New home again

I've moved for good this time:
http://hobbits8.com/patti

Change of Venue

Lately I've been posting things at a different blog site:
Hobbits 8

Google Deskstop

I really like Google Desktop. It may be that if I had a smaller screen on my computer, I wouldn't like it taking up all the space, but it takes up the couple of inches on the right hand side of my screen which is not a problem for me. It has several sections any of which you can choose not to include. I've excluded the running slideshow of photos on my computer. When you first install it, it takes awhile to index your computer files. Once that's done, however, you can quickly find anything on your computer in the search box. It searches all the files as well, as web pages visited, and emails much more quickly than the Windows search function. The other feature I like is in the "Web Clips" section you will get updates of any blogs that you regularly visit. You can also choose to exclude any where "once was enough." But that way, I always keep up with some of my favorite blog sites. (Xanga sites don't seem to get included).

There is a "news" section which has few options available for change, but interesting things come up periodically. I don't keep up with the news much, but I did know....only because of Google Desktop....that Bill Nye the "Science Guy" had gotten married!

We were able to get broad-band internet a few months ago, and maybe the program would be cumbersome if you were using 26.6 dial-up as we used to have.

Wedding Photos

I've put up all the photos from Nate and Amy's wedding.

Cheating Receiving the Seal of Approval from Teachers

You won't believe this unless you read it:
Learning to Cheat at Spunky's blog

How to Prepare for College

I know it's been awhile since I posted anything. I've been trying to catch up on some other projects. It just feels nice not to have to do anything besides my normal household duties and homeschooling the kids. However, many times I am reminded of this article; so I will post it here.
How to Prepare for College by David Crabtree

His brother Jack had an interesting article at the World Magazine blog:
Intelligent Design Decision: Evidence of Philosophical Confusion

Here are some wedding photos, although there are more to come which will most likely cause some major rearranging: Wedding Individuals

On Writing and Other Educational Endeavors

I am not a great writer and probably never will be. I do hope though that I am able to convey ideas accurately and in an organized fashion. I know that there are many people who have a natural flair for writing and don't have to work at it too much. But I think there are probably a lot more people like me than like that. In teaching my own children in our homeschool, it is all too easy to avoid the hard things, and I've become more convinced the harder something is for me or my kids the more we need to work on it. This quote from I'm the Teacher, You're the Student (book I wrote about in an earlier post) even uses the music analogy that I have used before. It isn't just applicable to writing, but in a lot of educational endeavors. It also can be instructional for us as homeschoolers to know areas of potential weaknesses in college students.

Most Emory undergraduates are bad writers; most Berkeley undergraduates are bad writers; and I know from talking with my academic pals around the country that most students at Yale, St. Louis, Stonehill College, Colby-Sawyer College, Hiram College, Notre Dame, and Duke are also bad writers. They have not done enough writing to become good at it. They've been cursed with a lifetime of multiple-choice examinations instead, so even the highly intelligent ones come to writing as a strange and alien activity that is occasionally forced upon them. But writing is an activity that needs constant practice if you're going to be good at it. It's like being a violinist--if you once had a few lessons but then got into the habit of picking up the violin just four or five times per year, you would not make sweet and beautiful sounds on it to delight an audience. So it is with the students' papers. They haven't written much, ever, most of them, and they don't really know how to do it, with the result that they can't convey their knowledge and intellectual ability in writing.

Dr. Allitt goes on to explain other problems in students' writing--one of which is grammar. Mistakes in grammar he finds in students' papers are subject-verb agreement problems, mixing tenses, misuse of past participle forms in verbs, misuse of apostrophes, and lack of understanding of the use of the pluperfect tense. Confident usage of these things take practice. If the teacher/homeschool parent doesn't know these things, she will be unable to help her student correct them in writing. If the teacher/homeschool parent does know them, she will be much more able to help her child in his writing. Much can be learned about grammar in the context of writing if the parent is educated herself. So learn that grammar with your kids! You'll be glad you did.