Archive for January, 2012

Learning at the Edge

Posted on: by Jamie McMillin

A. & E. Exploring the edge of a stream

Any naturalist knows that the most interesting place to look for things is at the edges. Where a field meets a forest or a river flows into the sea or where the reef hangs over deep water – those are the areas that are especially abundant. The edges are where species from two different ecosystems mingle and hide and hunt. There are even plant and animal species that exist only in these edge habitats.

Ecologists call this the “edge effect,” but I think the same phenomenon applies anywhere that two different areas intersect. For instance, physics is interesting, but exploring the edges of physics and art, or physics and psychology, or physics and theology, can be even more interesting. How about the intersection of martial arts and mythology, or architecture and music, or history and dance?

Everything in this world is attached to something else. By exploring the edges of seemingly unrelated fields of study, new ideas are born. In fact, that’s where all the great thinkers are. Buckminster Fuller lamented that our modern educational system concentrated too much on creating specialists when what we really needed were more generalists. By this he meant people who studied a variety of things and could make valuable connections between them. These are the Renaissance thinkers or polymaths like Leonard da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Maria Montessori, Rabindranath Tagore, Isaac Asimov, Steve Jobs, and others who are able to see the large patterns that others may not see.

We will always need specialists in every field, because they are able to study something deeply and make new discoveries based on years of intensive research. But we need generalists too; those who have spent time and effort to learn several subjects very well, and have made something of what they learned. Simply being well-informed isn’t enough. We all tend to dabble in different subjects, but a real polymath will put in some real time and effort on several subjects (not necessarily all at once), and come up with new insights or contributions.

This is one of the wonderful things about homeschooling. Because we have the freedom to customize our curriculum, our children can study the things that most interest them, for as long as they want. For science, my daughter only wanted to study anatomy and health. Every year for six years I would ask her, “Do you want to read this book about rocks? (or electricity, or space, or whatever)” and she would say no. She only wanted more books about muscles, bones, cells, blood, viruses, etc… It could be about animals or humans, sometimes plants, but certainly nothing that hadn’t once been alive.  We read books about Florence Nightingale and medieval medicine, constructed models, did Janice VanCleave experiments, drew pictures, counted heartbeats, looked for golden ratios in the human face, listened to trees with a stethoscope, looked at nematodes with a microscope, played the Somebody game, watched documentaries about the brain, evolution, animals, etc.  When we discovered animal carcasses while hiking, she would squat down to investigate the position of the bones and look for clues as to how the animal died and who had been eating it.

It’s amazing how many different topics you can touch on with a single abiding interest. She was happy for me to find interesting things for her to read and do as long as it was related to anatomy or health. Thinking about it now, I probably could have interested her in electricity if we had researched the body’s electrical field, or space exploration if we had looked at what astronauts did to stay healthy during missions (in fact, this was her favorite exhibit at the local Air and Space Museum).

The wonderful fun thing about learning is making connections – finding out how things are related. And to see that, you must go to the edges and look.

Try this: Bring to mind two or three things that you are very interested in, and find the connections between them.

Everything we Used to Think About College is About to Change

Posted on: by Jamie McMillin

Sebastian Thrun, a tenured computer science professor at Stanford University recently quit his job to dedicate all his efforts to an online school he helped create last year called Udacity. The school’s very first course offering, “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence,” attracted over 160,000 students in over 190 countries. It helps that the school’s courses are absolutely free, at least for now – how will they make money? But the big picture here is that there are a LOT of people who crave this caliber of information, who would not otherwise have the means to get it. Getting into Stanford is notoriously difficult, and even if a student is accepted, there is still the problem of paying for it. Thrun and his fellow co-founders David Stavens and Mike Sokolsky started Udacity because they believe that education can be delivered a lot more efficiently. They believe more people should have access to information and resources that, up till now, have been controlled by traditional universities.

They are right of course. The Internet has revolutionized information delivery. Anyone with access to the Internet (unfortunately this still excludes a lot of people) can have the world’s greatest library at their fingertips. With online courses and videos, we have access to any great thinkers and innovators who choose to share what they know. What, if anything, do traditional universities still have to offer?

