Arcadia, you are fabulous! Thanks so much. Those were great directions and I had no difficulty posting the link to the video on our platform. I really appreciate the help and will be spending some time exploring what some of the recommended Google apps can do. Slack and Trello seem really cool too.

:blushing: How do I browse to my video clip file? This is the first time I have ever made a video on my computer. Actually I can locate the clip in my photos, and there is a share button, but it is for other apps like YouTube, I think. This is so embarrassing, you guys.

I made a video on my laptop to turn in for my teaching certification class and I have no clue how to get it from the video format into my Google Drive to share with my cohort. In Google Drive, I can see what others have shared with me, but don't really quite understand how it all works. I will need to provide a URL to the class. Thank you! And I thought making the video would give me a heart attack....!!!!!

Thanks for your help! Do I feel silly. I've had webcams on my computers for years and sure I Skype with the kids, but have never done anything else with them. Once I located where to turn the camera on, taking the video was ridiculously easy and I lost a bit of time drawing horns and a mustache on myself in the final product. I suspect the first attempt will be sort of crude (rough) and I figure it will take several videos to get over being self -conscious, but it's a start. Arcadia, I have a ton of Power Point presentations that I've done through the years for homeschooling, so I am excited to play with turning those into videos. Thanks. It's a whole new world. :D

Help please! I just started my classes for my teaching certification and one of the first projects is to make a 5 minute video to upload to the class platform. There are numerous links for editing software to do all kinds of cool things to your video like add music or add a quiz at the end, but there is nothing for the ignorant, over-50 crowd who have never made a digital video in their life. Googling seem to bring up articles from several years ago and suggested software that Microsoft no longer supports. I just know that someone in this creative crowd makes videos, especially for educational purposes. I have a webcam on my Lenovo Flex 4 and an iphone - 7, I think. We can make the video on anything we want, but the suggestion was to make something we can use in our teaching career. Many in my cohort are already in the classroom. I am not. My goal is to be a high school teacher in the social sciences. I was thinking about making a quick intro to "Why Study History?" It's not the world's most original topic, but when I was building AP syllabi to submit to the College Board, it seemed like that topic was often on the first week's agenda. I want to have an intro that hooks my students, so I figure this is the place to start. I can re-edit as many times as I like, but right now, I just need to know how to make the video. A lot of our work will be submitted on video and when we are doing our clinical hours, we will need to record on class session per week for appraisal. Any help you can offer would be appreciated. My mom is terminally ill and I spend about 20 hours a week with her. Right now, I need short learning curves and try to get my homework turned in as early as possible to guard against the inevitable emergency, but other than that, I am so excited by what I am working on.

Sailor Dude is now in his second year of college and I am still not taking homeschool retirement well. My answer to that is to work towards my teaching certification at the ripe old age of 54 with the goal of enlightening high school students about the various social sciences. It is an accredited online program that my alma mater steered me towards as a much less expensive and time-consuming program as I already have a masters (albeit not in teaching) and "some" teaching experience. :D We started this week and I love it! I am in a cohort of 12 people, many of whom are already in the classroom. The program is highly collaborative, interactive, and technological. I am scrambling on the technology end of things, but enjoy the challenge and the plethora of resources I am discovering . One of our first assignments is to discuss as a team which collaborative tools we want to use outside of the virtual classroom. Skype of course has been suggested as well as Google Hangouts from one of our colleagues who is a university professor looking for a change to a high school classroom. For those of you that are in the classroom or who work in collaborative environments, what collaboration tools do you like to use? Also, for those of you in flipped classrooms, if you are making your own videos, what do you use to make them? Thanks to you all I even know what a flipped classroom is. Anyway, if anyone is interested, I can link some of the inspiring videos and tools I've encountered in my program so far.

nm

In my state, there was a young man that was severely injured in a famous school shooting. He survived only to be killed in a hunting accident a couple of years later. His family's attitude about their loss explains why gun control is impossible in this country. The family basically viewed the loss of their son at an early age with his whole life before him as the trade-off for the privilege of owning guns. There is no reasoning with people who will give up a child in order to hold on to a cold pile of steel for the ironic stated goal of "protecting their own." If you listen to the language of gun owners who won't compromise, it is frankly, the language of addiction. There is something almost genetically missing from the equation. Witness the run on "bump stock." Gun owners are so afraid of losing access and want to know what that "power" might feel like, that they are grabbing what they can. Never mind 59 people dead. Never mind the over 500 wounded. Never mind the mental and financial ripple of all that is lost. These gun owners can't see it. All they can see is the "high." Gun reverence is nearly as powerful as God and every bit as addicting and irrational as a heroine addiction.

