Author: Scott (Page 79 of 80)

Get Into The Game!

August 22, 2008 / Scott / 1 Comment

We’ve received a couple of emails from people who are interested in starting up their own blogs to write about their kids’ progress and don’t know where to get started. It’s pretty easy actually. Just head over to WordPress and register. It’s ABSOLUTELY FREE and very easy to use. You’ll be writing your first post within a few minutes. Blogger is another free option, but we’re partial to WordPress around here. By the way, both of these options also allow you the option of keeping the entire blog private if that’s a concern.

If you want to get really fancy you can buy your own domain name and host your own site. It’s a little more work, but you have a little more control (and responsibility) over how your site works that way.

Why should you start an education or family blog? Here are a few good reasons:

Track your kids’ progress–It’s a great way to keep notes on their struggles and achievements
Meet and connect with others–If you’re homeschooling, there are many others with whom you can network and share ideas. The same goes for teachers and parents who are working with their kids outside of school.
A blog for your kids–having your kids keep a blog of their own is great writing exercise for them and also is a great way to help them (and you) get hands on experience with how technology is changing the way we learn. Maybe they could use their blog to write reviews for the books they read.
A teaching tool–What if you posted assignments for you children on your blog and they were tasked with reading and comprehending these assignments? You could even include some intentional grammar and spelling errors and have your child find them.

There are probably a million other reasons for you to start blogging that have nothing to do with education, but hopefully this will convince you give it a try. Make sure you let us know about your new blog (a link would be great), and we’ll make sure to put you on our blogroll and feature your unique ideas!

Back To School, Or Homeschool, Giveaway

July 31, 2008 / Scott / 2 Comments

Summer is flying by, and people are no doubt getting geared up for back to school. Whether your kids go to public school, private school, or homeschool, we want to help you get this year started on the right foot by giving away a $20 Abunga.com Gift Card to one of our new subscribers this August. To be eligible, all you have to do is subscribe to our site through email (it’s free) using the form below. That’s it!

Seriously, that’s it! Only email subscribers are eligible, but if you’ve already subscribed in a feed reader you can always subscribe by email too. As long as you subscribe before midnight on August 31, you will be included in the random drawing.

If you don’t know about Abunga, it’s a family friendly, online discount bookstore that gives 5% of its revenues to non-profits.

Thanks, and good luck!

Literacy On the Web

July 28, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

One of the issues we’re already concerned about is setting a good reading example for our kids. We feel like it’s important to not only read to them, but for them to see us reading on our own as well. Ana is much more apt to read books than I am. I’ve always been a pretty voracious reader. I’m constantly reading, but 90% of my reading now occurs online. I feel like I need to make a conscious effort to read books when little ones are around because I’m afraid they’ll associate a computer as some type of toy and won’t understand that what I do with the computer is actually reading. But even if they realize that I’m reading, is that the kind of reading kids need?

Yesterday’s New York Times has an excellent article discussing the changing face of reading and how it affects literacy. Reading online is increasingly popular with young people, and the experience of reading online resembles more of a zig-zag-bob-and-weave than the linear beginning, middle, end type reading most of us grew up doing in books, magazines, and newspapers. When I was a kid, I was big fan of “Choose Your Own Adventure” books because they offered a little bit of control over the story, and the story could change. One of the reasons I love reading online is because the experience is similar, and it offers many more tangents. The difference is that those books I loved so much still had a beginning, middle, and end to their stories.

From my own experience, I think the big issue with reading online is that I don’t tend to get as much granularity as I would from a book. I use my online reading as more of a macro view of a subject. Although I can get many more vantage points on a subject, I tend to miss out on the details. I tend to use what I read online as a guide to what I want to read more about in a book; the overview that I get online helps me decide what I’d like to learn about in detail. But, just as the article suggests, I think the way my brain works has definitely been changed by the availability of information we now enjoy.

I think it’s interesting that for kids born in the last ten years or so, this way of getting information is perfectly normal, and for the generation before mine (at least a large number of them), they haven’t really transitioned to life online the way many in my generation have. It’s definitely a strange spot to be in, having experience “extreme reading” both before and after the presence of the web.

Still, I tend to agree with this statement from the article:

Even those who are most concerned about the preservation of books acknowledge that children need a range of reading experiences. “Some of it is the informal reading they get in e-mails or on Web sites,” said Gay Ivey, a professor at James Madison University who focuses on adolescent literacy. “I think they need it all.”

What do you guys think? Does reading online really count as reading?

