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Hunter

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Everything posted by Hunter

  1. The digital divide is a social justice issue that I am passionate about. Water justice issues make me even more furious, but they are separate issues, and my rage over water scarcity and maternal and infant mortality rates don't reduce the rage I feel about the digital divide.
  2. Curricula companies do not have a first priority to teach your child. Curricula companies have a first priority to sell curriculum. Curricula company want to make you dependant on them. Curricula companies design a curriculum that does NOT teach a child to teach himself. Curricula companies do NOT enable students to apply the skills immediately. Curricula companies promise that a child will be able to apply the skills after many YEARS of purchases from them. Even Spalding is mess since the author died. Spalding was ONE book. Now it is a multi-year curriculum designed to trap you in the curriculum for many years before you can graduate from it with any ability to apply what was learned. First I thought the expanded cursive handwriting instructions in the 6th edition were helpful, but that was only because I have been trained to expect workbook-like instruction. A student that has mastered Spalding manuscript only needs to learn to join and tweak the manuscript letters. He does not need brand new different instructions for each cursive letter. The focus should be on what is the same, not what is different.
  3. Handwriting a page takes time and preparation. There is such freedom once a child is prepared to copy from a typed page. It is like teaching a child how to make his own bowl of cereal, and how to make a sandwich. Once a child can do those two things, his ability to feed himself relieves us of having to feed him every few hours without a break. When a child can copy from any book, you can be on the phone and simply open a book and hand a child paper and pencil and silently mouth "copy this!" Only certain curricula prepare a student to write letters that are not modeled. Workbooks train a child to copy the model. Spalding teaches a child to master writing individual letters from very specific spoken instructions about clock faces.
  4. When the power surges get really bad here, I just run through the apartment and unplug everything, even the lamps. I keep my Solar Bible Bus by my bed, and just jump in my bed and turn it on. Unfortunately, there is not longer the model that I have. These are the closest. https://www.auroraministries.org/collections/thru-the-bible https://megavoice.com/audio-bible/envoy-2-e-series-audio-bible/ Vernon McGee can be such a mess! He makes me mad and he makes me laugh. He is a familiar voice in the dark, and the flashlight works for trips to the bathroom. This is something I would buy over and over. So far, I have not had to. It fits in my carry-on no problem.
  5. I am struggling with my eyesight to read these posts on a small screen. Power surges again today: I can't chance plugging a monitor into the wall. Please excuse any rudeness or lack of response that might be explained by inability to skim and to reread what I wrote. Thank you EVERYONE for adding your precious experiences and ideas and opinions!!
  6. Some people, some of the time, have some cellular data when they have nothing else. Cheap or free access is granted and withdrawn hodgepodge. Wifi in slums is all over the place. More people are added through grants and that overwhelms the systems in place with customers that are not paying much and the cable company has little incentive to update. And if the slum is prone to power outages, the wifi goes out with the power. Rural areas have always had less access. In the long-run some of them might get help, and others not. The digital divide: it is interesting to watch what is getting worse and what is getting better, and who is trying to take advantage of the most vulnerable to make a profit while pretending to "help". I have been on the phone for myself and neighbors with a variety of wifi and cellular providers. Some are transparent, and some are hiding their true plans. I don't know what Assurance Wireless is trying to hide, but it is something.
  7. Our agencies stop making appointments more than 3 months out, so you can't even make an appointment. People were assuming that waiting would eventually fix the problem, but now we know that it won't. I am just watching to see what happens long-term when this many people no longer can drive or have ID. And at the same time, some people can do what they need to do online, and go on with life as normal and even make a profit.
  8. Mathmarm, you posted so many good things. I think you might be the second person to list an atlas. I would not have thought of that! And lots more good geography, too. I love Drawing Textbook!
  9. Sometimes things stay closed because of lack of funds, not the spread of virus. When this is being done, it is lied about until it cannot be lied about anymore. I just dealt with something this afternoon. Whoever I was talking to was hiding something: I don't know what. There is so much going on that we don't know about. And when we do find out, we often have to act fast. I had 3 days to pack up my life in the city before getting on the plane with just my carry on and shoulder bag. If I hadn't of done something similar multiple times it would have been impossible. The people that watched me do it are still talking about. Some of them had to do the same things months later, and copied things I did, and called me for advice and to calm them the muck down and insist that it was possible. Shutting the doors saves a LOT of money, especially if you cripple the website and direct everyone to the crippled website. And then let it crash. Sigh!
  10. You BTDT experience is invaluable. What do kids feel in situations like this? How much can they be expected to focus? The reality of what a child can tolerate should make a difference in what a parent plans to teach. Many of us here are happy to explore this topic if it is something you want to discuss. No pressure, though, and you have every right to your privacy!
  11. When the college is open. Back in the city, the community college library was closed for a very very very long time, and closes again and again with no notice. One good thing about Kindle Fire tablets is that they are designed to download and hold borrowed library items to be consumed offline. An hour of wifi can mean bringing home a lot of stuff. It is worth practicing if you have not taken advantage of this feature.
