The Innovative Educator named top #Homeschool #EdTech blog

When we think of innovative educators, we often think of classrooms and teachers, but we sometimes forget parents are employing innovative strategies to support learning outside of school.  For home educators this is just a way of life, but parents who choose school can also play a key role in helping their children learn. When they do, I am happy to know that The Innovative Educator was named a top five ed tech blog for homeschoolers by WizIQ who provides an online learning platform on which to deliver classes.

Other blogs named were Free Technology for Teachers, Get Me Geeky, and The Wired Homeschool.  Check out the article and these other great blogs at http://blog.wiziq.com/top-5-ed-tech-blogs-help-integrate-technology-homeschool 

What if we let students design their own schools?

What if we let students design their own schools? That's exactly the question that was explored with The Independent Project. The program provides a model that empowers students to design and learn in their own school. The project was proposed by students. Their principal agreed to allow students to create and attend this school within a school located  Monument Mountain Regional High School, a public school in Massachusetts. In this video teens share how this model worked well for them. Especially those who weren't thriving in a traditional setting.  

Want to learn how they did it? Here is The White Paper.pdf, a formal document outlining the details of The Independent Project. It was created as a guide for others interested in bringing a version of the model to their own schools.  

Interested? Watch this video too.

6 ways unschooling can inform practice for innovative educators

Guest post by Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko | Writer and blogger at Radio Free School.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. —Henry David Thoreau

There is a whole world of learning that unfolds, starting with the spark of an interest.  For unschool educators, it is a matter of following the lead of the learner.

The learner focuses on what he wants to know about. From this node of knowledge, like an octopus sending out its many arms to the environs around, the learner links to ever more nodes—making connections and expanding his knowledge.

It’s the job of an educator to shine a light on the nodes so that the child can choose to look closer at or not.

Putting a spin on some familiar platitudes that are regularly associated with school, I offer six thoughts on how the unschooling method can inform and help us improve educational practices everywhere:

John Stossel hated school. Investigates unschooling.

In case you missed it, last week, John Stossel did a segment on unschooling as part of his “Education Blob” special.  In the segment he pointed out that the number of homeschoolers is on the rise nationally, a whopping 75% since 1999. This puts the number of homeschoolers in the nation about equal to those attending charter schools. He shares that the number of families that homeschool today for religious purposes is on the decline as the choice today is more likely to be the result of dissatisfaction with the government schooling system.  He informed viewers that compared to publicly schooled kids, more homeschoolers go to college and once there they do better than the other kids in college.

He brought an unschooled (a form of homeschooling) youth and a parent to the show to discuss how this option works. He asked, "What would happened if children wanted to veg all day?" He also shared that like many students, he hated school and if he had the choice he would have just watched TV all day.  Considering that his profession ended up being that of a TV personality, his instincts to do so, may not have been off!

The Education Blob –Tonight at 9 pm ET with John Stossel

John Stossel thinks our public schools can do a better job and that those who try to make improvements run up against the "BLOB." Watch tonight as he takes a look at what he describes as this Jabba-the-Hutt like thing that can barely be budged.

In the show, Stossel addresses President Obama’s proposal to spend more on Pre-K education. We hear from Steve Barnett, of the National Institute for Early Education Research, who says universal pre-school would be a good thing. But Darcy Olsen, of the Goldwater Institute, says it would not.  Stossel explains that the government’s own data shows that even popular programs like Head Start have no lasting effect. Stossel invites us to hear why some believe early schooling is best while other believe keeping the kids home makes more sense.

And, keeping kids home well beyond pre-k is what more and more parents are doing as they make the decision to homeschool. "They don't think it's worth it to fight the education BLOB," Stossel explains. Instead, they escape it. "Unschooling" (a form of homeschooling) mom, Amy Milstein, and 14-year-old "unschooler,” Jude Steffers-Wilson, talk about a how they take the reins on their own education.

Why College Kids Shouldn’t Act Like College Kids

Guest post by Dale Stephens, Author Hacking Your Education

If a prophet came and told me that dropping out would be the best decision I ever made, I wouldn't have believed him. In fact, at the age of 15, it seemed like I had more chances of committing a Ghirardelli chocolate robbery then I did of dropping out of college.