Rules of CoWorking

July 16, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

We’re putting together some structure and a website for our local coworking group, and were kicking the idea around about how to include people (or not). I’m a big fan of keeping rules as simple and minimal as possible. I figured eight rules were plenty…apologies to Chuck Palahniuk.

The first rule of coworking is that you must talk about coworking
The second rule of coworking is that you MUST TALK ABOUT COWORKING
If someone brings in a box of donuts or pulls up a cool new website, work is over
Any number of people can work at any time
Any number of projects and businesses can be worked on at the same time
No shirt, no shoes? Well, can you at least throw on a t-shirt and some flip flops?
Work will go on as long as it has to
If it’s your first day coworking, you have to work

[amzn_multi_product_inline keyword=’Chuck Palahniuk’ count=’3′ page=’1′ sort=’default’ category=’Books’]

Reading Phailure?

July 10, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

USA Today has a pretty scathing criticism of Reading First in its editorial section. The crux of the argument is that the system has been duped by textbook publishers into wasting a lot of money on a program that has no value. But does that mean the research is wrong? Is the problem with the research or the implementation?

…the studies the panel reviewed show that intensive phonics has little to do with students’ ability to understand what they read. Distinguished literacy experts Frank Smith and Kenneth Goodman have provided compelling evidence that comprehension is the basis for learning to read: We learn to read by understanding what is on the page.

But what happens after we learned to read? How do we learn to stretch our skills? What about reading to learn? Shouldn’t our goal be to eventually learn to understand by being able to read what is on the page? Mr. Krashen’s solution to literacy ills is the mere presence of books.

Instead of wasting billions of dollars more on Reading First, let’s invest much more in libraries in low-income areas. Let’s make sure all children have access to books, and solve the real literacy crisis forever.

Great. Now what do we do about the kids who don’t live next door to the library?

Whether taught at school or at home, with books paid for by the parents or provided free for loan by libraries, using researched based techniques or trial and error, children are ultimately going to be affected more by their parents’ attitudes toward literacy and reading than anything else.

Family Friendly Online Bookstore

June 27, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

The other day I happened to run into Gavin Baker of Abunga.com at an informal entrepreneur’s meetup. Abunga is a family friendly online media store that actually uses the input of its community to decide what they should sell. Abunga isn’t Amazon, and they aren’t trying to be either. They are built around the idea of not only providing family friendly products at great prices, but they also have a program that donates money back to worthy causes.

Gavin and I had a really good conversation about the directions they’d like to go with Abunga and new services they have in the works to enhance the experience of their user community. We talked part technology, part marketing, and part “you know what would be cool”. I don’t want to give away any of their plans for the future, but those guys are working feverishly to add more and more to Abunga.

Check them out if you have a chance. We’re constantly looking for cool things like this in the community (especially our local community) that are good resources for parents and kids!

175th Carnival of Education

June 12, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

This week’s Carnival of Education (game show edition) is being hosted at Learn Me Good 2. Good luck to MisterTeacher on his upcoming game show appearance!

COH Issue For June 10

June 10, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up–thanks to The Common Room for hosting! Just a few of the interesting posts that caught our eye here at RCO:

Hands on ABC Order — some activities you can do with your child to exercise their alphabetizing skills.

First Grade Curriculum Review — great insight from a first year homeschooler on several subjects (not just reading)

There’s More to Education Than Smarts — an interesting post about the social responsibilities that come with an education.

And take a look at the test Phil gave his 4th grader.

There are several other great posts in the carnival for homeschoolers–check it out!

Passing a Cyclist

May 21, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

Patrick Beeson has a nice article with some tips for drivers. It’s a good, quick list of pointers, but I’m assuming this will be of interest only to the drivers who don’t make a habit of yelling “Git off da roa-ohd!” or throwing stuff at cyclists.

I was riding a lot on the roads a couple of years ago when I was training for longer triathlons. I decided it just wasn’t worth the risk of getting hit by some a-hole after a guy was killed on one of the routes I rode often. I started riding on Cherokee Boulevard exclusively–plenty of space, and people are aware and considerate of cyclists there for the most part. That kind of sucks for longer rides, but the monotony built up my mental fitness and it paid off in races.

Sure, a cyclist has just as much right to be on the road as a motorist, but I’m still not comfortable putting my life in the hands of someone who doesn’t know or care about that fact. Drivers should actually be happy that more people will be on bikes. The decreased demand for gasoline will have prices falling in no time.

Readers and Golfers

May 18, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

I love to play golf, but I’m not a golfer…yet. That raises the obvious question–what are the differences between a golfer and someone who plays golf? Well, they’re basically the same differences between someone who can read and a reader.

