stephinsocal
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Help with PAH's AP Lang class.
stephinsocal replied to pinkelement's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
My son is in the secondary section this year, and it’s great. He spends a ton of time on the class (up to three hours/day), mostly because he loves the interaction with the other students. His older brother did the same thing, so it’s hard for me to say how long the daily workload would take a kid who wanted to approach it more efficiently. -
Rhetorical and Scientific Analysis?
stephinsocal replied to KarenC's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
Not sure how to do a link with my phone, but there’s an annual book series we’ve used, The Best American Science and Nature Writing. -
WTMA Study Skills for the Logic Stage
stephinsocal replied to maize's topic in Logic Stage & Middle Grade Challenges
Checking back on this, as I’m thinking of signing up ds13 for this spring. Any experiences to share? -
Chromebook for online classes?
stephinsocal replied to diaperjoys's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
One Chromebook feature I like is the ability to set up a user account that only permits access to whitelisted sites. For some kids, at some times, it’s nice to be able to limit distractions. This has worked fine for us for Bravewriter, WTM, and AP Lang through PAH. Sometimes they’ll need to click through to other sites to complete assignments; in that case I just let them on my own, less restricted user account. -
DS15 has an iPhone. I've disabled the internet browser, disallowed games, and subscribed to OurPact, which lets me schedule and control his access to apps. Right now, apps he uses for school are available all the time, while others, including messaging, are available only for an hour a day outside "scheduled" blocks (school, dinner, nighttime and Sundays). I can grant temporary access for good reasons. Tougher than some, I know, but we figure it's easier to start out tight and loosen up than to go the other way.
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No firsthand experience, but a friend liked BYU's Korean courses: is.byu.edu.
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Missed this thread the first time around. Re: the BYU Idaho recommendation above, you should know that the Idaho campus is much less selective and academically rigorous than the BYU flagship campus, which also offers DE: www.is.byu.edu. That said, DS1 took Biology 100 through BYU a couple of years ago, and we were underwhelmed. It was very much a check-the-intro-course-box kind of class--read the textbook and provided course notes, and take ungraded quizzes and three or four graded tests. DS was frustrated with unclear/imprecise wording in some of the questions, and there was really no way to take that up with an instructor. Customer service people and tutors were available, prompt, and helpful, but we could never figure out who was actually in charge and grading the tests. Furthermore, for "test security reasons," they wouldn't allow students to look at their graded tests, so they couldn't figure out what they missed and thus what they needed to bone up on for the final. Overall, DS doesn't regret taking it, since it got him out of freshman bio, but I'm not rushing to sign up his brothers. No idea if this is an outlier--other people I've talked to love BYU classes, particularly for foreign language, so take it for what it's worth.
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Experience Astronomy
stephinsocal replied to 48820592's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
I hadn't heard of it, but looked at the site since ds12 is an avid stargazer. They lost me at "Bible-based projects." -
Community service ideas
stephinsocal replied to stephinsocal's topic in High School and Self-Education Board
Thanks for your great responses, everyone. We've always done ad hoc kinds of service projects through scouts and church, and I'm thinking of adding a more regularly scheduled commitment--maybe Meals on Wheels a couple of times a month. I appreciate all the ideas.