And who am I to argue with the eloquent, hard-working Pioneer Woman?
I think part of being a homeschooler is being somewhat of a nonconformist, somewhat of an anarchist, with a healthy amount of “freak” thrown in there somewhere, as well as an overall absence of good sense.
The rest of the post is, as usual, funny. With photos.
Today isYesterday was National SpankOut Day. I don’t usually care for these kinds of days of observance — mostly because there’s a day for everything, including the unbelievably trivial, but also because I don’t see much of a purpose to making the days official in some way — but if SpankOut Day helps just one parent stop spanking his/her kids, then it’s worth it.
Chris O’Donnell has collected some posts on his Evolved Homeschooler Wiki.
Check this out: a study by Vanderbilt University indirectly supports the value of homeschooling. It concludes that kids learn best when they explain what they’re learning to their mom. Previous studies (if not oodles of personal experience) have shown that people learn more when they generate explanations of what they’ve learned. The Vanderbilt study examined whether it’s important if the explanation is for oneself or for a listener, and also if the specific listener mattered.
In other words, do children learn better when they explain something to someone else?
Don’t we all?
And does it matter if that someone else is one of the most important people in a child’s life?
Shouldn’t it?
From “Learning from explaining: Does it matter if mom is listening?”
The goal of the current study was to examine whether explaining to another person improves learning and transfer. In the study, 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 54) solved multiple classification problems, received accuracy feedback, and were prompted to explain the correct solutions to their moms, to explain the correct solutions to themselves, or to repeat the solutions. Generating explanations (to selves or moms) improved problem-solving accuracy at posttest, and explaining to mom led to the greatest problem-solving transfer. The study indicates that explanation prompts can facilitate transfer in children as young as 5 years and reveals that it matters if mom is listening. [emphasis mine]
Well, DUH. It always matters if mom is listening. And she usually is, as is dad. Most parents naturally help their babies and young children learn new things by talking to them (even when they’re too young to “talk back”), answering their questions (even the thousandth “why?” for the day), and listening and otherwise showing genuine interest when their kids say, “Hey, Mom, look at this!” or “Hey, Dad, guess what?” This is the natural state of early exploration and learning for all humans raised by other loving humans.
Should this relationship be any different as kids get older? Would a parent’s genuine, natural interest in what’s going on in his/her child’s mind (and life) not continue to exist and nurture the child’s learning? It seems obvious to me that if a parent doesn’t drastically change the way s/he interacts with and listens to his/her kids, the benefits of having that parent as a “listener” would never dissipate. It also seems obvious that the more time a child spends with his/her parents actually learning and talking to them, the better.
Homeschooling, then, naturally provides a superb learning environment for children.
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My family spent Saturday afternoon at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Family Day in Boston, where we saw all kinds of great stuff. I’ll post more about the expo a little later, but I want to tell you first about one particularly outstanding product we learned about while there: a free programming interface for kids called Alice.
I’m excited about this program because my 9-year-old has said she wants to learn how to make her own computer games, and we’ve been looking for a child-friendly application to help her learn how to do that. We couldn’t find anything that looked like a 9-year-old programming novice would be able to learn quickly and easily. Half the battle with helping young kids maintain their excitement is to enable them to complete a project in a short period of time (like two hours on the first try). Everything we looked at either had a huge learning curve or would have probably been too difficult for our daughter right now.
And then, Saturday, we just stumbled upon Alice by accident.
Carnegie Mellon developed Alice, a drag-and-drop programming interface that allows you to create 3D worlds in a Java-like language. Sometime this year, a new version (3.0) of Alice will be released which will enable actual Java programming, not Java-like programming.
In the meantime, two versions are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, standard Alice, designed for high school and college-aged “kids” and Storytelling Alice, for middle school-aged kids. I think even some younger kids will be able to use Storytelling Alice, given that my 7-year-old son sat on my lap this morning and explained to me how he thought it worked. After watching me for a few minutes, he definitely understood the basic idea behind how to build a world and make the characters in it do what we wanted them to do.
Both versions of Alice come with a library of scenes and characters; each character has a handful (or more) of ready-to-use methods (actions), so that if you want your character to walk, run, talk, turn, smile, cry, think, etc., you can just drag that method from a list and drop it into your program. You can also create new methods.
I took the 30-minute tutorial for Storytelling Alice and then spent another 30 minutes playing with the software. In that hour, I learned how to create a new world, add characters to it, and program those characters to do what I wanted them to do. I also learned some programming terminology, like what a method is. I finished a brief movie in about 30 minutes. Not too shabby!
