Another busy body politician who thinks she knows what’s best for kids instead of the parents.  This battle will never end.  As Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=346726

While environmentalists can certainly go overboard in their zealous desire for a clean earth, there is still valid reason to take care of our earth.  Clean sources of energy are a worthy pursuit and the Vatican is taking steps to do so.  This story shows how they have made good use of solar panels.

The 2,400 panels on the 5,000 square metre roof of the Paul VI auditorium, near St Peter’s Basilica, where popes hold general audiences, will convert sunlight into 300 megawatts of electricity a year.

This is enough for the year-round energy needs of the hall, which is also used for concerts and conferences, and several surrounding buildings, according to the Vatican.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gJQliG5EWg3Vr8AAsJCeo8Nc0Qng

This Monday, Starbucks will offer free coffee to homeschooling parents.  Don’t miss out!!

http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/pressdesc.asp?id=896

http://homeschooling.about.com/b/2008/09/24/starbucks-offers-free-coffee-for-homeschool-parents.htm

I’m pleased to announce the launch of the LivingRoom Academy web store.  There you can find a line of bumper sticker that I have started working on and the entire American Catholic History course.  You can purchase with check or credit card through Google Checkout.

Of course, what would a grand opening be without a grand opening sale?  Right now, through Columbus Day, October 12th, bumper stickers are just 3.75 each!!  American Catholic History audio course is 25% off!!

Keep checking back for new items to be added.

I was talking with my wife the other day about homeschool families and what prevents them from using the internet more.  She mentioned that safty was a big concern.  I figured I would add this to the topics that I post about. 

While there are many topics that can be covered, I’d like to start with the basics.  There are two pieces of protection that everyone should have in place.  They are: anti-virus protection and a firewall.

Viruses are small programs that people write to cause some type of harm to a computer system.  Sometimes they are destructive, such as one that deletes files.  Sometimes they exploit your system, such as a program that will send SPAM from your computer when you are not using it.  An anti-virus program will guard against these threats.  AVG is a free piece of anti-virus software for the home user.  Follow this link and select the FREE version.  http://www.grisoft.com/ww.product-avg-anti-virus-free-edition#tba2

Firewalls are programs that protect against intrusions against your computer.  Using a firewall is sort of like locking your doors and making sure only friendly people can get in.  Zone Alarm is a firewall that is freely available to home users.  As you use programs that access the internet (such as a web browser), Zone Alarm will ask if you want to allow it to do so.  Follow this link and select the FREE version.  http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/catalog/products/znalm/comparison.jsp

I’ll have more posts on internet security in the future so stay tuned.  Feel free to leave a comment or question in the comment section or send me an e-mail if you like.

LivingRoom Academy now has a newsletter about Catholic homeschooling and related topics that you can subscribe to.  You can find the form to sign up at the top right corner of the web page.  When you subscribe, in addition to the actual newsletter about Catholic homeschooling, you will get a link to a free report.  This report is exclusive to LivingRoom Academy and highlites 10 Pros and Cons to Catholic Homeschooling.  I didn’t want it to be one sided and only give the plusses.  There are some potential downsides you need to consider when making your decision to homeschool.  When you fill out the form, you will get a confirmation e-mail.  Click the link in this e-mail and the confirmation page will have a link to 10 Pros and Cons to Catholic Homeschooling.  Right click to download or click to open and press the save button.

LivingRoom Academy will not sell or give your e-mail address away to anyone.  The purpose is to keep in contact with news, ideas, articles, and offerings.  Join today!!

Yahoo mail users note – the confirmation e-mail may get sent to your spam folder.  If you do not recieve the confirmation e-mail within a few minutes, check your spam folder.

I’m considering hosting a web programming class for older students in the western Chicago suburbs.  At this point, I would like to gage interest in my idea.  Do you have high-school age students that would be interested in learning some web programming?

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Besides teaching my kids about saving and investing I want to give them a broader perspective of what money can be in somebody’s life. Living in America were in a land of plenty. It’s not easy to comprehend what real poverty means. I learned about a concept called micro-lending. I started to think that this is something that we can incorporate into our homeschool education.

Micro-lending gives people in Third World countries and other poverty-stricken areas access to credit. The credit comes from a private bank. You act as that private bank. By acting as a private bank you allow people to escape what is known as credit slavery. Without micro-lending these people often have to borrow money from modern day loan sharks. These loan sharks charge enough interest so that the person borrowing the money you never really get ahead. The credit given in micro-lending programs is intended to go to entrepreneurs in the third world country. This will help them to grow their business and become self-sufficient.

