covered
• 86 integrated educational titles
• 54 hours of multimedia presentations & video
• 37 hours of audio books
• 101 Barron’s Book Notes
• Printable tests to monitor progress
• PLUS new educational material for your iPodTM"

I think this would be a great resource for younger gifted kids working at a high school level, for homeschooling teens and/or as a review for regular high school classes.

Fun (and...shhh...educational) Site for Kids

I found this awesome site this morning. ExploreLearning.com has over 300 "gizmos"--interactive, web-based games/simulations--that teach concepts in middle and high school math and science. It's particularly well-suited to visual and kinesthetic learners and works equally well for homeschool/after-schoolers/individual learners and class learning via computer/media lab.

ExploreLearning has already correlated their gizmos with major textbooks and state curriculum standards, so homeschoolers who are worried about keeping up with the public schools can be sure they're covering everything they need to. Just click on your state, the standards are copied word-for-word with the list of appropriate gizmos just beneath. The gizmos all come with five or so assessment questions at the end of the activity and reports the score to the student and to anyone designated as teacher, so you can keep track of how much your child is doing and comprehending easily.

Xavier and I played around with the Chicken Genetics gizmo and had lots of fun. You get five minutes to play without registering, which isn't quite enough time to complete an assessment. ExploreLearning does offer a free 30-day trial subscription, after that there is a subscription system available. I plan to use this to extend the boys learning come fall. Too many textbooks makes Jack a dull boy. :D