Quiver0f10
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Posts posted by Quiver0f10
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I know BJU, and soon Abeka, will have digital textbooks, I am wondering what other digital textbooks are available? Thanks.
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We are using BP this year and the companion could be used alone as a spine without adding MOH or SOTW if needed.
Biblioplan. It schedules SOTW for the younger, MOH for older, readers for each grade level and a read aloud for the family. All planned out. Worksheets and maps for each age group, and crafts for the youngers.
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Thanks. I did find a set to borrow though.
Jean, these lectures are often on sale for as low as $19, sometimes lower. I am just thinking that sending borrowed materials back and forth could run $5-6 or more depending on packaging.
The resources that EL listed look good. I might have to go make some comparisons.
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Thanks!
If you can't find them, here's a few free resources I've earmarked for our study next year.
Saylor uses part of this course from Yale OCW
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My two youngest would love this! Thank you for sharing!
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Longshot, but does anyone have The Teaching Company's DVDs for The Divine Comedy that I could borrow? Thanks.
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helena -
I'm pretty sure I know what is worrying you. Although we aren't a very bohemian-life-style family, we accidentally wound up doing some rather extreme alternative-y stuff for high school, combined with some community college classes and some just-get-it-done stuff for the subjects that didn't interest us. I used TWTM as a half-way point between unschooling and conventional schooling. For me, it was a way to divide the bits of a conventional education that didn't suit our family goals and lifestyle from the bits that were necessary to become that life-long learner and not wind up accidentally handicapping my children. As long as you are willing to use community college as a bridge to university, you can have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. You can continue to do more or less what you are doing but add in a few things along the lines of what Muttichen suggested and wind up with children who are capable of learning something in an academic way if they choose to do so. Personally, I think it is a huge handicap not to teach your children how to do this, provided they are capable of it. I strongly suspect that this is exactly what is worrying you. There is nothing wrong with leading a bohemian life-style or raising your children to prefer that, but if you are like I am, you probably know "bohemian" people who lack the self discipline to accomplish their creative goals or who lack the academic skills to accomplish their career goals - would-be musicians or writers who can't make themselves put in the necessary time to become proficient at an instrument or finish that novel, or would-be architects or vets or engineers who never received the academic grounding necessary to make it through the necessary classes. I don't think it really is a matter of whether your children know when women were allowed to vote or what mitosis is. One can learn those things. It is more a matter of whether they can write a research paper, read a difficult passage of text, understand a complex explanation, solve problems, pick out the main point, figure out which bits need connecting and which need memorizing, etc. I think homeschoolers who have never learned to write clearly, are not well-grounded in math, have not read lots of high-level material in a wide range of subjects, and have not learned how to study (academically) are probably going to be at a disadvantage when they start college classes, but community colleges are pretty good at filling in the rest of a standard education. Their students come from all over the world (at least where I live) and the introductory classes assume basic academic skills but do not assume that everyone has received the same previous educations.
We all make decisions for our children. One of the major decisions is what sort of lifestyle they will lead while they are living with us. It is ok, I think, to raise your children to fit into your own world. I think you have to expose them to other worlds and make sure that they are educated in such a way that they are able to live other ways if they need to, but I think you are under no obligation to make them WANT to live any other way unless you think your way will not work for them. Will they be able to make a living in your world? If not, then perhaps you should reassess. Otherwise, I would not worry about that part.
As much as we try to keep all doors open to our children for as long as possible, at some point (like the beginning of high school), some of those doors will begin to close. If you choose to aim your children for an ivy league school, they will need to give up some things. If you choose to let your children study music seriously in high school, they will need to give up some things. If you choose to let them compete heavily in a sport, then they will need to give up some things. Some children and families seem to be able to get away with giving up very little, but in the eastern US, at this point in time, for the average family and child, I think high school is when you begin to have to make some choices and give up some things. That just is the way things are. It is ok. You just don't want to close too many doors. For example, for my family, not studying math through pre-calculus in high school would close too many doors. It is worth thinking about this and deciding at the beginning of high school exactly where that line stands for your family. I think it is very important that you tell your children about all these decisions that you are making for them and get their agreement about any doors you choose to close. Some are closed at birth. Not everyone is intelligent enough to be a good doctor, for example. It is good to discuss those doors, too.
