Worldschooling is a term coined by a young man named Eli Gerzon as an alternative term to "unschooling" and as an alternative education form to homeschooling.
Eli is a writer, speaker and traveler. He has spoken on his philosophy and experiences at Unschooling Conferences and in front of educational groups. He writes a very readable and informative online newsletter titled "Stranger in a Strange Land," as well as articles and poetry. On his site he hosts several photo albums of his travels, with each photo captioned, making them a very good teaching tool.
Everything on his site is free and mostly educational. I found the site easy to navigate, refreshingly without advertisements, informative and inspiring. This site is bound to grow and become an even better free educational resource.
Recently, Eli Gerzon began leading travel tours with a focus on Worldschooling. He has several exciting destinations coming up. You can read more about Eli's philosophy and educational background and his tours on his site at http://www.eligerzon.com/.
On the site you will find his definitions of the three terms I just mentioned, with this explanation on Worldschooling: Worldschooling is a new term coined by Eli Gerzon that is essentially a more descriptive and positive version of unschooling that can apply to anyone even those beyond school age. Gerzon defines it by saying, "It's when the whole world is your school, instead school being your whole world." Eli Gerzon has "unschooled through college" mainly by learning from his international travels but the term does not require you to travel the world, just as unschooling doesn't forbid making use of school resources. Instead, it's when one actively experiences and learns from the world around one: the home, family, friends, strangers of all backgrounds, libraries, parks, sports, forests, schools, towns, and of course the world and the world wide web. It also emphasizes that there is always more to learn from this wonderful, complex world regardless of whether one has a high school degree, is a doctor, or is solely self-educated.
You will find Mr. Gerzon on Twitter and a Worldschooling Group on Facebook.
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog by Susie Williams."
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Support & Community for Homeschool Moms
The free website The Homeschool Lounge offers the opportunity for a supportive community to homeschooling parents. As a homeschooling mother in the early 1980s, I remember being extremely grateful that my local school district supported me, by allowing me to homeschool my children without intervention or supervision. Friends in other school districts and/or other states did not have the same experience.
I was an experienced classroom teacher, properly credentialed in our state and a regular substitute teacher in our district, familiar to school district officials. But, all that was irrelevant in many school districts and I knew it. I could have just as easily been required to jump through dozens of hoops to get permission to teach my children at home. Indeed, I went into my school district office to ask permission expecting to come out with at least a list of requirements. Instead, I came out with the loan of materials and the information that my children would have to be tested for grade level placement, if they were re-enrolled in that school district in the future.
Not all school districts or state education departments were as lenient or should I say forward thinking as mine. Alternative education, at least in the upper mid-west of the U. S. was not as commonly encountered or accepted as it is today. Cooperation, by non-involvement was the best you could hope for from your local or state education officials.
Though there were a handful of other homeschooling parents in the district, we had no organization for support, and the idea felt a little subversive anyway. We Moms were too busy organizing natural food coops to put energy into our own right and need for support. The only means of communication we had were land lines and snail mail. So you might imagine how lonely I felt at times as a homeschooling mother.
That was then and this is now, where most homes have access to several forms of instant communication. I know that today many of you do not feel so privileged as I am making your situation sound. I know that even with the advancements in communication technology, it can still be a lonely, hard fought, exhausting campaign to educate your children according to your own principals and ideals at home.
That is why I am so impressed with the website Homeschool Lounge, http://www.thehomeschoollounge.com/. It has over members, so I know that some of you have already explored it and or joined this dynamic community.
Though the site is by its own words directed to mothers, ("the homeschool lounge is a free online community exclusively for homeschool Moms,") I am sure a homeschool Dad or other family members could also find support, nurturing, inspiration, and good ideas on the site. After all they say, "Get advice, give advice, share, learn and laugh with those who truly understand you."
In addition to the gift of support, there are articles, discussions, reviews, resources, music, photos, videos and great free give aways on the site. Check it out at www.thehomeschoollounge.com.
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog and Susie Williams."
I was an experienced classroom teacher, properly credentialed in our state and a regular substitute teacher in our district, familiar to school district officials. But, all that was irrelevant in many school districts and I knew it. I could have just as easily been required to jump through dozens of hoops to get permission to teach my children at home. Indeed, I went into my school district office to ask permission expecting to come out with at least a list of requirements. Instead, I came out with the loan of materials and the information that my children would have to be tested for grade level placement, if they were re-enrolled in that school district in the future.
Not all school districts or state education departments were as lenient or should I say forward thinking as mine. Alternative education, at least in the upper mid-west of the U. S. was not as commonly encountered or accepted as it is today. Cooperation, by non-involvement was the best you could hope for from your local or state education officials.
Though there were a handful of other homeschooling parents in the district, we had no organization for support, and the idea felt a little subversive anyway. We Moms were too busy organizing natural food coops to put energy into our own right and need for support. The only means of communication we had were land lines and snail mail. So you might imagine how lonely I felt at times as a homeschooling mother.
That was then and this is now, where most homes have access to several forms of instant communication. I know that today many of you do not feel so privileged as I am making your situation sound. I know that even with the advancements in communication technology, it can still be a lonely, hard fought, exhausting campaign to educate your children according to your own principals and ideals at home.
That is why I am so impressed with the website Homeschool Lounge, http://www.thehomeschoollounge.com/. It has over members, so I know that some of you have already explored it and or joined this dynamic community.
Though the site is by its own words directed to mothers, ("the homeschool lounge is a free online community exclusively for homeschool Moms,") I am sure a homeschool Dad or other family members could also find support, nurturing, inspiration, and good ideas on the site. After all they say, "Get advice, give advice, share, learn and laugh with those who truly understand you."
In addition to the gift of support, there are articles, discussions, reviews, resources, music, photos, videos and great free give aways on the site. Check it out at www.thehomeschoollounge.com.
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog and Susie Williams."
Friday, June 26, 2009
TeacherWrite Online English Usage & Writing Lessons
I know it is not yet the 4Th of July, but I am excited to tell you about a free educational resource that will be available to students and parents starting this fall.
Nancy Ramsay, a veteran classroom teacher is developing a series of online English usage lessons for her web site http://www.teacherwrite.com/. She will be developing and posting original lessons during the school year that she will be using simultaneously in her sixth grade classroom.
Her TeacherWrite materials are meant to be a supplement to the programs children are using at school and at home. The materials will focus on sentence structure and revision along with suggested writing activities.They will build grammar concepts of how sentences work. Lessons will be consecutive and build on each other, so that students will need to use the materials in the order they are presented on the site and remember the concepts for the next lessons. The best age groups for this site are 5th, 6th, and 7th graders.
Nancy is not charging a fee for the use of the materials on her site. She says, "I'm interested in helping parents and children. I am sharing information I wish that I had been taught as a child." I think this will be a great free resource for homeschooling parents of middle school students.
The site will develop slowly throughout the first school year (2009-2010). Ms. Ramsay welcomes parent and student feedback during the development year of this site to help refine the lessons. I will inform you on this blog or on Twitter when Nancy post her first lesson in the Fall. In the meantime, go to her site and get acquainted with Nancy at http://teacherwrite.com/. You can also find her on Twitter.
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog by Susie Williams."
Nancy Ramsay, a veteran classroom teacher is developing a series of online English usage lessons for her web site http://www.teacherwrite.com/. She will be developing and posting original lessons during the school year that she will be using simultaneously in her sixth grade classroom.
Her TeacherWrite materials are meant to be a supplement to the programs children are using at school and at home. The materials will focus on sentence structure and revision along with suggested writing activities.They will build grammar concepts of how sentences work. Lessons will be consecutive and build on each other, so that students will need to use the materials in the order they are presented on the site and remember the concepts for the next lessons. The best age groups for this site are 5th, 6th, and 7th graders.
Nancy is not charging a fee for the use of the materials on her site. She says, "I'm interested in helping parents and children. I am sharing information I wish that I had been taught as a child." I think this will be a great free resource for homeschooling parents of middle school students.
The site will develop slowly throughout the first school year (2009-2010). Ms. Ramsay welcomes parent and student feedback during the development year of this site to help refine the lessons. I will inform you on this blog or on Twitter when Nancy post her first lesson in the Fall. In the meantime, go to her site and get acquainted with Nancy at http://teacherwrite.com/. You can also find her on Twitter.
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog by Susie Williams."
Monday, June 22, 2009
Free Tool for Internet Protection for Children
Little Eye offers a free tool to help protect your young ones on line. I have checked out this link but have not actually registered for the tool they offer yet. I don't usually recommend products I have not yet used myself, however, the last few days I have been away from my own computer and not able to add their tool to my system. However, I do feel strongly that this is a legitimate site and free offer. Please check it out at http://www.littleye.com/homeschool. I will more thoroughly review this offer in the near future. In the meantime, please know that, as always I welcome your comments or info on your experience with this site.
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog and Susie Williams."
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog and Susie Williams."
Friday, June 19, 2009
Summer Reading for Parents & Teachers
I saw the link to a book list on Twitter, submitted by Ron Glodoski an author and speaker on educational alternatives for at-risk youth.
Let's face it, not all homeschool and alternative programs are put together to provide a quality and creative foundation for children who are loved and cared for. As a former teacher and administrator in Alternative Schools, I know that many at-risk kids end up in some kind of alternative program, be it a homeschool environment, a tutorial program, etc., that is organized as a last ditch effort by parents, caregivers, or the court to keep a child off the streets and out of more sinister alternative educational programs like drugs and prostitution.
If you are an educator who works in alternative education or the desperate parent of a teen you will surely find something beneficial on this list. But if you don't fall into those categories, this is still a good list to download and add to your educational files. Though the title of the list, compiled by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Education, uses the term Disruptive Youth, you will find good reading about alternative education and educational philosophies on the list. I found lots of great books that I recognized and would recommend to any parent or teacher. One of my favorites is John Taylor Gatto's, Dumbing us Down; The Hidden Agenda of Compulsory Schooling.
Here are two links to the PA DOE list.
http://www.pde.state.pa.us/alt_disruptive/cwp/view.asp?a=3&q=103435&pp=3
http://bit.ly/kcp8c
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog by Susie Williams."
