She is looking at high school and for a variety of reasons she will need to have a portion of her schooling homeschooled. This gal wants to get going on growing up and living and I don’t think that college is in her future.
Rereading Charles Murray's book on REAL EDUCATION has inspired me to try to put together a curriculum that includes some education to achieve certifications in one or more technical computer-related area.
Advice appreciated
Tech ping please?
Homeschool ping please?
Thank you
Why don’t you think college is in her future? (if it’s okay to ask)
The best way to learn is to teach. Have her homeschool you.
I understand morse code isn't required anymore (spit).
/johnny
Be wary. The days of certifications with no diploma behind them leading to employment in the tech world are disappearing. More and more employers are wanting degrees first, and certs second. It’s not like the 1990’s where a novell certification was a gold card, and no other education required. These days even the techs at Fry’s all have degrees.
Do a search for “girls science camp” and your area. You’ll find everything from Microsoft computer science camp for girls only to local science and tech programs for homeschoolers.
Listen to this:
http://generationswithvision.com/broadcast/college-out-of-the-box/
Shipping your daughters off to college will soon be an anachronism.
I struggle with the same problem with my daughter - she is going into 7th grade as a homeschooler, and she’s extraordinarily bright, loves math and techie things. I was the same way at her age, and I was fortunate that the only thing available was programming in BASIC, because now it’s hard to get kids interested in learning from the ground up. My nephew also had to fight to find computer learning, but he was finally able to take programming classes in high school.
Are you aware of the programming site called “Scratch?” That’s kind if a fun thing to do. I also echo the sentiment about the ham radio - a great idea.
I would suggest keeping with her maturity level and let her have a lot of fun - she’s still young, so let her enjoy the fun of computers for a while.
I would check into your local schools (both public and private) to see if they can do ad hoc techie classes, as well as your Community College, or see what online options are available. She probably ought to get a BA or a BS, but she can work on getting credit online - she can do this quickly, and she doesn’t have to see it as an impediment to growing up and earning money. She needs a goal or she’ll flounder, if she’s not old enough or experienced enough for employment. And just being technical doesn’t necessarily mean that she wants to do it for the rest of her life! The skills might just be an example of her personality type. Maybe she likes solving problems, and the routine of a tech job might be boring.
College might be a very good bet for her. She would learn a great deal of useful information. Engineering schools are anxious to enroll women with her skills and interest, so she should be able to get a scholarship.
Check out Make magazine. I have no financial interest in them. I just think you might find some kindred spirits there. I think of the magazine as the current version of the Scientific American amateur science column, the old magazines like Radio-TV Experimenter and Science Experimenter, and the Whole Earth Catalog.
>>>Charles Murray’s book on REAL EDUCATION
I just started reading COMING APART by Murray. Most interesting statistics.
On the high school education front, how about these:
http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/
He recommends Saxon Math.
And don’t forget to visit his newsletter site with the fairly recent article on model building and science:
Also, there’s Open CourseWare from MIT. Your daughter can order the college texts, read them as she follows the online videos, and then take the tests. All of this is free online. http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
And, also there’s Khan Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org/
College Board offers a fair amount of free online materials to pass Advance Placement tests.
Hope this helps.
I am going to get “techie” with you - what kind of technology is she interested in? There are any number of areas of industry that get lumped into the category of technology. I’ll give you an example -
Computers
Digital networks
Communications (such as telephony including cell phones)
Radio communications
Satellites
Electrical Engineering
Electronic Engineering
“Green” technology
So, what area of technology interests her? It’s hard to help you put together a homeschool curriculum without knowing that. If you want a GENERAL approach that will help her out, make sure she has plenty of math (Algebra, calculus and trigonometry) and physics. If she nails those things, she can go pretty much anywhere in hardware technology - UNLESS she wants to be a software engineer. If she wants to be a softare engineer, the math is good (but not so much; some calculus and probably no trig), but she will need to be comfortable with the different software applications and the develoment languages currently in use.