There are some amazing online resources for home educators these days! Well – for anybody really; anybody who wants to learn anything, at any time.
How cool is that! And something we didn’t have when we were first starting home education way back, when access to others was through phone calls only via Education Otherwise‘s members book, or the very slow and painful (and sometimes not at all) process of ‘dial up’! (For those of you too young to remember ‘dial up’, read the history here)
I remember when we first had that exciting new facility out here, right at the end of a very long lane in the middle of nowhere and we waited in excited anticipation for our first web page to load only to discover we had inadvertently dialled up a prostitute, (You can read the amusing story in ‘A Funny Kind of Education’) Then my overriding concern was not download speed but getting off the internet as fast as possible.
Now, almost a generation later, we have this incredible learning resource that provides immense support to those who want to home school; both support morally as well as educationally and knowledge wise. There is so much to investigate.
Along with specific learning resources, like ‘Twinkl’ for example, there are amazing sites linked to museums, programmes, films, educational games, video clips for learning how to do just about anything, along with limitless knowledge and ideas for the kids to explore.
I’m not in the habit of promoting any specific resource – I can hardly give them a test run now can I? But I know that Twinkl is a renowned resource used by schools as well as many home educators, which I consider a great endorsement. So when someone from the home education team there got in touch to ask for a chat and potentially a podcast about our home educating days, I thought it might be of help to people. For I also know that Twinkle has a huge and supportive home school community, and it’s community and the moral support it provides which is of enormous value to parents who are home educating.
Apart from panicking about making a horrible cock up I actually thoroughly enjoyed my chat with Alastair Lawson from the Home Ed team at Twinkle. And I think the farther the spread of ideas about alternatives to a school approach to education, the more children will be saved from wretched outcomes that sometimes result from a learning approach that doesn’t suit them. So I’ve asked him if it’s okay to share it here in case you weren’t able to access it through the Twinkle Facebook page.
Here it is, hope you enjoy it: https://rss.com/podcasts/twinklhomeeducators/220753/
And for extra support look up their Home Ed Facebook community, it’s growing and growing and being connected to others helps keep you balanced through those tricky moments!
Ross Mountney's Notebook 