Alan Jacobs wrote in the Atlantic Monthly: “Of course, there have always been autodidacts, especially in the technical realms. But what happens if universities come to see it as part of their mission not just to benefit from the next Bill Gates or Steve Wozniak but actually to produce him — or her — without having any formal relationship to that person at all? This could get dicey. At least in some disciplines — though surely not in all — even the great universities of the world could soon find themselves with nothing valuable to sell.”

The thing that universities still offer is credibility . . . credentials. After all, would Udacity have attracted 160,000 students if the Professor hadn’t been from Stanford? Maybe. In the tech world, its possible to gain credibility by virtue of one’s invention or start-up success. I’m sure people would have signed up for classes by Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg too, regardless of where they went to school.

But if you are a history expert and hope to provide an online course in history, how is anyone to know that you know what you are talking about? Without university credentials, your only hope is to have published reviewer-acclaimed books. But how would you get your books published in the first place without proving to the publisher that you know your stuff?

Artists, dancers, musicians, athletes, fiction writers, entrepreneurs, and skilled trade artisans are all well able to show tangible evidence of their skills. But not many people would want to take a chance with a self-trained historian or veterinarian or psychologist or economist or anything that is difficult to prove.

Credentials are kind of like money. Money represents value so that we don’t have to carry around cows and pumpkins hoping to trade with someone who has an extra pair of shoes. Money (and credentials) stands for something else that has value. As we negotiate prices, we are continuously changing the relative value of money. The same is true for information and education. As supply and demand changes with new technology, we are changing the relative value of credentials.

Already, the founders of Udacity foresee a future where tech firms will recruit new employees from this school, not because the school is accredited, but because it is the best.

I’m really excited to see where this takes us. As a firm believer in self-directed education, I would love to see society move away from the habitual conviction that a college degree is the only path to knowledge or success.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Don’t get me wrong – I still think that universities have a lot to offer. I love to live near universities because they have so much positive energy and cultural opportunities. But why should students sit in a crowded lecture hall watching a Powerpoint presentation on an overhead projector when they could get the same thing (or better) on their laptop at home? There must be a way that universities could offer physical space to the classes that are best taught in person, such as labs, small group discussions, studio art, etc… while providing access to the best possible instructors via online courses for everything else. This would lower prices for everyone.

Maybe universities could become more business oriented, where customers could enroll for any courses they wished to pay for, without worrying about admissions or degree requirements. Then when they applied for jobs, they would attach a transcript of courses taken rather than simply a degree in such-and-such. Or maybe more universities could be like Oxford and allow students to plan out their personal course of study with the help of an academic advisor.

There are so many possibilities!!! What do you think? How can the great potential of self-directed education coexist with the need for credentials?

Should kids keep illustrated journals?

Posted on: by Jamie McMillin

Illustrated journals seem like such a good idea for kids, right? It’s a good excuse for building writing and drawing skills, not to mention budding scientific observation.  Wouldn’t we all be proud to have a child like Teddy Roosevelt, who kept detailed journals filled with his sketches of birds, mammals, and other creatures, sometimes even labeled with their Latin names?  Charlotte Mason, that wonderful Victorian era champion for homeschooling, was also an enthusiastic advocate for children keeping nature notebooks.

It seemed like a reasonable idea to me, especially since I enjoyed keeping illustrated journals myself. The problem was, when I introduced the idea to my oldest son Jesse, he had absolutely no interest in drawing anything from real life. He liked to draw, and would often sit for an hour with a piece of paper, illustrating a space battle while narrating the scene aloud (with plenty of explosions and sound effects):

 

Robot Battle by Jesse, age 10

This kid was obsessed with monsters, aliens, space villains, and ray guns. Running around outside was fun, but he wasn’t admiring the flora and fauna for what it was, because in his mind, trees were fortresses and rocks were spaceships. There were monsters hiding behind every bush and he carried his homemade stick saber wherever he went. Occasionally, he would stop short to admire a spider spinning her web or tadpoles swimming near the edge of the pond, but drawing those scenes would have ruined the enjoyment. No, as soon as he was back inside, this is what he would draw:

Space Battle by Jesse, age 8

 

I was happy that he was so imaginative, but sometimes I worried a bit that he didn’t want to do anything “academic.” Write a paragraph on tadpoles or “What I did today?” Forget it. Writing thank you notes was required, and he saw that it was important, so that was OK with him. Otherwise, the only type of writing he might do involved dire peril or good vs. evil, and that was only to keep Mom happy. Interestingly, it wasn’t until Jesse was around 13 and saw a friend’s sarcastic birthday letter, that he really started writing on his own. His friend’s letter opened the possibility of humorous writing, and Jesse has never looked back. He’s actually a wonderful writer, and now, at the age of 19, he’s working on a degree in communications, with the dream of writing for television.

