Learning on the web

In one of my past jobs, my co-worker and I attended a training in which the presenter ranted about “antispanking nazis” and offered a very complicated refrigerator chart system (still allowing for pro-spanking democrats, I guess) to replace any parenting common sense. We left early, requested a refund, and determined that there were phrases in the course description that could have saved us a trip to Indianapolis, including “disrespectful kids,” “weak parents,” and “regain control.” We spent some time discussing what phrases and words we would seek out in spending our continuing education budget, including connection, respectful, developmentally appropriate, and gentle.

I’m trying to apply the same thinking to the bookmarks in my “homeschool” folder. Keywords that generally land the site on the “keeper” list include explore, natural, emergent, and living. Sites that assume kids are interested in learning and avoid artificial motivators like cute cartoon animals crooning “good job!” can spark new investigations and exploration. Sites that aren’t quite as helpful for our journey generally include words like worksheets, motivate, track, creation and daily. The ones boasting of any type of curriculum or program fall into my AA category- take what you want and leave the rest. Some of them have great living book suggestions, or science activities that Carter enjoys, and we can ignore the insipid worksheet questions.

The majority of our web learning has been from Wikipedia. We’ve read up on Rune Stones, which led to reading about Vikings and an exploration of early symbols, alphabets and word roots.

We’ve had mixed results at the bbc website. Some of the “games” are worksheets disguised as cartoons, others are engaging, fun and informative. Others might not provide the greatest web experience, but offer fun ideas for activities that could be done easily in our kitchen.-

Here’s Carter’s favorite so far:

Both Carter and Archie spent a lot of time trying out the different rocks, and Carter has since decided that in spring we are devoting a month to studying geology.

The mirror game below is also fun, and could launch an exploration of angles, reflection and light.

There’s also the standby pbskids, particularly cyberchase, one requested almost constantly from Archie, who then requires assistance in completing the math activities from Carter.