» The Beginner’s Guide to Unschooling

Post written by Leo Babauta. There’s nothing I get asked about more as a parent than unschooling, and nothing I recommend more to other parents. It’s an educational philosophy that provides for more freedom than any other learning method, and prepares kids for an uncertain and rapidly changing future better than anything else I know. My wife and I unschool four of our kids, and have been for several years. And yet, as powerful as I believe unschooling to be, I’ve never written about it, because the truth is, I certainly don’t have all the answers. No one does. The beauty of unschooling is in the search for the answers. But I’m getting ahead of myself: what is unschooling? What is Unschooling? First, it’s a form of homeschooling. However, this is how I describe it — in contrast to school: Let me emphasize that for a minute: in unschooling, life itself is learning. This is how I learn as a self-employed writer, as an entrepreneur, as a parent. Why Unschool? More reasons to unschool: More Reading

201 Ways to Arouse Your Creativity Arouse your creativity Electric flesh-arrows … traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm. ~ Anais Nin Creativity is like sex. I know, I know. The people I speak of are writers. Below, I’ve exposed some of their secret tips, methods, and techniques. Now, lie back, relax and take pleasure in these 201 provocative ways to arouse your creativity. Great hacks from Merlin Mann of 43 Folders

Family Unschoolers Network - Unschooling Support Lee Stranahan: Unschooling : How Good Morning America Got It All Wrong I know I'm naïve to expect the mainstream media to cover a subject like "radical unschooling" as anything other than a freak show, but the recent hatchet job that George Stephanopoulos and Good Morning America did on the topic was so hopelessly biased that it'd make Rupert Murdoch blush. Unschooling is a type of homeschooling that promotes organic, self-directed learning without the structure of traditional education. My family has unschooled our kids for over a decade. One of the reasons I'm making the film is that it's not a topic that a lot of people understand or have experience with. Many people seem to have theories about how unschooled kids will turn out. Here's reality -- any parenting choice that you make for your kids means that there are other parenting choices that you didn't make. The GMA segment raise the specter that children raised outside of the education system will be unable to cope with going to college, if they so choose. You can keep your theories; I have my son.

My Super-Charged Life | Good Habits for a Great Life! Unschooling "Read a little, try a little, wait a while, watch." People learn by playing, thinking and amazing themselves. They learn while they're laughing at something surprising, and they learn while they're wondering "What the heck is this!?" My favorite and oldest discussion group is called AlwaysLearning, where the principles underlying unschooling are the topic. On facebook, my less favorite but busier discussion: Radical Unschooling Info If unschooling can't work in the real world, nothing at all can. Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum. I've removed the link I had because used copies on Amazon are listed way too high. The way adults tend to learn things is the way people best learn—by asking questions, looking things up, trying things out, and getting help when it's needed. Regional groups, lists and resources (by language, nation, state, religious or special focus) THIS PAGE IS OLD for a webpage.

Unschooling Site News, SandraDodd.com 50+ Personal Productivity Blogs You've Never Heard of Before (and about a dozen you probably have) The personal productivity niche on the Web has grown by leaps and bounds since Lifehack launched only a few years ago. While a few sites dominate the rankings, there are lots and lots of lesser-known sites that are as good or even better than the “A-list” productivity blogs. Most of them are solo operations — the GTD newbie documenting his or her quest for greater control over their life, the coach or consultant sharing his or her knowledge with the world, the writer adding to his or her published work with notes, errata, and new findings. Their voice is personal, intimate even — and deserves to be heard. So here I present a collection of productivity blogs that are less well-known, by writers I think you should get to know better. Of course, the big names are here too — after all, I owe some of them a tremendous debt for helping me get a grip on my own life. Enjoy! 43 Folders: Merlin Mann started a lot of us on this journey, so now he has to pay. Read full content

Canadian Unschooler Now you can get college credit with Coursera For the first time a brick and mortar educational institution, Antioch University, will offer Coursera MOOCs (massive open online courses) for credit as part of a bachelor’s degree program. This announcement could be one of the first tremors in a seismic shift hitting higher education. “A year ago, online education was something people would look askance at, as a not completely respectable form of education,” says Daphne Koller, Stanford professor and co-founder of online education site Coursera.”Now it’s something which every institution is figuring out how to use and how quickly.” Antioch will offer local support and facilitation from an instructor wrapped around Coursera MOOCs.”Students get Antioch credits for an Antioch course,” Koller explains “but the Antioch course makes extensive use of these pre-existing, high-quality, on-line materials. It’s like teaching a course from a very rich text-book” Coursera has come along way since its launch a mere nine months ago.

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