But, looking back, it might not seem that way. I’ve been out of school since I was 12 - looks like I was setting myself up to fail, right?

To put it delicately, I’ve realized that not going to school was exactly what set me free. You don’t need physical chains to tell you that you’re being subjugated. But what many don’t realize, is that it wasn’t blindly dropping out that saved me. Instead, it was refusing to throw myself away, that did.

College kids act like college kids because they go to college - you don’t need a forensics team to figure that out. It’s the societal structure that dictates their own behavior, and we can’t blame them. But, within the thousands that go to college, there are many that are hacking their own education, as we speak.

When your child says, "Go to hell!"

The following post is excerpted with permission from Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, by Peter Gray.  Available from Basic Books, a member of The Perseus Books Group.  Copyright © 2013.

Purchase your copy at this link.

"GO TO HELL.”

The words hit me hard. I had on occasion been damned to hell before, but never so seriously. A colleague, frustrated by my thickheaded lack of agreement with an obvious truth, or a friend, responding to some idiotic thing I had said. But in those cases “go to hell” was just a way to break the tension, to end an argument that was going nowhere. This time it was serious. This time I felt, maybe, I really would go to hell. Not the afterlife hell of fire and brimstone, which I don’t believe in, but the hell that can accompany life in this world when you are burned by the knowledge that you have failed someone you love, who needs you, who depends on you.

The words were spoken by my nine-year-old son, Scott, in the principal’s office of the public elementary school. They were addressed not only to me but to all seven of us big, smart adults who were lined up against him—the principal, Scott’s two classroom teachers, the school’s guidance counselor, a child psychologist who worked for the school system, his mother (my late wife), and me. We were there to present a united front, to tell Scott in no uncertain terms that he must attend school and must do there whatever he was told by his teachers to do. We each sternly said our piece, and then Scott, looking squarely at us all, said the words that stopped me in my tracks.

Mainstream television features kids growing up without school

Dayna Martin is a mother of four who is raising her children without school, textbooks, standards, or a curriculum. Instead her children's passions, talents, and interests drive their learning.

Check out Dayna's interview below on the Jeff Probst Show as she explains why she's unschooling her kids, and what her role is in their development and education. 

For more information about Dayna, visit her website. To connect with other parents who are raising their children without school join this group. To connect with schoolfree teens join this group.

High school dropout pursues passions and becomes a multimillionaire

David Karp began learning HTML at 11 and soon after was designing websites for local businesses. Unlike Nick Perez who spent years being drugged and tortured in a school that didn’t understand his particular passion, Karp attended high school for one year before dropping out.  This allowed him to focus on doing projects that enabled him to pursue his passions. 

He also knew this would be a good way to impress colleges. As was popular in America prior to the days of compulsory schooling and the infantalization of youth, Karp worked on projects he loved, found mentors, and began apprenticing in areas that aligned with his passion. Ironically, Karp didn’t need to impress colleges since after taking ownership of his learning he realized he didn’t need school for success.  

Public ed is only a right for the compliant

The powerful and wealthy in our country pay to send their children to schools that are not testing factories, but for those who can't afford this luxury, children are used, abused, chewed up and spit out of the system if they are not compliant. Even if it means they will get hurt or sick.

It's sort of like one of those alien movies where those in power feel they have the right to run these tests on aliens because they are sub-human. But this is not a movie and our children aren't aliens.
This story played out recently when 12-year-old Anthony Hererra's mother, Gretchen, followed doctors orders  which she shared with the school and allowed her son to opt out of the test.  As reported in Education Week, what came next was a letter waiting for her from the charter school her son attends. The letter said Anthony was no longer welcome because by opting out he violated his learning contract so he was being withdrawn from the school, effective immediately.

Why no school is the best school if you can't afford an independent school

A friend recently asked what school/districts I recommend near New York City. When my boyfriend and I discussed this a few years back I rattled off numerous schools and districts like this one.  Back then my job consisted in part of supporting schools with something called the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) which honors students passions, talents, interests, abilities and learning style. My advice today is very different.