Katie, sending :grouphug: and :001_wub: your way. It's the gun owners who have no room to make any changes that drive those of us in the middle towards voting for total gun control. When a gun owner appears to have no empathy for humanity, but a huge need for more ammo, I am gone.

I grew up with guns in the house (for livestock issues only) and ds and I spent six months in a part of the country where everyone had guns and yet, we never felt uncomfortable or wary. Something has shifted in the attitude of gun owners or perhaps the population of gun owners has shifted. I never used to be for eliminating guns, but did feel that like cars or even alcohol purchases, there should be some common sense restrictions, like perhaps what Switzerland embraces. But because gun owners have no limitations and really do appear to not give a damn about the carnage, I am no longer feeling so friendly. The "f-you all, it's all about US and our rights " attitudes are getting really old. There is an utter ugliness that I don't remember existing before. It's pushing me to the edge. It's a demographic that gives the appearance of total irresponsibility and lack of empathy. 527 wounded? 58 dead? Whatever. "I am a responsible gun owner; I didn't do the shooting. It's not my problem." No, it's not your problem, but your apathy and unwillingness to have any compromise of any kind are.

In the US, the right of a gun owner to have an extra box or an an extra 10,000 boxes of ammo supersedes the right of a child or 20 some, to go to school and not be gunned down. The right of a gun owner to walk to through a suburban mall packing a long gun because - well, I am not really sure why - supersedes the right of the mall shoppers to not get gunned down and to make it home safely to their families. The right of a gun owner to collect as many weapons as possible in his apartment with no responsibility to store the guns safely or to have any training supersedes the rights every one of one of the 59 people massacred and the 527 people who were injured in Las Vegas. They are nothing but spit on the pavement compared to gun owners and their rights. We won't give up one box of ammo, require gun safes, or training classes because our right to have them no matter how irresponsibly we behave trumps everything, including peoples lives. With the NRA actively encouraging gun owners to go after the left and people that disagree with them - with their guns - we are lost as a country.

I think that would depend on where you are applying to and what the student's "story" is. Ds took 11 AP classes (all with CB approval) with 9 exams. In AP Biology, he earned a C, then a B with a 3 on the AP exam and a 740 on the SAT Subject test. No shame there. It was one of his favorite classes with a brilliant, curmudgeonly AP teacher at our high school. Our educational philosophy was "stretching without breaking." We embraced educational risk-taking and ds's GPA was not perfect. His story was one of taking several challenging classes, participating in sports year round, and holding a job. He is not a rocket scientist, but he does have a passion for what he does and a fairly strong work ethic. He is not at a top tier school, but at a fairly good one, loving what he is doing. You don't have to report all the scores. It's your choice and part of your student's story.

We absolutely love Ray. Ds has been disappointed with his college Spanish classes after spending two and half years with Mr. Leven. Congrats to your DD!

Do schools have policies about codes? I am curious because in three terms, my ds has never been required to have a code. Or is that more applicable to specific majors?

Thanks for your annual PSA! Last year, I read yours and other professors advice on this topic to ds before he started his first year at college. I just sent him another reminder. I received a "Lol" text with the following, "Wouldn't dream of not reading them." He had a professor his first semester that offered no mercy for those who did not read the syllabus. The professor told her class each day the first week to read the syllabus and she told them exactly what to expect if they didn't. Sailor Dude said she held to it no matter how bitterly students complained.

Oxford World Classics has a relatively accessible edition of selections from the Historical Records Sima Qian: The First Emperor Be sure to read the introduction as it provides good background material. The book can easily be covered in a week or less.

You are correct about the American lit, as long as you, the teacher, are not submitting your syllabus for the College Board course audit. Many brick and mortar schools have American Literature for 11th grade and British Literature for 12th grade. The way to handle this on the course audit is to state exactly that and put the SC1 next to it on the audit.

Kai, thank you so much for this recommendation. I've ordered it as it looks like it addresses some very specific concerns that I have.

