Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Other home educators ... 1

Someone new joined the autonomous education network at mc2, and diving into the web from his blog (Living in a Deschooling Madhouse) I surfed to Diary of Home Education Nobody. Entry 001 triggered my own awareness of the challenge to provide evidence of Cricket's & Fish's learning. I don't actually 'have' to provide evidence to anyone just now, so the challenge is partly seeing it for myself. I don't want to spoil the boys' enjoyment of their life-learning, so why do I ask them to write about it?
  • At the very least, says one of my justifications, some brief note by which they can practice handwriting.
  • In the process may be practice at generating written words from thoughts (I'd be content with personal spelling)
  • Habits can be helpful: and I am thinking that this kind of writing can help them develop habits of:
    • reflection on performance/development/process
    • documenting either objective data of their exploration (like Daniel does in Star Gate) or
    • deliberate thinking (I'm thinking of showing them deBono's CoRT or at least starting with PMI or Thinking hats)
  • sometimes writing can help reinforce learning
  • Maybe it will help them become aware of what they are learning so that when asked they can answer with more than "I've been playing the computer and watching DVDs"
  • I feel a need for some sort of documentation, and I don't want to spend my days following them around with notepad and pen.
Still, I need to keep requirement to a minimum (to be consistent with my philosophy of autonomy) ... yet I am the guide so maybe for now I need to focus on:
  • pointing out the use and practice of various forms of documentation in their areas of interest
  • finding reasons that have meaning to them.

No comments: