4Real Forums: laptop

Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.

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High School Years and Beyond
4Real Forums : High School Years and Beyond

Topic: laptop

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Barb.b
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Posted: Aug 08 2012 at 4:26pm \| IP Logged

just got my upcoming 9th grader a macbook air. Sooooo, what things do your kids do homeschool on their computers. I know - papers, assignments, vocal., Just want to pick your brains to see what I'm missing. We didn't school all summer and my brain is dead!!

Barb

Martha
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Posted: Aug 08 2012 at 4:40pm \| IP Logged

Ohhh. Jealous!!

We have a laptop and a desktop, both are mine/communal.

All the teens do is LOTRO, e services for civil air patrol, and type final drafts of their papers. That's it.

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Martha
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Barb.b
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Posted: Aug 08 2012 at 4:58pm \| IP Logged

Just showing my ignorance - what is LOTRO?

I spent quite sometime setting her up - decided on an internet filter I liked better then the mac parental controls. But I have also an admin. account on her computer so I can have some control and log in.

SallyT
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Posted: Aug 08 2012 at 6:10pm \| IP Logged

My mother gave my 9th grader a laptop last year. It sounds so . . . creepy . . . but honestly, we communicate a lot about school by email. He's an easy kid to talk to, and we get along fine, but honestly -- somehow this works! He writes papers and emails them to me; I'm going to be emailing him his plans week by week. (and I'll be posting them on my blog starting next week as well).

A lot of his reading for English/history this year is in the form of free e-texts online. AND he's doing German via an online program called Deutsche Interaktiv, plus the BBC's German foreign-language page. I've spent a lot of time this summer bookmarking resources to email to him and/or include as links in his weekly plans.

Mac has some very nice foreign-language flashcard apps and other things, too -- I would definitely browse the App Store to see what you can use. There's a totally great frog-dissection app you could use for biology -- my younger kids adore that one. Many good educational apps are free or very cheap. My son's laptop isn't a Mac, but mine is, and I've found a wealth of things to use with various children. My son has Google Earth on his computer, which he likes to play with and which is a geography course in and of itself.

You can also download a Kindle app and send books to it. I find this very helpful for a person who for all his excellent qualities tends to LOSE STUFF. If it's all on the computer, he has no excuse for not having it! He'll be traipsing back and forth to and from the college campus with his dad a lot this year, so more than ever I'm concerned with providing him with materials that CANNOT POSSIBLY BE LOST. Not that this has ever been a problem in the past or anything.

As you can see, we use computers a LOT in our family . . . I tend to want to use them for all they're worth. I love love love my Macbook, and although the computer my son has is not quite the pinnacle of computer wonderfulness that a Macbook is, still we can get a lot of mileage out of his having it. Have fun!

Sally

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Martha
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Posted: Aug 08 2012 at 8:25pm \| IP Logged

Sorry. LOTRO = Lord of the Rings Online gaming. ;p. it's quite fun and free.

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Martha
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mom3aut1not
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Posted: Aug 11 2012 at 1:01pm \| IP Logged

One of my kids did online courses in high school. (This was great as that chid was uncooperative with me in a couple of areas back then.) Another one did a lot of her undergrad online as well as most of her master's so far. They have also used laptops to take notes in their offline classes instead writing notes.

I asked those kids about this, and they mentioned being able to do research and being able to download books in the public domain. My oldest did both for a paper she wrote on the Marquis de Lafayette.

What else? Hhhmmm.

Also, more and more hs stuff is available via pdf files. (I have been pondering this recently. I started hsing in 1991, and things have changed so much. Not only is there much more available for hsers, but the kind of materials and the delivery systems have changed so much.) Amanda Bennet's unit studies now have hot links in them which is really nice for my autie son. I see more and more curriculum in the future being done this way.

I might have my child use the laptop online only in public areas in the beginning. Oh, and be sure to remind them about security measures if he or she takes the laptop out of the house.

In Christ,

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Deborah

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