What learning looks like for the children
of the wealthy or highly educated.

Those SEM schools are gone for the most part, though some hang on by a thread with an after school program.

Priorities have changed.

Gone are the days when we saw our children as creative, unique individuals and educators as the ones who could help them discover, explore, and develop their passions.

Today our teachers and students know they are nothing more than mere datapoints who will be fed a pre-packaged, curriculum that is measured by numerous One-Size-Fits-All tests that line the pockets of publishers like Pearson, fill the egos of politicians who don't know better and hurt our children.

Penelope Trunk, a wildly successful career advisor explains it this way:

"Test-based curricula is irrefutably ineffective and bad for kids. I'm not even providing a link, because it's so widely reported. However no one can think of a better way to run such a large and diverse public school system as the one we have in the US, so test-based curricula will persist for a long time."

Tell Diane Ravitch that bashing homeschooling & online learning is not a gift

Diane Ravitch has a gift this holiday season that I hope innovative educators and parents will reject.  

Here it is:

"This article is a Christmas gift from me to you.

Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic has written one of the most eloquent explanations of why we need teachers, schools, and universities.

At a time when we hear hosannas to online learning, home-schooling, inexperienced teachers, the business model of schooling, for-profit schools, and the commodification of education, this is bracing reading." 

The article that has the "eloquent explanation" Diane Ravitch's is praising calls homeschooling "the demented idea that children can be competently taught by people whose only qualifications for teaching them are love and a desire to keep them from the world—constitutes another insult to the great profession of pedagogy." 

While there are those that agree that the business model of schooling, for-profit schools, and the commodification of education are not the best for our children, lumping online learning and homeschooling into this bucket throws an unnecessarily divisive wedge as our society should be coming together to do what is best for children. Ignoring the research that says those who are home educated generally out-perform their public schooled peers undermines the credibility of both Ravitch and Wieseltier and will make knowledgeable parents and educators think twice before following their advice.  

When it comes to hearing those hosannas to online learning Ravitch should read up and learn about the amazing options that such learning brings to our children and take the time to find out why many students say they prefer it. People around the world now have free access to classes at places like MIT. Students who could not take classes in traditional schools now have the chance, and students who live in places were options were limited now have many more courses they can choose from.

Ravitch's ignorant and bold attack masked as a gift, has alienated a large segment of the population that knows better. The real gift Ravitch gave this holiday season was revealing her true colors for all to see.
______________________________

I invite you to comment with your thoughts below and join the conversation on Facebook where innovative educators have left more than 100 comments on this topic here.

How to Make Dropping Out of School Work for You

I have the good fortune to be able to call Deven Black a colleague and friend who has never disappointed when it comes to stretching my thinking. Deven helps me become smarter and look at things in new ways. Every time Deven and I communicate, I'm always surprised by some other amazing accomplishment of his that he mentions in passing.  As I was writing my Teens Guide to Opting Out of School for Success, Deven mentioned he was one such teen and he agreed to contribute to my guide.  I shared what an inspiration his story was and that I hoped he'd share it more widely.  Guess what? He did! This year I had the pleasure of seeing Deven speak at the #140edu conference in NYC on the topic. To follow is what he said, reprinted with permission and cross-posted on his blog Education On The Plate. If you'd like to watch him speak, you can find that below as well.

How many of you here graduated from high school?

(Hands go up)

#140edu stage – via digital camera (Photo credit: NJ Tech Teacher)

How many of you liked high school?

(Hands come down)

Just as I thought. 

Despite the laws mandating it, despite the ominous predictions of what will happen if you leave it, not everyone should go to high school.

Let me say it again, not everyone should go to high school.

This sounds like heresy, especially coming from a teacher.

But even in a time when it seems like you need a college degree to be an auto mechanic, not everyone should go to high school.

When I dropped out of high school for the first time, yes — I’ve done it twice — dropping out was considered a sure path to economic and social failure.

Not much has changed since 1968. Dropping out of high school is still labeled a sure path to ruin. That there are students dropping out of school is still called a crisis.