I will remove some of the following information, so please do not quote this post. My parents are both 77 and live in their single-level home about a 5-minute drive from us. My mom had breast cancer several years ago and we think the chemo severally hurt her lungs and the past year has greatly diminished her ability to do more than walk a few feet in the house. She had a mild heart attack a couple of months ago and they placed a stent. My dad has been fairly healthy and he now does nearly everything around the house. They have house cleaners every other week for two hours. Anyway, Dad was scheduled to have hip surgery last week, but a few days prior, he had chest pains. We got him to ER and in the cath lab they discovered two blockages, one on the major artery they call "the Widow Maker." We were very lucky. He just had another few days in the hospital due to a concern over a possible clot in one of the stents. There can be no hip surgery for 6 months, so he has chronic pain. We need to make some major changes and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. My folks have acknowledged they need help and they would like to stay in their home for now. I spent four nights there over the past week and have a better feel for what my mom can do and what she can't do. Any advice that those of you who have been there can offer would be greatly appreciated. I am working my way through the book, How to Care for Aging Parents. Tomorrow morning I will meet with their house cleaners and see if we can change to every week and add some more items. I will be working on meals and grocery shopping and laundry to start with.

You will need to do some significant adaptation. This is the first scoring component: "SC1 The course includes an intensive study of representative works such as those by authors cited in the AP English Course Description. By the time the student completes English Literature and Composition, he or she will have studied during high school literature from both British and American writers, as well as works written in several genres from the sixteenth century to contemporary times." Your class is strictly British literature, so you have two choices: 1) If your student has covered a significant amount of American literature (i.e. Honors American Literature and Composition - 11th grade), then keep Sonlight's course title and simply state "with AP exam" as Attolia mentioned. 2) If you want to label your course as "AP" and still want to submit your syllabus to CB for audit, then you will need to add some American literature. You don't need to add a lot, but you will need some. Look for works that tie into what you are already covering. SC1 also mentions "several genres from 16th century to contemporary times." The Sonlight scope and sequence covers around 23 works over 36 weeks. You will probably want to edit this down. Remember that the AP exam is in the first part of May. Save works that may not matter to the exam for the last weeks of school after the exam. The following works have never been cited on an AP English Lit exam: Peter Pan , A Severe Mercy, The Great Divorce, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Right Ho, Jeeves, and Sherlock Holmes. These works cover 7 weeks, so this could ease some of the schedule and allow for more exam prep or again, read one or two of these after the exam. AP English Lit teachers do not stick strictly to the time period suggested (16th to contemporary times) as evidenced by the frequency with which Classic plays from authors such as Euripides and Sophocles are cited; however, you have few works written in the last 100 years and only one (A Severe Mercy) written in the last 50 years.

On further reading through the sample, one of my concerns for AP - a college-level course - is the significant amount of proselytizing in the lessons. While it may serve a faith-specific objective, my concern would be in how the student translates that into the analysis portion of their essays for the exam. I will be curious to see if anyone has adapted this course for the AP exam.

Robbin, I would ask Sonlight if they have a syllabus that has gone through the audit process that matches their course. If they do, then you will be able to submit the same syllabus under their audit number. However, while I think the reading list is strong, the instruction samples that are available for the first three weeks, seem weak. Have you looked at the AP English Literature course description and have you looked at the sample syllabi and then compared it to the 630 sample? ETA: Also, you said that you were looking forward to using Perrine's Structure, Sound and Sense, but Sonlight only uses Sound and Sense which is strictly poetry. Personally, I would get an older volume of Perrine's Structure, Sound, and Sense and adapt it.

I can't speak to Khan, but we found the videos on Dr. Tang's site to be quite helpful.

The mentality behind one starring this thread is the kind that often ruins the breastfeeding experience for many women: mommy-shaming and holier-than-thou. I am glad to see that gentler souls rectified the situation. ETA: Of course, we have all goofed up when starring too. My first experience was very similar to yours. My hospital lactation consultant was a hard-edged, judgemental woman whose sole purpose seemed to be to terrify a new mother into submission. My daughter suffered for the "advice." It took staying at my mom's for a few days while my husband was traveling to start undoing the damage. On the third night of staying up with me and walking the floor to try and quiet a crying baby, my mom looked at me and said, "Honey, this baby is very hungry and you are very tired and have no milk. This is fixable and no one that matters will think less of you." For my second child, I got another militant consultant who at one point, grabbed the coughing infant out of my arms and ran out of the room. When she came back, she informed me that the formula that my daughter had been fed formed a ball in her throat and that she could have choked to death due to my negligence. I was terrified again even though it was on the pediatrician's advice that he be given some formula. All three of my children have been born early and small. For the third child, I asked the hospital to please either send me a competent, compassionate, non-fanatical consultant or none at all. That consultant was so wonderful and helpful that I started sobbing and asked her where she had been for the first two kids. I guess my advice would be that a good human will still be better than a good book. Be very explicit to the staff about the kind of consultant that you want. Every mother is different and every child is different. Finding someone who can help you craft the answers that work for you is worth its weight in gold. Rabid consultants cause more harm to mother and child and I have no respect for their inflexibility.