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.

Learning to Type

A basic skill that all people need is the knowledge of typing. After all, typing is a common skill for access to the digital world and all it has to offer. Here are some strategies for teaching typing:

Set a goal:

Set goals and let your student measure themself as they wish. Many websites (such as this one) offer typing tests to tell you how fast you are typing.

Make it a game:

Learning to type can be boring. Choose games to help your student learn. Here are some possible resources:

• Typing Games
• Text adventures and Interactive Fiction
• Text-based Role Playing Games (MUD)

(Not all games and items linked above have been checked for suitability to any given age group. As with all parts of your curriculum, it is up to you to review the content for appropriateness.)

Show them the relevance:

Typing is probably one of those skills to cover quickly and then let them use it. A couple of assignments in other subjects that require typing will teach them quickly how important it is to be able to type.

Embracing 'New Media'

Let's face it -- homeschooling is hard. We all have our reasons for taking on the challenge, but that doesn't mean we have all the time in the world to put into it. After all, with children there are a lot of things to do. Digital homeschooling can help to make it all more efficient.

Classroom-based learning has changed little in the last two-thousand years. It is an artificial construct that serves one simple purpose -- to maximize the ratio of students to instructors in order to minimize the cost of learning. With homeschooling, the ratio of students to instructors is pretty well fixed. Instead of focusing on that, we can focus on individualized learning.

Digital homeschooling is about embracing the 'new media' in your home curriculum. After all, what is 'new media' to us today is going to be the basis of society tomorrow. To use this new media, first you need to understand it. Here are some good primers on new media that I would recommend:

• What's a Blog?
• What is Twitter?
• What is a Wiki?

Also, there are some other resource sites, you should check out:

• YouTube -- a video sharing site
• Hulu -- an online TV/movie website
• Wikipedia -- an online Wiki-based Encyclopedia
• Blogger -- a blogging website
• Google -- the home of lots of useful tools
• Amazon -- An online marketplace for all sorts of things.
  

Get to know these sites and understand the new media and you'll go a long way in finding resources for homeschooling.