An example is in order. Suppose a man makes wooden furniture by hand. Because he is using hand tools he can produce a limited number of pieces per month. He barely makes enough to cover the cost of materials plus feeding himself and his family. However, if he had access to borrow a couple of hundred dollars he could buy a circular saw which would allow him to come close to doubling the number of pieces that he can produce in a month. Microcredit allows him to borrow this money at zero or very low interest. You can view this man’s profile over the Internet and you may decide to lend him part or all of the money that he needs to buy the saw. Once he gets the money he buys the saw and pays back the loan with the increased amount of business that he has.

These programs are usually governed by a certain number of people within the persons’ village. It’s the village members who sit on this board that put pressure on the borrowers pay back the money from microcrediters. They want to keep the rate that the loans are paid off very high so that people continue to loan them money. This board will decide who is eligible to have their picture and story posted on the website to ask for a loan.

I have mentioned this type of program to my children. I told them that what we could do as a family is set aside a certain amount of money that we can use for micro-lending. Then we can all review the profiles together and decide who we would like to loan money to you. Since this is something that we have not actually started yet I don’t know all the details of how this works. I’ll post another entry once you get the hang of it. One of the things I hope exists within these programs is the ability to follow up with the person that you’ve lent money to. I love to be able to show my kids exactly what the person did with the money and what the impact it made on their lives was.

This would also be a good lesson in terms of entrepreneurship. We get to see the profiles of people who have small businesses that want to grow them. Hopefully this will spur the imagination of my own children. This can also show them how privileged we are to live in the date place and time that we do. One of the things that we often don’t think about in terms of our wealth is the ability to have cheap credit. We usually only think of the assets that we have. But credit gives us leverage. As a matter of fact we can see that perhaps we’ve been too generous with our credit. Perhaps we have gone too far when you think about the subprime mortgage fiasco that we have encountered.

I encourage everyone to check out micro-lending. There is certainly a number of lessons that can be drawn from it: math, religion, economics, world cultures, etc. The only potential downside is the risk of default. But that is also part of banking and can become part of the lesson too. If you put a reasonable limit on the amount of money that you want to loan to someone there is still relatively little risk. If one person defaults on $25 that you contributed to his loan then you’re only out $25. Check out the following links to learn more about micro-lending.

http://www.kiva.org/

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6682424

Because homeschoolers are more isolated from each other and other students compare to students who are going to a more traditional elementary or high school, they don’t have as much chance to work on projects together with other students. I think this is an important skill to children should have. They should know how to work together and cooperate with different people. Obviously they can do this with their brothers and sisters but they also need to learn how to work with kids that they’re not as familiar with. One of the things that technology can help accomplish is the ability to do collaboration on projects with other students. Again this is one of the skills that will lend itself directly to the workplace when the student is older and also in college. In college you are often paired up with another student will have to work in a small group. You have to learn to work together with that group including all of the dynamics that each person brings.

In today’s day and age this is increasingly done with collaboration tools and often over the Internet. Because homeschoolers do not have the luxury of having different people working together in the same project in the same location, they have all the more reason to leverage the Internet for this. Homeschool students can collaborate with students in their own homeschool group or students with other homeschool groups across the country or across the world. This mirrors the way a lot of work situations exist nowadays.

There’s some very basic tools that we are all very familiar with that we can use to do this. Obviously there is e-mail for both communication and sharing files. Instant messaging is also very important if they’re working together the same time. Students can send short messages back and forth and share files quicker than e-mail.

There are other tools such as tada-list. It’s a way to setup checklist for tasks to be done and it can be shared with other people. They’re more advanced tools such as basecamp which offers more collaborative features. There is also project software hosted online that older students can use. This type of software is more advanced and lets you assign to specific people and also set target dates and dependencies.

Picture and text messaging are also helpful. For example if one student is investigating artifacts in a museum, he can take pictures with his digital camera and send them electronically to other students or to a blog. This eliminates the need to try to describe things that are difficult verbally.

The travesty of justice in California will be reviewed by the 2nd District Court of appeals to review the case.  More soon…

http://www.worldmag.com/webextra/13871

Things are looking a little better for California homeschoolers.  We will see how things pan out.  I am slightly worried that this is just the first of attacks on homeschooling.  It didn’t take long for the president in Germany to make it’s way to America.