  12. I posted exact devices so we can share what would be possible on these exact devices. I do not have this exact Kindle; I have owned an older version. I have never used any recent version of Freetime. I hope people can share how to make best use of these options. Someone could be saved a lot of money and time if they are warned that they cannot do something they assumed that they could. I have used a free month of Amazon unlimited and kept it for another month when I had limited access to my new library and already lost access to some of the things back in the city. I do not think we can buy anything to read CD's from a tablet. And beware that large pdfs freeze. Right now, I cannot access content that I have stored on a CD, and if I could buy a CD reader for a tablet, I 'd love to learn more about that option! If anyone has experience with how specific pdfs work on a tablet, please share that. I have used Layer's of Learning pdf's on a variety of tablets over the years and had nothing but success. I have found them more sluggish in e-ink devices.
  13. Nope, you don't grab your box as you flee. That is why things need to be in print. This is a theoretical box that awaits you. A box that is maybe a gift or a box that you can purchase with funds from a new charter school in your new place. You travel to your new place with a carry-on bag each. Sure, you COULD make a box like this and take it with you or mail it ahead of you. This is just a thread that someone can click on to glean ideas if certain types of scenarios befall them, and they need to make a lot of choices and purchases quickly. This is starting over from scratch.
  14. In the city, when things first locked down, opportunities to access public wifi did not exist. Here in the open desert, even when the library closed, wifi was available OUTSIDE and security guards were employed OUTSIDE. At times, to remain outside was impossible, even for a short amount of time. But the desert temperatures are extreme. At one point in the 24 hour day, it is usually possible to be outside for awhile. When it 115 degrees in the afternoon, it goes down to the 90s at dawn. When it is below freezing at night, it is often 50 in the afternoon. I choose here over the city for as long as people fear infection and take steps to reduce what they fear.
  15. The parameters are as tight or loose as is helpful. Start tight, to make sure you are not missing an opportunity to grow in some way, and then when you hit a roadblock where the parameters are making you do something ridiculous, widen the parameters. If you start too wide, and give up too quickly, you miss the opportunity to grow. If you don't give up something quick enough you build the entire remaining curriculum on an foundation that is unhelpful.
  16. I am still taking stock of what is gone and what is available. For ME, I need stuff that I can hold onto easily or can be replaced easily.
  17. Karen Stout's Science Scope is still in print. https://cathyduffyreviews.com/homeschool-reviews-core-curricula/science/general-science-resources/science-scope Using this scope with new books is a perfect example of 80's and 90's inspired.
  18. 80's and 90's inspired. Pointing out where and why you felt the need to update is beneficial for everyone to hear. Recently I read something that said "patterns" are not "rules". Noticing and using patterns as our default IS helpful! Assigning more worth to rules than we assign worth to people is not helpful.
  19. I wanted to rip off the mask and yank the beard of the librarian that I had to deal with. I think it took 6 trips to get him to okay my card. I held up mountains of bills and receipts and statements through the plexiglass that he rejected because the envelopes didn't pass even when the contents did pass, and vice versa. Finally he took something and treated it like it was radioactive. Court is online, too, and if your tech and connection are not as good as your opponent, you lose. Courts will not be open for all the people being evicted. No free passes here for the DMV. If you go to court to protest, they will reduce the fines but not excuse them. You will spend more money on data alone than you will save by protesting. We need to just pay the fine for our crime of not being served by the DMV. It was only recently that the government agencies all announced that they will not be opening again. People were just waiting. Since I am not planning to stay here, maybe it will be better to not bother at this point.
  20. I am really curious about what she ends out stumbling upon and loving. When a person is thirsty and never learned to drink water, they will seek out anything with water in it. Children do the same with books. They start to grow and get hungry and a book will have some drops of what they crave. They sometimes have no ability to imagine what might be a fountain of what they crave. She is hungry for something. Fiction supplies at least a bit of almost anything we might crave. Fiction is awesome. Fiction is enough for many people. And then others ... LOL ... they explore some wild other stuff. LOL.
  21. I have come to hate all handwriting workbooks. I prefer to spend a lot of time with a student teaching clock face manuscript, so they are prepared to copy regular typed text, instead of a handwritten model page. Handwriting curriculum are cheap to create and lock people into more of their curricula. I feel trapped when a student cannot copy anything but handwritten models. IF, and that is a BIG IF, a student shows general ability to multitask, then I will start teaching them to join the clock-face letters. Cursive requires thinking about multiple letters at a time to choose the correct join. Many learning disabled students need to finish one letter before thinking about the next letter. I also no longer teach uppercase cursive. Modern language contains too many acronyms that look very strange in cursive capital letters. Using manuscript uppercase with cursive lowercase is just fine as long as the slant matches. I make sure the cursive hand matches the slant of the manuscript hand. If I am going to teach slanted cursive, then I need to teach a slanted manuscript. I prefer to teach a vertical cursive and manuscript, because I have tutored a disproportionate number of lefties. GIFTED lefties can learn to write right-slanted cursive without smearing it, but it means turning the paper almost upside down. I'm going to stop talking. My nickname was "the handwriting nazi" for awhile. Every student thanked me, but they did not always enjoy my "torture".
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