Golfers have spent countless hours practicing chip shots and bunker shots. They’ve hit thousands of buckets of balls with their drivers and irons. They’ve spent time and effort tweaking small nuances in their swings in their basements. They are prepared for every situation the course, which they’ve played dozens of times and know intimately, can throw at them. As a result, they score well on the weekends when they play.

Guys who play golf (like me) usually go out once a week or less to play 18 holes. Maybe we hit a bucket of balls before we play to warm up. We get a little stressed when put in the situation of having to chip downhill onto green because we don’t really have that shot. We lay up instead of going for greens because we can’t hit our 2 iron well every time and can’t rely on it. We basically play every hole shot to shot, reacting to the latest situation we’ve created for ourselves instead of setting ourselves up and executing a strategy.

So what does this have to do with reading? Maybe you can see where I’m headed with this…
Continue reading

Previously On…

May 10, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

I admit it. I’m a TV junkie. I like to think I watch in moderation, but I probably watch too much. I know that fact may seem to contradict what we’re advocating here, but I can’t help it. And I actually noticed something helpful about television a few weeks ago when Ana was explaining a reading strategy to me. The strategy we were discussing is summarizing. I’m not the reading expert, so I’ll let her take you through the specifics of summarizing, why it’s important, and how to employ it, but I quickly realized that it is a strategy used in television all the time.

Most of my favorite shows are running series like Lost that develop characters and stories over weeks and years. One thing every episode of these shows has in common is that they all begin with a “Previously on…” segment that summarizes what has happened so far. As Ana points out in her article on summarizing, there’s a very good reason for this–it gives us a chance to get caught up very quickly so we can pay attention and absorb the new material.

Again, I’ll leave the coaching of this strategy to Ana, but I thought I’d point out a way that this strategy is commonly used in another medium. I’ve always appreciated the “Previously on…” segments of television shows. Besides reminding me of what has happened in previous episodes, they’re also effective in setting the mood for what I’m about to watch. Whenever I pick up a book I’m working on, especially if it’s fiction, I almost always skim a few paragraphs I covered in my last reading session just to give myself a quick reminder of where I was and to get my mind back into story.

Damn You Scrubs

May 8, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

I tried it once, just a taste, a few years ago. I got just enough of it to know that it was something I should stay away from. I could feel those inner voids that had been present in the years since Seinfeld went off the air being filled just a little, and I knew I’d be in real trouble if I allowed myself to partake. There was no way I’d let myself get tangled up in its evil web.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave in to my weakness. Gave in may not be the right phrase. It’s more like I got overconfident in my ability to fight off my demons. It had been years since I’d bothered watching a sitcom. They all suck, right? And I’ve outgrown them. I’m mature. I can handle my TV now. It wouldn’t do any harm to watch just one episode. Besides, it would be a nice thing to do for the missus. She seems to enjoy it, and she’s confined to that big comfy chair made for two feeding the baby. It’s family time.

It’s just one episode, right?

Wrong. I hadn’t counted on the fact that she was mixing up a dangerous concoction of Scrubs with Tivo. Cooked up with 2.5 hours of syndication every weekday, they form the speedball of television sitcoms. It didn’t take long for my tolerance to build up. Within a few days I was there with her watching 2 episodes a night. We should have known things were getting out of hand when we accidently missed The Soup that first Friday night.

I know. It’s pathetic. We weren’t trying to be neglectful, Joel McHale. Honest. It just sort of happened. We’ll never let it happen again. One more promise we can’t keep.

Now, a few weeks later, here we are at rock bottom. I’ve even caught myself calling my male coworkers “Bambi” and thinking up places to hide saltines even though I have no competitors. At home, we’re making excuses to watch more and more, and our justifications are just lame:

“We can’t watch just one episode…they air in pairs.”
“It’s Tivo’d, so it actually takes us three episodes to watch an hour of TV.”
“We have to watch some of these or we’ll run out of recording space.”
“We should watch all of these now. We’re going to be gone for a couple of days and will be way behind.”

It’s easy to rationalize it, but deep down I know it’s wrong. The worst part is that she can’t help me. Her problem is just as bad as mine, and I’m not sure if she sees it herself. Maybe if I get it out of my system I can help her get straight too.

Maybe I can get in touch with the producers of Intervention on A&E. We used to watch that show too before all of this started. Maybe they could help us.

But it wouldn’t hurt to hear just one more snide comment from Dr. Cox would it? They come in really handy at work.

Want to watch some with me? Come one…just some clips, not a whole episode or anything like that. A little bit won’t hurt you.

Nine Months Old and Learning to Read!

May 2, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

Ok, I’m sure you don’t believe me, but it’s true…just let me explain.

