Monday, April 2, 2012

Homeschool Engineer



It's no secret that, in general, homeschooled children far outperform publically schooled children in many areas. Math, language arts, philosophy and history: all of these have traditionally been the domain of the homeschooler. It is our intention to expand that domain to include technology, including engineering, and break the monopoly that public and formal schools have on this area of knowledge.

So what keeps homeschoolers at a disadvantage in this area? Simply the absence of a knowledgeable mentor and the lack of suitable instructional materials. Of these two, the lack of instructional materials is the larger obstacle. Could you imagine teaching algebra or calculus without suitable text books and instructor materials, no matter what your knowledge level in the subject? Of course not. Technology is no different. Even those parents with significant experience find it difficult to pass on all their knowledge of a given area of technology. And those without this experience could feel completely hopeless in this area.

With this in mind, we decided to design a series of courses which can be studied, and taught, with no prior experience in the subject required on the part of either the student or the parent. Be careful, though, if you decide to teach these courses to your child, you might be surprised at how much rubs off on you in the process!

Even if your child has no intention of pursuing a career in technology, he or she can benefit from these courses. How? Well, for good or bad, our modern world is riddled with technology. Using the fruits of technology is one thing, understanding it at its core and mastering it for your own purpose is entirely another.

So what kind of technology are we describing? The use of spreadsheets, word processors, or web design? No, these things are handled aptly enough by others, although our courses do touch on these. No, we're talking about the kind of technology which is used by large and small companies alike to manage business data, design custom software programs, or embed computers inside the products we all use. Even the future farmer is dependent on embedded computing to run his tractors or livestock environmental systems. In our consulting work, we and our thousands of business clients worldwide have designed or helped design many of the technology products in use in the world today.

And we are going to hand the keys to understanding these systems to you with a series of courses which will be released in the near future. And remember, you don't need to know anything about any of this to get started. Later electives will allow the student to gain in-depth knowledge of practical robotics and automation, business data systems or image and audio processing.

Having trouble with pesky and intrusive state adminstrators who want to deride and disqualify your homeschooling efforts? Upon completion of one of our courses, you'll have a stack of student work to show them. Armed with this work, you can even challenge whether their public school students are working anywhere near the same level.

Even better, all our technology courses are absolutely apolitical. Our job is to help you teach your child, not to indoctrinate. If you've struggled with the authors' politics embedded in other texts, you'll find this a refreshing change.

5 comments:

  1. The Head First books are great. I would probably start my kid right with a strongly type language like Java or C# rather than python.

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    1. Hi Jim,

      I understand your point of view, but Java or C# is a much harder language for a beginner to learn, or most importantly, the typical homeschool mom to teach. This course requires zero knowledge on the part of the mentor, where Java or C# would require an expert such as yourself to teach. We need to encourage education that can be self-propagating, and to help bring potential new patriots (i.e. homeschoolers and their parents) into the fold, regardless of their background.

      Add to this that many open-source drone programming, cryptography, and gun mount projects all involve Python.

      See this video, for example (h/t LastBox):

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPgqfnKG_T4

      Read between the lines, my friend.

      Finally, if you run across a homeschooler who could benefit from this and be a great force multiplier, but who is too destitute to afford it, have them contact us and we'll get one out for free.

      Tom

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  2. I'm not familiar with his book, but know he is a Patriot and was asked to help him out. He is the Starving the Monkeys™ Baugh. http://www.starvingthemonkeys.com/

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