Let's face it, not all homeschool and alternative programs are put together to provide a quality and creative foundation for children who are loved and cared for. As a former teacher and administrator in Alternative Schools, I know that many at-risk kids end up in some kind of alternative program, be it a homeschool environment, a tutorial program, etc., that is organized as a last ditch effort by parents, caregivers, or the court to keep a child off the streets and out of more sinister alternative educational programs like drugs and prostitution.
If you are an educator who works in alternative education or the desperate parent of a teen you will surely find something beneficial on this list. But if you don't fall into those categories, this is still a good list to download and add to your educational files. Though the title of the list, compiled by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Education, uses the term Disruptive Youth, you will find good reading about alternative education and educational philosophies on the list. I found lots of great books that I recognized and would recommend to any parent or teacher. One of my favorites is John Taylor Gatto's, Dumbing us Down; The Hidden Agenda of Compulsory Schooling.
Here are two links to the PA DOE list.
http://www.pde.state.pa.us/alt_disruptive/cwp/view.asp?a=3&q=103435&pp=3
http://bit.ly/kcp8c
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog by Susie Williams."
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Global Campaign Against Poverty & Disease Provides Free Educational Resource
Talk about a free educational resource on geography, climate, history, politics, economics, poverty and compassion! Check out One a grassroots campaign committed to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable diseases. I first noticed One via their Twitter postings regarding clean water. Their site has an entire section titled Water for the World with pulitzer prize winning reports and compelling videos.
The site covers other vital global problems equally well and with the same quality of information: HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria; Agriculture; Education, Climate and Development, Maternal & Child Health, Trade and Investment and more. An educational site for adults, loaded with valuable teaching tools for educators and families. http://www.one.org/us/
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog by Susie Williams."
The site covers other vital global problems equally well and with the same quality of information: HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria; Agriculture; Education, Climate and Development, Maternal & Child Health, Trade and Investment and more. An educational site for adults, loaded with valuable teaching tools for educators and families. http://www.one.org/us/
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog by Susie Williams."
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Free Global Summer Art-Social Studies Project
A great art/social studies project to occupy the next few weeks of summer for children of all ages is offered online at http://www.togetherinpeace.com/. The Ontario, Canada based site is sponsoring a global community project that looks to the children of the world to join together in an expression of world peace. Talk about a free enrichment project.
On their site they say, "We invite children the world over to participate in the creation of an enormous global peace puzzle.
Like a puzzle, we too are all interconnected, and like a puzzle we are not complete if even one piece is missing.
Let your painting add your country to the display. "
They display on the site some of wonderful early submissions from children in South America, North America, Europe and the Middle East. Worth a stop by the site just to spend some time with your child looking at those submissions and locating the country of their origin on the globe.
The concept is a natural starting point for a variety of discussions on history, geography, theology, economics, anthropology, etc., for any age of child. So get your child out from in front of the T.V. this afternoon and take a look at http://www.inpeacetogether.com/.
Participating in the project is easy: produce a piece of art (they do ask for certain dimensions on the site), take a digital picture and email it to them at inpeace@inpeacetogether.com. There is also a snail mail option. Submission deadlines are July 10, 2009.
Construction (July 20) of all the pieces of this enormous puzzle will be video taped and run on u-tube.
They are still asking for submissions. Obviously, the more countries represented the better and if you know kids in countries other than your own, who might be interested get the info to them asap.
The following piece by Robert Fulghum is included on their site as a wonderful whimsical plan to bring world peace. "Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination."
~Robert Fulghum
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog by Susie Williams."
On their site they say, "We invite children the world over to participate in the creation of an enormous global peace puzzle.
Like a puzzle, we too are all interconnected, and like a puzzle we are not complete if even one piece is missing.
Let your painting add your country to the display. "
They display on the site some of wonderful early submissions from children in South America, North America, Europe and the Middle East. Worth a stop by the site just to spend some time with your child looking at those submissions and locating the country of their origin on the globe.
The concept is a natural starting point for a variety of discussions on history, geography, theology, economics, anthropology, etc., for any age of child. So get your child out from in front of the T.V. this afternoon and take a look at http://www.inpeacetogether.com/.
Participating in the project is easy: produce a piece of art (they do ask for certain dimensions on the site), take a digital picture and email it to them at inpeace@inpeacetogether.com. There is also a snail mail option. Submission deadlines are July 10, 2009.
Construction (July 20) of all the pieces of this enormous puzzle will be video taped and run on u-tube.
They are still asking for submissions. Obviously, the more countries represented the better and if you know kids in countries other than your own, who might be interested get the info to them asap.
The following piece by Robert Fulghum is included on their site as a wonderful whimsical plan to bring world peace. "Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination."
~Robert Fulghum
Copyright 2009 Creekside Education & Susie Williams
Contact me: creeksideeducation@gmail.com
Contents of this Blog are copyrighted by Creekside Education and Susie Williams and may only be used or reproduced for non commercial purposes and must include the following credit; "This information is copyrighted by and used with the permission of Creekside Education Blog by Susie Williams."
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