Our nine month old is learning to read already. She can’t read yet, and she probably won’t be able to read for years, but she’s already learning how. She’s learning because we started building her reading foundation months ago by doing a few simple things. At our house, we call it “reading with a purpose.”

Like most kids, Chick Pea has a favorite book. For her, that book is Marcos Counts. We read this book to her at least six or seven times a day. At times it’s the only way I can get her to calm down while Mom cooks or writes. We’re very fortunate that she shows an interest and loves everything about books, whether it’s listening to us read, looking at the pictures, or eating them. But every time we read this book with her, we read with purpose. Just a few simple things make all the difference (we hope) in helping her catch on to the idea of reading long before she has the ability to really read. Here are a few techniques you can use with babies and toddlers:

Repeated Readings
If you’re like us, you don’t have much of a choice in this one. Small children love repetition and pretty much force you to read the same book over and over. But these repeated readings help them build vocabulary and fluency early on.

Tracking the words in the book
Even though you’ve memorized the text from repeated readings, tracking the words with your finger as you go along helps them make the connection that the scribbles you are pointing at with your finger (text) have some meaning and are related to what you are saying. Resist the urge to recite the words and turn the pages on queue.

Let your child turn the pages
With repeated readings, you child will learn pretty quickly when the page needs to be turned, and they’ll be anxious to do it to get to next part of the story. Along with tracking, which will be paused while waiting for the page to turn, kids quickly figure out that the story needs the next page to continue. In our case, she’s figured out that pages need to be turned, but her timing’s a little off. That’s ok too–it’s good practice.

Look at the book while you read
Again, this may be tough to remember to do because you’ll have the story memorized pretty quickly, but directing your attention to the pages and text gives your child a visual cue that the information is coming from the book, not from you. You can expand this using tracking by pointing at the pictures in the book and talking about them. For instance, Marcos Counts objects, but the book never mentions what those objects are in the text. We always point out what Marcos is counting on each page (ducks, cars, crayons, etc.) to help her learn to identify these objects.

HAVE FUN!!!
This is the main purpose of our reading sessions. The single most important thing you can do to instill a love of reading in your child is to make it fun. Don’t force a reading time on your small child, and don’t chase them around insisting that they listen to the story. Even though it’s her absolute favorite book, Chick Pea often crawls away 3 pages in to Marcos Counts to go inspect a wooden block or chase a cat out of the room, and that’s ok. I usually just sit quietly and read silently to myself to find out what happens at the end of the story. 🙂

8 Shows That Would Be Better Than Rock of Love

April 11, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’ll never be able to forgive myself for watching both seasons of Rock of Love in their entirety. The only thing I can do that would possibly atone for my actions is recommend a few shows to VH1 that may allow me to gain some of my self respect back. In no particular order, here are eight shows that would be more interesting and more entertaining than Rock of Love.

The Purity is Right With Nikki Sixx

Contestants shoot heroin with the Motley Crue bassist and try to guess it’s purity. The contestant closest to the actual purity level without going over gets to spin the big wheel, which contains various rehab packages. The grand prize includes detox and a spot on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. All contestants receive a complimentary double dose at the methadone clinic good for one visit only.

Survivor DLR

Contestants are stranded on a deserted island with David Lee Roth. Instead of being voted off of the island, contestants remove themselves voluntarily. The contestant who can stand DLR the longest is the winner. The game gets harder as more contestants leave and survivors are forced to spend more and more time with Diamond Dave.

The Ultimate Fighter with Kid Rock

The concept is pretty simple–we follow Kid Rock as he tours the country’s Waffle House’s and nightly challenges drunks in pugilistic competition. A game show? Not really, although I guess you could consider anyone who doesn’t get Kid Rock’s bodily fluids on them a winner.

What’s My Line with Ozzy Osbourne

Unlike the original “What’s My Line”, contestants on this show simply listen to Ozzy and translate. Contestants accrue points based on the number of words in each sentence they are able to correctly identify. The winner gets to avoid ever having to know anything about Ozzy’s annoying offspring for the rest of their lives.

Name Buy That Tune with Lars Ulrich

Lars hosts this new version of the old classic, but with a catch. When a contestant successfully names a tune they are immediately swarmed by lawyers and retired concert security guys with RIAA t-shirts (sleeves rolled up of course). If the contestant is not able to produce proof that they actually purchased the song they’ve just heard, they must choose between being sued by Metallica’s attorneys or having the security guys bludgeon them with those big flashlights (after which you will be sued anyway).