The thought that the education you are giving your children at home now might be the only academic education they receive is indeed a scary thought. Very scary. It is an awsome responsibilty. That does not mean that their education with you has to look like a conventional education, I think, but only that you need to make sure they are not handicapped by the education you give them and that they understand exactly what sort of trade-offs you are making by educating them unconventionally. Homeschooling allows a wonderful flexibility and freedom. It also has some rather large disadvantages. Personally, I think that it is a good idea to make up for those disadvantages by taking full advantage of that flexibility and freedom to do some unconventional things. For example, your children may not have the advantage of a fluent foreign language teacher, but they CAN make up for that disadvantage by taking a few months in the middle of the school year and going to live in a foreign country. They may not have the advantage of taking formal lab sciences, but they CAN spend lots of time designing and doing their own experiments. They may not have the advantage of being able to choose amongst a wide range of elective classes, but they CAN do a large, year-long independent research project. They may not have the advantage of being able to take AP classes, but they CAN take community college classes (provided you live near one, have the money, and the rules allow it). They may not have the advantage of lots of inspiring, great teachers, but they CAN have great mentors. Etc. You might feel better if you think about what exactly your are giving up and what exactly your are gaining with each decision you make.
If you want, I will describe (or find past posts describing) the alternative-y things we did and how we tried to make sure they still covered the basic academic skills. They were along the lines of what Muttichen described, with a few additions specific to my particular families goals (like learning to design and document an experiment).
Hope this helps...
Nan
I would love to read some of what you did. I remember reading some of your posts in the past and always enjoyed reading how you homeschooled.
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Ds 17 and 15 Dante's Inferno
Ds 14 Journey to the Center of the Earth
All 3 are reading I don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Athiest
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My son is 12 so over what the target age is for level 3 I would expect. However I did buy it for him because nothing else is working. It has been like this for every subject we have ever done. Nothing worked until it did basically then he just seems to take off. Example math- he was so so so far behind the beginning of last year he was barely adding. We finally tried math u see he has jumped a TON!!! He went through beta, gamma and is now in the middle of delta. He is severe ADHD but he also has tourettes so he can't take many meds and the ones they tried seemed to make it so bad. Violent outbursts, crying fits, and the muscle tics that were so HORRIFYING people would stare in public. Needless to say he has been on a roller coaster forever it seems. This last year we stopped all meds and started watching diet and the changes are amazing!!!
He is now doing great. Now his issue is reading and grammar mostly. He just can't seem to grasp it or hold it for very long. So if you guys have any other advice on reading that would be great too. He can read he is just terribly slow and forgets the rules for the sounds and such. I am hoping to get through level 3 by summer maybe and help him start catching up because he asks all the time why he can't do what other kids do.
What are you using or reading instruction or phonics?
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A most important thing about Dragon Speech, is that it needs to be trained to understand a persons voice.
Which basically involves correcting it when it makes mistakes. Where it learns from being corrected.
So that time needs to be spent on training it.
Though another important thing, is that this 'training' is stored as a file in Dragon Speech.
So that to install and use Dragon Speech on another computer?
It simply involves copying this 'training file' to the other computer.
So that it only needs to be trained once.
But the English language uses 44 phonemes. Where something that you could try, is training Dragon Speech to recognize the way that he pronounces the different phonemes and their combinations ?
Here's a link to a page that can be printed out. Which has a list of words using the 44 phonemes. Where these words could be used to train it.
http://www.boardman.k12.oh.us/bdms/phonological/44Phonemes.pdf
Thank you!
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If we can't get it working this week I will call them. Thanks again!
Hubby didn't have a script to read, but his program is used hospital-wide--it probably has a different mechanism with so many different users. He wasn't sure what the script was, but it makes sense that a home version would come with something like that.
If your son's setup takes extra long, I would call their help center or see if they have a message board. Good luck!
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think you and thank him for he help. We are still in the set up process though. It has my son reading some scripted text so the program can recognize him. At this point he has to keep reading the script and he is getting frustrated. hopefully we will be able to finish the set up soon and start using the program.
Hubby says that Dragon gets better and better all the time. Initially, it catches a bunch of stuff (that's probably where you are now), but then you have to train it on specific words that it's not catching on it's own. It took him several months of using it 3-4 times per week for 3-4 hours each of those days to get it to where you want it. Then, he said "you and the Dragon are one." For background, he uses it for medical dictation (and it's the medical edition that has a medical dictionary). It is an investment of time, but HE LOVES IT.