The Alice.org website also offers free instructional materials, a user forum, additional characters and scenes, and other helpful information. When I have time to play with the tool more, I’ll learn how to do programming loops, “while” statements, and other standard programming thingies (pardon my technical language) that will allow my characters to interact more naturally. Eventually, I suppose I’ll let my daughter have a turn. It was her idea to learn how to program, wasn’t it?
And did I mention that Alice is free?
My only disappointment thus far is with the publishing capability. The “publish as movie” function doesn’t work yet (at least not in Storytelling Alice). And if you publish as an HTML page, anyone who wants to view the page has to have Java, Java 3D, and Java Media Console installed on his/her computer.
Otherwise, Alice rocks. Check it out at Alice.org.
In a previous post, I cautioned unpublished writers about magazine markets that don’t pay. I stand by my statements: I think that magazine publishers should pay writers something for their work, even if it’s a token amount. Why? Because professionals should be paid for their services. In what other field are people routinely expected to donate their services to help someone else get his/her business off the ground?
However, I’m not saying writers should never write for free. I just think they should do it when the benefits outweigh the costs (time and effort) and when the working conditions are not one-sided in favor of the publisher. For some people, the benefits have nothing to do with business: they write for publications that support causes near and dear to their hearts or that cover topics about which they’re passionate. Altruism is a good thing.
But if your goal is to earn money as a writer and you have not yet signed your first contract, how do you know if writing for free would help your career? Unless you have a crystal ball, you won’t know for sure. But the following three questions can help you evaluate the costs/benefits of writing for free.
Examples include:
Are you desperate to get published, to get your first byline and clip to show friends, family, and especially editors you’d like to write for? Don’t be. And don’t let publishers make you feel like you should be.
No doubt, it can be hard to get your first magazine article published. Many editors like to work with previously published writers. The pressure to get that first byline is legitimate, even for published writers who are trying to break in to a new market.
Breaking in is hard to do
It’s the age-old question, but it’s not unique to writers: How am I supposed to get experience if no one will hire me? We all have to get that first job/clip/whatever for our resumes, regardless of the field.
That’s why unpublished writers should exhibit confidence when they interact with editors; in no way should they assume or behave as if freelance writing is different from other professions. We all need to get our foot in the door at least once.
To a certain degree, I’m echoing sentiments expressed a short while ago by Linda Formichelli of The Renegade Writer Blog. Linda notes that writers should never let editors see them desperate for work. No matter how empty your bank account, Formichelli cautions, always present yourself in a positive, “how can I help you?” light.
That advice holds true whether you’ve published 200 articles or none. Editors shouldn’t see you as someone who so badly wants that first clip that you’ll accept just about any terms they toss your way.
As I mentioned in my previous post, in a recent call for submissions, a magazine editor announced that she needs several articles for her next issue. Unfortunately, it’s a nonpaying market. As compensation for published articles, writers will receive two subscriptions to the magazine, a $55 value.
I’ll write more about weighing the decision to write for free in another post. For now, let’s just say that writing for free does sometimes, under the right circumstances, have benefits.
But this editor also wants writers to work on spec, to submit articles that she may then hold for as long as six months before making a go/no-go decision. That means a writer could spend tens of hours researching and writing an article that never had a chance of being published in that magazine. And while the editor takes up to six months to decide whether she wants to publish it, the article is worthless to the writer, who can’t shop it around to other markets.
Keep reading… »
Remember, writers:
A call for submissions to a nonpaying magazine market appeared on a Yahoogroups writers’ list I subscribe to. Unfortunately, work-for-no-pay is not terribly uncommon with new, small magazines. Thumb through the Writer’s Market and you’ll find plenty of consumer magazines claiming their budgets are too tight or their businesses too new to pay writers for their work.
You’ll also find that most nonpaying markets have awfully high standards for work they want done for free. What ever happened to “you get what you pay for”? (Kidding — we should always put our best foot forward.) I’m amazed at the arrogance of some of the ads — you’d think that they’d be begging for submissions and kissing writers’ butts.
But they’re not. And that’s because they don’t have to. There seems to be no bottom to the pool of writers willing to give someone else’s business free stuff in exchange for seeing their name in print or pixels. The call for submissions that came through last night was particularly ballsy, though. The editor/publisher wants writers to:
Obviously, the magazine is offering very little in return for someone’s hard work. The burden lies entirely with the writer, while the publication will commit to nothing, not even a quick turn-around on their go/no-go decision. And they don’t seem to value the query process — they expect writers to hurry up, write a long, quality article, submit the work, and then cross their fingers that the article will be accepted and published. All of this for not a single penny.
Keep reading… »