The Roadie with Axl Rose

This one is sort of like The Apprentice. Each night, Axl Rose will either cancel an appearance, no-show the event, or storm off stage pissed off. Axl will then decide which contestant was responsible for the mishap and fire one. The winner of The Roadie earns the right to be blamed at the next concert for Axl’s behavior, and subsequently fired.

Celebrity Arm Wrestling with The Drummer From Def Leppard

No commentary necessary. On second thought, why did I even post this?

The Biggest Loser

This one is special because it actually pits celebrities people who used to be in bands against one another to see who truly is the biggest loser, literally. It should probably feature the members of bands like Faster Pussycat, Enuff Znuff, Britny Fox, and Vixen

Why I Give Full Articles in My Feed

March 31, 2008 / Scott / 0 Comments

With apologies to those who come here only for the ranting…

I have a plan to do a whole series of articles on search engine optimization (SEO) for bloggers. While the topic of full vs. partial feeds may not be directly related to SEO at first glance, I feel that it is in a round about way. After all, the goal of SEO and is to get more visitors to your site, and that is probably one of the goals you’d like to accomplish with your feed as well. I’m by no means saying that partial feeds are bad, and I think they definitely have their place. But for me (and probably most other bloggers) I believe full feeds are a more effective way to drive traffic. While much of what I’m about to say is based on experience, I believe I can back it up with logic and human blogger nature.

So first off, what’s the argument for partial feeds? It’s actually not a bad argument, and I used to subscribe to it myself. When I first set up my feed, I was sure that partial feeds were the way to go. I thought I had to do everything I could to force entice people to visit my site. There was no way I was going to give away all my content through the feed. Only after they loaded up the entire site, ads and all, would I give away my content.

But then it hit me–I’m giving it away no matter what. It didn’t take me long to realize that full posts in my feed were better than partial feeds, not only for my subscribers, but ultimately for me as well.

Good For My Subscribers

Anyone who uses an RSS reader is probably addicted to it. One of the first things we do after we read an article we like on a new site (especially a blog) is to look for the feed subscription button. And as a blogger, one of the first things I check every day is my FeedBurner stats, mostly out of vanity, because I’m truly flattered that people care enough about what I have to say to choose to subscribe to my feed. I feel like the least I can do for the folks who’ve paid me such a big compliment is to say “thanks” by making my site as easy as possible for them to read in the way they choose, and that means no ads in the feed as well.

But that means subscribers aren’t going to see any of the ads on my site in their reader, so they won’t ever click on these ads, right? Well…I don’t believe that’s necessarily true.

Good For Me

Think about it…the people who are subscribed to my feed are people who already may be interested in what I have to say. They are also likely to engage me in conversation by leaving comments on my blog. By giving them full posts in the feed, I increase the chances they will read everything I wrote. That increases the chances that they’ll want to comment on something I wrote, and that means they will visit my site. By contrast, a partial feed means that I have three or four sentences to entice them into visiting the site. Frankly, I don’t have enough faith in myself as a writer to accomplish that with every post.

An even more compelling reason–I think it’s pretty safe to assume that many of the people reading my feed are other bloggers. And while comments are great and encouraged, an even bigger compliment from another blogger is a link back from their blog. In fact, I’d much rather have a single link than ten comments. Again, providing the full feed increases the chances that someone will read something they’d like to write about on their own blog.

How do links back to my blog help me so much? Obviously, exposure to the the other blogger’s readers has a lot of value, but there’s another reason, and this is where the SEO part comes in. Search engines (especially Google) see a link as a “vote” for a site. So a link increases my “clout” with search engines, which means that I can greatly increase search engine rankings, which greatly increases my traffic. And I have to believe that the random visitor from a search engine is less familiar with my site layout and less likely to be wise to blog ad placement in general. This means that they are more likely to click on an ad than a regular subscriber who visits my site every day (because I don’t provide full posts in my feed) would be. More search engine traffic also increases the chances that I’ll get even more subscribers–rinse and repeat.

It’s win, win, win.

Full feeds reward loyal subscribers with the ability to read your site with ease. In my case, this includes keeping the feed ad free.

Full feeds reward you directly by increasing the chances your subscribers will visit your site and leave comments. One way conversations are fine, but I have those in my head all day, and sometimes I get tired of hearing only myself.

Full feeds increase your chances of getting back links, which increase your search engine rankings, and ultimately your traffic. Back links increase your exposure to other bloggers’ readers, and search engines are an excellent source of readers who would never find you otherwise.

I hope this helps those of you are trying to decide whether to use full or partial links, and I really hope I’ve convinced those of you who to whom I subscribe and are currently using partial feeds to give me the whole thing in my reader!