If you want to, you can also add words to the dictionary (like you would with Word's dictionary).
You can also save blocks of phrases that you use over and over again, you can do that. It's like creating a voice shortcut that says, "when I say x, always insert phrase y."
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We have the software. I am going to check out the youtube videos. thanks!
My hubby uses this program at work and loves it--he recommends it to folks all the time. I will see if he has time to answer your question. Are you using the computer software or an app?
mygoodstuffreviewed has a youtube video called "Dragon NaturallySpeaking Text to Speech Demonstration" that shows you how to have it read text back to you. He has a number of videos about Dragon. IE won't let me copy and paste the link into the forums. We are considering this program in the future, so I am curious to see what responses you'll get.
If you know someone IRL that uses this at work (like a medical person who uses it for dictation), they may be a good resource for you.
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DS uses Inspiration on the PC and iPad, and it is easy peasy lemon squeezy to use. :D
Sometimes DS uses the Windows text to speech function for PDF and Word documents so that he can hear what he's written. The voice is digital. He also uses LearningAlly and his older Kindle's text to speech function on a regular basis.
When he needs to make flash cards, he uses this website.
He pretty much types everything. He prefers the built in Windows speech to text function over Dragon.
I didn't know windows has this option! How do I get there? Could you share how he uses Inspiration? Does that have a speech to text option too?
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Honestly, we have LOOKED at Dragon Speak, Ginger, others such as those, but have not yet attempted to implement them. I have a friend who tutors SN kids and has a son that is dyslexic. He uses Dragon Speak tied with Ginger and really uses it successfully but she says it took quite a bit of additional work for Dragon Speak to correctly recognize his voice. I had heard that Kurtweil has a great system but it is apparently very expensive and has more bells and whistles than a normal household would need.
I was very close to getting one or more of the three of those over Christmas, but I am honestly a little overwhelmed with time consuming items on my plate right now and I just don't think I have the time to try and help the kids with learning a new system. I plan to seriously look into both while I am on a business trip without the kids in April, but I am very interested to see if anyone responds to your inquiry. I don't recall anyone here mentioning that they use either of those, but Sandy Cook's sons might have used them. I am trying to remember. She posts on this board periodically and has written a book on their experience with learning differences ("How to Homeschool Your Learning Abled Kid").
Have you read Ben Foss' book "The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan"? He discusses technology. I have not read the entire book. It is on my very long list of things to do over the next few weeks.
We are having trouble with this too. Frustrating. I haven't read that book, but I will look for it on Amazon. I feel like it;s time to start implementing more o the tools available or students like him. I don't mind reading for him, but he wants to be more independent.
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I don't mean reading programs such ass Barton, AAR etc. but programs you use to help with school such as Dragon Speech to text and so on?
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My 14 yo is having trouble getting the dragon program to recognize his speech. He has been reading the sample text until the program has enough to recognize, but he has to keep going. He did 6-7 years of ST and graduated but he has a very nasal, monotone speech when reading and I am not sure if that is the issue. Not sure how to proceed. I think Dragon would really help him move forward in his schooling. Once we can get Dragon working, I am hoping he can dictate his science notes and then have the program read it back to him so he can study. I have no idea if Dragon does this or not?
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me too! :lol:
Oh I'd totally snag some cake, get on the bouncy house, and just walk over there like I own the joint.
NOT
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This thread should be stickied at the top of the page. Thank you so much, Ruth!
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Hmm never mind
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I agree, however, if you are trying to get your budget to a zero based budget as YNAB and DR suggest, it is helpful to know what percentage you spend.
If DR recommends 15% and you only spend 10%, you can see that you have 5% left of your budget to put elsewhere. The reverse is also true.
Dawn
Yes, exactly.
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I was curious because I was looking at some budgeting tools online and each has listed % for the various categories. We are tweaking our 2014 budget so knowing what % to budget there maters to us. Or rather what % is reasonable helps in deciding.
What good is it to know the percentage?? If I say I spend 3% that doesn't tell you if I'm a great couponer or if I make a million dollars a year.
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We spend more on food than rent too.
I'd say a bit over 25%. We spend slightly more on groceries than on rent.
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We are at 24%. I thought that was high but I guess for our family size that is normal. I'd love to cut that down some though.
Xpost-Digital Textbooks
in The Learning Challenges Board
Posted
I know BJU, and soon Abeka, will have digital textbooks, I am wondering what other digital textbooks are available? Thanks.