Programming Video Games

A Book to Learn to Program Games

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/10/cc-licensed-book-on.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+boingboing/iBag+(Boing+Boing)

Dr Quantum's Explanation of Young's Double Slit Experiment

Wave-Particle duality is a good example of just how weird quantum mechanics can be in the realm of physics.  This is a good intro to explain the weirdness.

Interesting Article

"Going through the traditional school system (in California, Washington and Guam) was never my favorite thing as a kid, but as a parent, I’ve grown to realize that the whole system is upside down."

Read more on Zen Habits.

Learning Styles

Learning styles can play a huge role in homeschooling. A major focus of education should be teaching students how to learn, and this includes identifying their learning style and teaching them how to cater to it in their studies.

This article is a good overview of learning styles. Working with a student (or students) is an exercise is getting to know them and their learning style. By homeschooling, there is a greater ability to tune the curriculum to match so information is absorbed more easily. It can definitely mean the difference between a exciting successful learning experience and a bout of total frustration.

I tend to be a spatial thinker, so here are some personal tips I have learned over the years:

• Mind maps are awesome. They convert information and relationships into spatial information. FreeMind is a good piece of software for generating mind maps.
• Arranging typical flash cards into spatial patterns can help memorization. Think of the game memory.
• Maps, timelines, and other graphics can really help absorption of material.
• Sometimes the act of creating information (like drawing your own timeline) can really help a student remember.
  

For other types of thinkers, keep in mind that the actions during studying drastically impact learning. Reading a book to oneself versus reading a book aloud versus listening to a recording of a book versus watching a movie of a book are all drastically different cognitive processes. In some people, only 1 of these options will really allow them to remember the content.

Multi-Discipline Project for Spring

Spring is in the air and my daughter is ready to get outside. So yesterday I gave her a 50 foot tape measure, a large sheet of posterboard, and told her to make a scale drawing of our property. First she is starting with the hardscape (walls, sidewalks, driveway, deck, patio, property lines, fences).

I like this project a lot because it teaches a number of necessary skills:

• Organization -- She has to take a lot of measurements and keep track of them.
• Precision -- She needs to get every measurement correct or it will throw her whole project off.
• Planning -- Planning out what measurements to take and in what order is a good challenge.
• Neatness -- Small errors will propagate within the project if she isn't very neat with her lines.
• Spatial Cognition -- She is learning how to judge distances, proportions, and how things fit together.
• Drawing skills -- She'll need to work on drawing neat, precise lines, curves.

Eventually, she'll get to the softscape -- plants, trees, and flower beds, which will give her a basis for looking up some of the plants. This is a good exercise for science. She also will be calculating areas in the future (How many square feet of lawn do we have?)

Embracing Your Inner Google

There is no doubt that Google has changed the face of the internet. It started with a search engine that could find anything. It expanded to include all sorts of new tools and gadgets from Google's web-based email to Google Docs to Blogger.

I am not a big fan of lumbering monopolistic companies who take over markets, stifle innovation, and set back technology for a buck. Google is not that though. Google consistently has provided converged, innovative products for free to the user. Principles aside, I am all for getting stuff for free.

In homeschooling I have found many of the Google tools very useful for managing and running a curriculum. Here's my list for embracing Google:

• Google search is great for finding resources. Other home school groups, online homeschooling guidelines for your state, online worksheets, videos all can be found with Google search.
• Google Calendar is awesome for putting together assignments. Each assignment can be put on a schedule with deadlines. Repeating activities can be scheduled. You can share the calendar between teachers and students.
• Gmail is a good communications device between teachers and students. It also integrates GoogleTalk chat capabilities.
  
• Blogger is a great place to have your student explore multimedia for reports and themes. They can write and integrate pictures and video in one place. You can read it from anywhere and comment. Permissions can be used to either hide or share content with the rest of the world.
  
• Google docs is a great place for writing reports and doing spreadsheets in a more traditional word processing environment. Documents can be shared.
• Google video and YouTube are great places to find content. I found old videos of speeches by Ronald Reagan and was able to share those with my daughters. They could see and hear President Reagan say to 'tear down this wall'.

Empathy

When it comes to behavior problems, I am a big believer in teaching empathy. Teaching someone to put themselves in the place of another person teaches them how that other person might want to be treated.

Teaching empathy starts first with talking. A talk about how other people feel can go along way. Augmenting this with writing and storytelling can formalize the thought process. Here are some ideas for teaching empathy:

• Write both sides of a 'bullying' story from the point of view of the bully and the one being bullied
• Write a story about the school day from the teacher's point of view.