Looking back on all of Jesse’s drawings now, I can see that he was essentially keeping a journal. But it was a journal of his imagination. It satisfied something deep inside of him that I did not need to interfere with. He enjoys nature, but does not want to be a scientist or naturalist. He enjoys drawing and art, but does not want to become an artist. What he really wants to be is what he already is – a story teller. His early drawings were just stories that he told himself. Later, when he was ready to put the stories in words to share with others, he started writing. Now, it makes him happy, and he can spend hours working on one of his fantasy novels or screenplays.

Illustrated journaling or nature notebooks can be a fine idea if kids like it, but if they don’t, then it’s just another artificial school thing that must be done to please an adult. I suspect that the kids who enjoy nature notebooks, like Teddy Roosevelt, are naturally inclined to be naturalists, or at least observers.

My daughter is an observer. She could draw amazing pictures at a very young age because she actually looked at what she was drawing, but she still preferred imaginative drawings. She was not at all interested in her nature notebook, but drew countless fairies, babies, animals and story scenes in her large sketchpads (she didn’t like being cramped). One time she was inspired to tell a story, comic book style:

The Day I Saw a Garter Snake by Emma, age 7

 

She wasn’t using her best drawing skills in this example, because she was more interested in telling the story. She first drew the major plot elements, then told me the words to write in each frame. This was a very satisfying project for her because the event (seeing the snake) was so important and thrilling that she really needed to express it. Just like her brother, her drawings reflected what she was thinking about. They reflected what was important to her. My kids didn’t need me to tell them what to draw, or even to give suggestions. Even as she got older, Emma didn’t like art project books because she preferred to create her own projects. Now, at age 15, she is attending a charter school for the arts and must work on the assignments that the drawing/painting teacher gives her. But most of the assignments are about technique and the students are free to choose their own subjects as long as they practice the right technique. Plus, it was Emma’s choice to attend this school, and she gives it 110%.

My instincts and experience tell me that forcing kids to do a particular kind of journaling is not necessary and may even be counterproductive. It is fine for us to do our own journaling or nature notebooks; maybe our kids will wish to do something similar. But don’t require it. Just pay attention to what it is they really want to do. You might learn something interesting.

Illustrated Journals

Posted on: by Jamie McMillin

I was flipping through one of my journals this week and was struck by how well my illustrations reminded me of the hour I spent sketching the scene. I usually only had time to sketch when I was waiting for something – my kids to get out of a class, or my husband to get done with kite-surfing or off of work. While I waited, I would pull out my little blank page journal and look for something to draw.  One book is full of rocks, telephone poles, Douglas Fir cones, lifeguard stands, marinas, mountains, coiled rope, plants, and tequila bottles.

Waiting outside of pottery class

Sometimes I just doodle or try to draw pictures of animate objects like my kids or dog – but those never turn out too well. Occasionally my daughter has given me a creativity assignment to “draw a monster” or take turns with a collaborative fantasy picture, where she starts something, I add to it, and we switch back and forth until the page is filled with giant snails, hot air balloons, unicorns, and lemonade stands. But my favorite pictures are the ones that I drew from real life – my life. These are the pictures that actually bring back memories of a time and place.

Regular Thursday Date Night at Ward Center, Honolulu

 

These are the sort of scenes that words can’t always capture. I suppose I could have taken pictures of all these places, but the act of drawing really forces you to pay attention to the details. You may not notice the curves of the lamp post or the structure of the table umbrella until you try to draw it. Who cares, you might ask, about the structure of table umbrellas, but the point is that it forces you to be where you are at that particular moment. It’s meditative. When I draw something in front of me, I’m not thinking about my troubles, or planning for the future, I’m just observing. And real sketching forces you to quiet your logical left brain, because your left brain doesn’t know how to draw (it tries to make you draw symbols instead of what is really there).

