Have many in the U.S. ever questioned mass education of the world in a Western-centric model? Carol Black, film director and editor, has. Carol Black is an Emmy-Award-winning writer/director/producer of both entertainment and documentary television and film, co-creator with her husband Neal Marlens of the television series The Wonder Years, noted for its portrayal of the American [...]
Archive for the ‘Teaching methods’ Category
Schooling The World – A Movie
Posted by ginac on August 19th, 2011
Posted in Culture, Global Homeschooling, Learning Methods, Teaching methods 
Tags: American Indian, Buddhism, Carol Black, Film, Indoctrination, Ladakh, Schooling, Schooling the World, White Mans Burden, World Culture 
Comments OffUnschoolers Learn on Their Own Terms
Posted by ginac on August 10th, 2011
Unschoolers often get a bad rap. Often, those unfamiliar with unschooling assume children are completely unsupervised and learn nothing. Actually, the exact opposite is true. The key to unschooling is to allow either very little or no structure to the learning process so that the child has time to pursue interests. To an outside observer, [...]
Posted in Activities, Eclectic Homeschooling, News, Teaching methods Tags: child-led learning, Homeschooling, Learning, Unschooling 1 Comment »Sir Ken Robinson – ‘Why teaching is not like making motorcars’
Posted by ginac on March 21st, 2010
Sir Ken Robinson, TED presenter, educator, and author of ‘The Element’, spoke with CNN about how our education systems are failing kids because of the ‘mass production’ treatment — the same treatment applied to manufacturing automobiles. Sir Ken recently spoke at TED again this year, and I can’t wait to hear that presentation. He makes [...]
Posted in Eclectic Homeschooling, News, Teaching methods Tags: homeschool, Ken Robinson, TED, The Element Comments OffOur Mondays are Self-Directed Learning Days
Posted by ginac on October 19th, 2009
For the past month, we have been piloting a new concept in our homeschooling program. We always take a laid-back approach to learning, but we just let go a little more. We officially instituted Mondays as self-directed learning days. Sure, we were a little worried that nothing would get accomplished. Could our homeschooler really keep [...]
Homeschool Learning Strategy: Engage Learners with Personal Dry-Erase Boards
Posted by ginac on September 12th, 2009
I am delighted to share with you an inexpensive yet highly effective learning tool. Dry-erase boards have been around for years, and business people use them all the time in meetings, to manage to-do lists, or as bulletin boards. Although dry erase boards are not exactly ‘emerging technology’, they are very useful tools for [...]
Five TED Videos Homeschoolers Will Enjoy
Posted by ginac on September 3rd, 2009
TED is an inspirational movement of great thinkers from around the globe who gather to share unique insights and ideas about humanity. There are TED videos on all sorts of topics, and there are many creative ways to weave them into your lessons. Use these videos to ‘kick-off’ unit studies, to inspire creativity with a [...]
CNN Article Supports Homeschool as a Change Agent for Public Education
Posted by ginac on August 25th, 2009
Clark Howard, HLN money expert, wrote an interesting article for CNN about how alternative learning environments can contribute to changing the current public school education system in America. Citing a few high-profile court cases involving ridiculous actions by the school systems, Clark highlights the potential for bureaucracy to overshadow the learning process. In addition to [...]
Beautiful Statistics – Hans Rosling’s Gapminder.org
Posted by ginac on July 29th, 2009
Sometimes children assume that the way things are in the world today are the way things have always been and the way things will always be. Gapminder empowers the user to visually manipulate graphs to focus on elements of interest, but definitely shows that things don’t always stay the same in the world, even within [...]
Microsoft Research Makes Feynman Lectures Available for Free
Posted by ginac on July 17th, 2009
Microsoft Research, in collaboration with Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, makes the Messenger lecture series by physicist Richard Feynman freely available to the general public for the first time. The Messenger Series explains the relation of Mathematics and Physics. If you have ever read any of his books, you will really enjoy seeing and hearing [...]
Arizona Public School Takes Cues From Homeschool Philosophy
Posted by ginac on June 25th, 2009
Arizona State University reports on an innovative partnership with University Public Schools. Polytechnic Elementary, a public school/university partnership, looks much like a homeschool in a public environment. Even though it took ‘cutting edge’ university research, it looks like Polytechnic Elementary in Arizona is finally breaking the mold on the lecture-based, ‘drill-and-kill’ curriculum in favor of [...]