It is not a crisis. It is a message.

Thinking of drop outs as a crisis leads to solutions that focus on compliance– things like raising the age at which one can leave school, or more truant officers to track down the education fugitives.

But if we look at students dropping out of schools as a message, drop outs tell us is that school sucks, that it is not reaching them, or that they feel they have no hope for success, in high school or beyond it.

They tell us that they are not being challenged enough, or not being allowed to follow their interests, or just that school doesn’t fit them: it is too big, too small, too cliquey or too dangerous.

The reasons students leave school are as differentiated as the lessons we teachers are being told to teach them.

You have heard, and will continue to hear today and tomorrow, about ways to make school better, more enticing, more encouraging, more engaging and more effective.

All that is good, but it is almost impossible for any modern high school to meet the needs of all students.

This is not for lack of intent or lack of effort. It is a result of an increasingly centrally-mandated standardized world. Now we’re all supposed to hone our lessons to the common core. Really? Does anyone really want to be common?

Instead of focusing on how to make school better or teaching better, I’m going to talk about how to make learning better.

My idea of the perfect school is one in which you can  learn what you want to learn, when you want to learn it, where you want to learn it, and how you want to learn it.

I say, do what teachers have been telling you to do for so long, take charge of your education and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

I dropped out of high school twice, and college once, because attending was interfering with my learning. I got tired of teachers calling my questions and observations distracting and disruptive. I got tired of being told what to learn and when to learn it.

I figured out that knowledge doesn’t come in neat little packages called math, science, English Language Arts or social studies. Art is not a subject, neither is music, or health.

Knowledge is a massive, ever growing, completely interconnected all enveloping mass. It is the butterfly effect writ large, where everything we learn, every insight we gain, every understanding we come to, changes EVERYTHING.

So I left.

My parents were not happy about any of it, but I had the biggest, most cultured and most diverse city in the world to explore.

I still got a great education because I asked questions, followed tangents and never stopped being curious.

The real key to making dropping out — or opting out if you prefer– is to do it soon enough. Don’t wait until you’re beaten down by the system and have lost interest and hope. Leave school while you still have curiosity, a hunger to know something, to know anything or everything, and before you have to support yourself financially. It may be after 10th grade or it may be after 8th. You will know when it is right for you.

Now you can sleep a little later, but don’t spend the day in bed, or watching cartoons or talk shows. There is a world to explore.

Today it doesn’t matter if you live in Manhattan, like I did, or in East Nowhere, the whole world is available to you.

Think of the tools you have now that didn’t exist when I dropped out. Computers, the internet, Twitter, Skype, Facebook, and more are all there to help you access the world and learn anything you want.

You don’t need a curriculum, a road map or a plan at all.

Just ask a question and seek an answer.

Then ask another question.

Listen to the answers you get. Follow tangents. Focus like a laser or wander aimlessly. Tinker. Play.

All knowledge is connected and things will all start to make sense as you note commonalities, wonder about discrepancies, make connections and develop insights.

Are you in love with baseball? Study it. You’ll learn about statistics – figuring pitcher’s earned run averages takes complex mathematics — develop strategies, learn the science of the curveball, learn about the history of race relations in America, and more. You’ll learn about why the Dominican Republic produces so many major league shortstops and why Japan doesn’t, but produces pitchers. Follow baseball as far as it will take you…then ask another question.

Do you like to knit? Study it. Learn about different kinds of wool, how they differ and where they come from, how they become shocking chartreuse or majestic magenta. Learn math as you figure out how much you’ll need to make that sweater, the physics of tensile strength.

Into dolls, dogs, drumming or debate? Are you passionate about golf, gardening, guitar, grapes or Greta Garbo? It doesn’t matter what. Take the paths   your interests and passions give you.

Greta Garbo in The Joyless Street. Alexander Binder (for Atelier Binder) made the portrait during the filming. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After a while you’ll become an expert, an authority. You’ll wander off one path and discover another one, perhaps the secret of life, the universe and everything.

Just keep asking one more question and you will find many more answers. Each of which will lead to more questions.