Two great books on this subject are The Creative License and An Illustrated Life, both by Danny Gregory. If you’re worried about your lack of drawing skills, these books will put you at ease, and explain how the simple act of drawing regularly can unlock your dormant creativity. Danny Gregory insists that we are all artists, and his books are the best I have seen for showing the sheer variety of personal styles. He gives loads of examples from his own and other people’s journals. They are all wonderful in their own peculiar way. I love to see how different people will draw the same thing in completely different ways.

Two Scenes from Kailua Beach Park, Oahu

 

There are enormous benefits to keeping a journal, but illustrated journaling is even better. That doesn’t mean that every page must be illustrated, but even leaving room for little tiny drawings of your fortune cookie, or spoon, or cat’s paw, can bring back a flood of memories someday. And when life bogs down into a series of chores, spills, obligations, and temper tantrums, it’s important to remember that we are creative beings. Next time you are waiting outside of dance class or soccer practice, resist the temptation to play games on your phone and pull out a journal instead. In the long run, it will be much better for your sense of well-being. “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance… and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.” – Henry James

Evernote for Busy Homeschooling Parents

Posted on: by Jamie McMillin

Before I get off the subject of organization for a while, I just wanted to share with you one more techie trick for keeping your sanity.

Evernote.

Heard of it? It’s an application that you can download for free to practically any computer or mobile device. And it helps you remember stuff. You know how difficult it is to keep track of all the various unrelated bits of information that come to you each day, wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra brain to store all of it?

Here’s a lovely video from Digitwirl that explains the benefits:

All you need to do is visit the Evernote website to download. While you’re there, watch some of their videos to show you how to use it and get more ideas. Even though I use Google documents/sites to view my goals, to-do lists, calendar, and other documents, Evernote is a great way to store miscellaneous bits of information, particularly when you are away from your computer.

I was lucky enough to get an iPhone for Christmas, so I’m just now getting a chance to play around with Evernote, but I can already see the potential. My goal is to move away from paper planning as much as possible. Anything repetitive should be digital. But it’s still nice to use notebooks and sketchbooks for journaling, brainstorming, drawing, and other free forms of writing. And, as I mentioned in my last post, I would still use a 3-ring binder for planning my homeschool days if my kids were little. The 3-ring binder with pre-printed forms is meant to be doodled in and journaled in, scribbling notes in whenever you get a chance. It becomes a nice memento all by itself.

But if you just need an extra filing cabinet for your brain, try Evernote.

How to Keep Track of Homeschool AND Life

Posted on: by Jamie McMillin

Life as a homeschooling mom can feel like a Cirque du Soleil show gone bad. There’s so much to keep track of:  errands, phone calls, laundry, budget, healthy meals, extracurricular activities, volunteer work, cleaning, exercise, helping kids with schoolwork, planning, recording, mothering, and nurturing other relationships. It’s crazy! I don’t know how anybody expects one person to do all this stuff, but somehow we do. I’ve always tried my best to stay organized and get things done. For years, my motto for getting stuff done has been: “Never stop working.” But that’s not very helpful is it? I really don’t work all the time, although sometimes it feels like I do. It would be much worse if I didn’t find a way to keep track of everything.

In my last post, I talked about getting yourself personally organized, but here I’m going to share with you some of the ways I organized my homeschooling days when my kids were younger. My biggest friend was a 3-ring binder that lived on the dining room table where we spent 80% of our days. In that binder, I kept my journal, reference pages (book lists, homeschool tips, community/extracurricular info), and my planning pages. I had a section for long term planning, with home-made forms like this:

 I made up a grid like this for each half of the year so that I could roughly plan out when we would do certain things. Everything revolved around unit studies, potential field trips, and the activities of our homeschool group. While this grid gave me a nice overview of how things fit together, I used plain old notebook paper to plan out what books we would read for the different subjects, like this:

So, that’s what I keep in my binder for long-range planning. But in the front of the planner, I kept more home-made forms to help me get through the week. I made it so facing pages would cover one week of homeschooling, to-do lists, routines and rudimentary menu planning. I changed the forms as often as I needed to reflect changes in our schedule and only printed out 5 weeks worth at a time.

