Re: [seul-edu] Home schooling pages

[Jim Wildman <jawildman@cfanet.com>]

Home schoolers do have some different needs from a government school.

As to grade books:  Flexibility is very important.  Most are teaching
multiple classes of one student each.  Or one class with multiple
students of different grade levels.  ie doing a science project with all
of the kids (ages 17 to 8) at the same time.  There is also a
significant number of home schoolers that don't organize their studies
in a class like fashion at all, but rather concentrate on a specific
subject at a time.  

As to tuturial type programs: I think home schoolers want the same sorts
of capabilities that others do.  It would seem like a good idea for
some of the programs to closely follow one of the major curriculum
providers.  For instance, Saxon is often touted as the best advanced
math curriculum, but so far as I know, they provide no computer based
drill programs, etc.  

I think that Linux is a great fit for home schooling EXCEPT for the
technology learning curve.  With SEUL-edu's efforts, maybe in another
year we can start to provide shrink wrapped Linux boxes for home
educators.  It would be great to be able to set up an information booth 
at some of the book fairs (Ohio has a book fair that runs about 15,000
attendees in 3 days).  But that is a lot of work for a volunteer type
organization.

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Jim Wildman                         Senior Consultant, 3X Corporation
jawildman@cfanet.com                jim.wildman@3x.com  www.3x.com
http://www.cfanet.com/jawildman     (513)587-3647