Joyce Valenza calls it “a never ending search.”

Here are some things you are likely to discover:

• People are eager to talk about what they do and what they know, to someone who is interested in learning.
• People are eager to tell you their stories, what they think, what they feel, to someone willing to listen.
• Your bullshit meter will develop and become more accurate.
• You will find the joy of learning again, the joy of teaching what you learn, and you’ll rediscover the excitement of wondering.
• You will learn that all answers lead to more questions, better questions, deeper questions.
• Keep asking.
• Keep learning.

Do all the things school doesn’t leave you the time to do and you will get a better education than any institution can give you.

Don’t worry about getting into college. Getting into a good college requires standing out from the crowd, somehow distinguishing yourself from the hundreds of thousand other high school seniors.

So while all those other kids are all taking the same classes, cramming for exams and spending every extra minute doing every imaginable community service and extra credit assignment, you’ll be having different experiences.

While they’re being told what to learn, you’ll be deciding what to learn. Their learning will be limited by the curriculum, your learning will be free-range, going as far as your curiosity takes you.

Just think of the application essay you’ll be able to write.

And somewhere in the process of writing that essay, you might begin to wonder whether you really need to go to college.

Once you start becoming a free-range learner it is almost impossible to stop. And that is the best part of it all.

_________________________________________

If you want to hear it from Deven, here's his talk:

A Real Alternative: Degree AND Credentials Without College

Guest post by Alexandria Potter


Is college easy? 

I have heard that it is not and I can believe that. So you may be interested to know why I refer to going to college as “the easy way out."

Let's start with a Q&A.

Question:
 
How many people do we know that go to college and don’t know

• What they want to major in
• What they want to do in life
• What other options are available

Answer:

Alternatives to Standardized Tests for Homeschooling Families

Editor's note:  The information here targets homeschooling families, but these really are great ideas for all families.
Cross posted from Parent at the Helm with permission from Linda Dobson

From Susan and Larry Kaseman:

Your interest in your homeschooling child’s academic standing is understandable. Fortunately, we homeschooling families have many opportunities to observe our children’s development. We watch them exploring the world and, when necessary, translate what they do into conventional academic language. (Sorting rocks is science. Building with blocks is geometry and spatial relations. Recognizing one’s name is reading.) We can see the processes our children go through and support their early efforts just as we recognized and responded to their first words. We gradually come to understand that learning about baseball or horses develops basic academic skills.

The Missing Group in Our Nation's Talk About Education

Editor's note:  You can scroll to the end of the article to see Education Nation's final decision.

I had the pleasure to join journalists from around the country to speak with NBC News President Steve Capus and SVP of Education and Chief Digital Officer Vivian Schiller to find out what was planned for this year's Education Nation Summit. During the call we learned about many of the exciting activities planned. This year I am especially looking forward to the coverage that includes an increased focus on student voice as well as attention to the issues around "college for all" and is it really worth the cost.
 
However, there was one important group missing.  

Home educators.

The number of home educated students has doubled in the past few years and this is no longer just a choice reserved for certain religious groups.  It has gone mainstream. As a public school educator I have become enthralled not only with this movement, but with the amazing success that children who are living life without school are having both from the standpoint of academic achievement, college acceptance, citizenship, and achieving career goals.  

Some may wonder why Education Nation and other mainstream press shine the spotlight on charter schools which serve the same percentage of our nation's students but simply neglect to recognize another thriving and more successful movement. Could it be, as some savvy home educators in my online group have suggested, that it is being left out because it has no place in the corporate reform movement?

Let's hope not.

The research tells us homeschooled children outperform publicly school children on nearly all measures. I suggested that it was time to shine attention on this segment of our population that has proven itself to be one of the most effective paths to college and career success. 

I was pleasantly surprised to hear they were open to the idea.

Through the time I spend as an advocate and moderator of a online home education group for adults and teens I have had the opportunity to connect with some of the most prominent voices in home education who are guiding parents and young people in this journey.  Below (listed alphabetically) are my recommendations for those who would make terrific guests on Education Nation to provide a missing perspective that deserves to be included.