 

You can see from the hole punches on the sides how these pages faced each other. I purposely left the dates blank in the computer so that I wouldn’t waste paper printing out unnecessary weeks.  For the life of me, I can’t remember what program I used to make these forms, but it was probably MS Word because I didn’t have any fancier software in those days.

Even though I tried to plan ahead, the kids didn’t always like what I had planned, or life got in the way, so I also kept “Learning Logs” to record what we actually did each day. Since my boys usually did the same thing, I kept one log for them, and a separate log for my younger daughter. I printed these in landscape mode for my binder, but I’m showing you an abbreviated example turned right-side-up to make it easier to see:

These homemade forms worked great for me when the kids were little, but when my oldest entered 7th grade, and we moved to a state with stricter homeschool requirements, I started playing around with “Homeschool Tracker” on the computer to do my planning. In some ways it was easier, but it was far less forgiving or fun to use. When I switched to a Mac computer, I couldn’t find any homeschool software for that platform so I’ve been making my own. I’m still a big fan of 3-ring binders, but when you need to record grades, assemble transcripts and compute GPA for older kids, it’s kind of nice to have it all on the computer.

Techie Trick for Getting Your Act Together

Posted on: by Jamie McMillin

In my ideal world, I would have a cozy little office all to myself with inspiring pictures on the wall, roomy bookshelves, and a private corkboard for posting goals and reminders. It might look something like this:

 

Image from InspireBohemia.blogspot.com

But, I don’t have space for my own office yet, so I need to borrow a corner of the living room, next to the drum set and our bulging family bookshelves. It’s hard to feel like it’s really my own space, so in the past, I confined all my thoughts and inspiration to various notebooks and planners. The problem was . . . I felt scattered. It seemed like all the bits I needed were spread out, and easily forgotten. I’ve also been trying to get away from a big heavy planner because it usually doesn’t meet my needs and I end up wasting paper.

So, a few months ago, I had an inspiration, and have been very pleased with my solution: Google. Again. I know I must sound like a paid spokesman for Google, but I’m just really excited about what I’ve learned. Now that I know what is possible with a few free applications, I can’t stop thinking of new ways to use them.

So here’s what I did. I made my own personal Google web site that is only visible to me. For info on how to do this, check out the following video:

On the home page, I posted my daily routines for different days of the week. I had figured these out earlier as a way to accomplish all the things I needed to do during the week, but kept forgetting where I had written them. I also posted my affirmations and a short list of the habits I’m trying to develop. I also added a few Google gadgets to automatically rotate inspirational quotes and display a photo slideshow from one of my Picasa albums.

On another page, I posted my goals broken down into: 10 years, 5 years, 1 year, and 90 days. It really is helpful to look at this every day and remember where I’m going.

I also use Google Calendar for all my scheduling now. I have a calendar for home, one for work, one for planned blog posts, and one for tasks. It’s easy to turn these calendars on or off as necessary to see what is coming. I can also share specific calendars with other people if I want to.

I use the task list to jot down random to-do items that pop into my head but I don’t know yet when I will do them. For bigger tasks, with deadlines, I schedule them in my “Task” calendar.

So every morning, I take five minutes to review my affirmations, habits, goals and the daily routine in my private Google site. Then I check my calendars to see what must be done for the day. All the lists I used to keep in my planner such as books to read, stuff to research, household info, etc. are now in Google docs inside a folder called “Organizing Me.” So whenever I come across a book that begs to be read, I jot it down quickly on the appropriate list. The nice thing about Google is that I can reach it anywhere I have an Internet connection and don’t have to worry about synching my laptop with my desktop with my iPhone, etc. It’s kind of like unlimited planner space without having to pack around a big heavy book.

Having said that, I still believe in notebooks and journals for creative thinking. When I am brainstorming, mind-mapping, or journaling, I still like to use an old fashioned spiral and journal notebook. It’s much easier to scribble, draw, and be expressive with just a pen and paper than a keyboard. But for things I want to refer to again and again, I like having it consolidated in one place.

I’m very happy with how this is all working for my personal organization. I don’t have much need to organize homeschool plans these days, but in my next posts I’ll show you some of the ways I kept that organized over my many years of homeschooling.