Online Learning Success

By Brandy Chandler

Online learning is a wonderful way for children and adults to continue their education. As an online educator for the past nine years, I have worked with a number of students, ranging from middle school all the way up to graduate school, who have utilized the expanding technologies to take classes. I have observed many benefits of an online course, which offers the student an opportunity to gain wonderful skills that go well beyond just the subject area of the class. It is exciting to see how this newest generation is embracing the technological tools that allow online learning to even be possible.

Numerous class formats are available to students who wish to take a class online. With home education, a student can take a class through an online program or can complete an entire curriculum using an online format. It does allow somewhat for a self-paced approach to the learning, but in most cases there are set deadlines that a student will need to follow.      (more…)

Planning a Homeschool Photography Course for Fun or Developing a Career

By Naomi Musch

 

With the advancement of digital photography, nearly anyone can learn to take better pictures and have more fun doing it, as many teens have discovered. Social media gives them a forum to visually share events in their lives with frequency and immediacy such as they’ve never been able to do before.

But what if your student wants to pursue photography with a more passionate purpose? The digital photography craze means that more young people than ever are interested in photography as a potential future career. So how do you, without a professional photographer in the family, guide them along in this elective pursuit, whether for fun or for laying groundwork toward a possible career or cottage industry? That’s what my husband and I have had to figure out as our now-graduating senior, standing on the threshold of possibility, steps into her post-high school future with her eye on turning her passion for photography into a business.      (more…)

Cyber Authorship: Inspired Writing for the Internet Age

By Amelia Harper

In February of 2012, a North Carolina father took a handgun and leveled nine shots into his teen daughter’s laptop, recording the whole event in a YouTube video that went viral on the Internet.1 The crime? His daughter had posted disrespectful comments (complete with profanity) about her parents and the chores she was being forced to do around the house. This incident has ignited a firestorm of controversy about the situation, but the father, an IT professional, made the point that he intended: Anything that you post on the Internet can have a far greater impact than you realize.

For writers, especially aspiring ones, the Internet can be a wonderful place to hone your writing skills, publish your thoughts in a public forum, and receive feedback from others. So often, writers, especially teens, are frustrated because they do not have anyone to read their words. By starting a blog, posting notes on Facebook, or simply writing emails, you expand your audience and your purpose in writing. However, there are several aspects of cyber writing that you need to carefully consider first.      (more…)