Re: Another Recycling + Linux Project

The original post is here.

The Year 12 students have been working well on this project. They’re making their way through the piles of assorted tech. So far we have one box which has Xubuntu installed. They were so excited to install the base Ubuntu system and then configure the network from the command line they kept thinking of websites to ping. Ooo let’s ping this one, now we’ll ping this other one. 🙂 LOL

Both of these young men have excellent MS Windows and hardware skills and are very keen to learn Linux. They pick things up so quickly it leaves me in awe!

Now I just need to install some xfce4 games and then this box is ready to be given away.

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May The Source Be With You

Pia Waugh from Linux Australia is featured in this rather patchy article in the
Sydney Morning Herald
technology section. Pia is represented well in the article, it covers all the things she’s involved in but I feel it kind of jumps around all over the place. One minute it’s talking about her community work and then it’s about her business and her philosophies for success. To me it’s a bit patchy. I don’t know if patchy is the right word, maybe light or lacking in substance. It’s a ‘nice’ article. It says a lot without saying much at all. Maybe it was a longer article which got the chop?…. I’ve had the privilege of hearing Pia speak, have read her blog and her emails on the Linux Australia list and I know that there’s more depth to her than what the article portrayed.

Anyway well done Pia, it’s great to see women in IT doing good stuff and being interviewed in major newspapers!

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National Home Education Week 21 – 27 May 2006

“Homeschoolers around Australia celebrate National Home Education Week annually in May. The
motivation behind this is to inform the general community about this enriching alternative to
regular school attendance and to celebrate the freedom we have as families working toward a
common end. There will be events held in cities and many country areas.”

This is quoted from an email from the Home Education Association Inc.

I haven’t heard yet what our local Home Education Network will be doing but I’m sure we’ll be doing something. If the whole group aren’t getting together that week then individuals may hold some activities. If noone else is I might write something for the local newspaper too.

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LibriVox – Audio Books

I’ve been reading some more home education blogs today and came across Bruggie Tales and their posts about Audio Books Listening Up A Storm and Audio Books Update There are lots of suggestions for how to use audio books for children and adults as well as enjoying books and music on cd, mp3 player and cassette.

Being a lover of Open Source & Open Content I’m impressed with LibriVox From the LibriVox site:

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net (podcast and catalog). Our objective is to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet. We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.

Some of their books are very large to download but they can be downloaded chapter by chapter if you can’t download the whole thing at once.

Even though it’s school holidays here it doesn’t make much difference to us and our routine. I’m going to get some audio books from the library and possibly download some for us to listen to. I can put some on my laptop for the kids to listen to when I’m working.

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Home Education And Income Support(Centrelink) And Thanks For Your Comments Rosie

On the Australian Homeschoolers Yahoo Group I’ve been talking to Rosie about Centrelink income support. We’ve also found each other’s blogs and been reading and leaving comments. Thanks for your comments Rosie! It is encouraging to know that we’re not alone.

In reply to my post Home Educating, Youth Allowance And Centrelink, Rosie left the following comment, “

It’s amazing isn’t it that these policy problems relating to compulsory school ages, home education and Centrelink regulations are yet to be addressed in any systemic way by Centrelink?

I and other homeschoolers I know have been lobbying for some time to fix this issue with Centrelink and yet problems persist. I personally have found little to no support from the organisations who normally advocate for youth or welfare recipients. They don’t understand the issues and their responses appear to indicate to me that they don’t care either. So much for advocacy. I guess homeschoolers get a lot of practice at doing things themselves.

It appears to me that it depends on who deals with your claim for a Centrelink payment as to how it gets treated. I think different offices deal with issues differently. There seem to be differences from state to state too.

My sister asked me last night if there are any home education advocacy groups. I don’t know of any groups who advocate for home educators. Does anyone know of any such Australian groups? I’m thankful that our case turned out well, I hope that others can have such positive outcomes too.

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Can I Teach My Children?

These quotes are from Rosie at her blog Face Value

Many parents considering home schooling wonder how exactly to get started. Many parents, wondering if they are up to the task ask, “What exactly is the task anyway?” “Can I do this?” If you ever question your capacity to home school just ask yourself who or what taught your child prior to school. Make up a mental list. If you taught them to eat, to wash, to go to the toilet, to brush their teeth, to walk, to talk then you are indeed a great teacher already!!

There is no reason for the parent to mystify ‘academic’ subjects and treat them as a distinctly different phenomenon to other teaching tasks – they are not. As a teacher you become your child’s primary example of learning. Whatever you do with a positive outlook your child will do also. Therefore, whatever you teach your child is only within the limits and boundaries that you have placed upon yourself. Teaching should never be a one-way process. It should be a two-way exchange where each party brings something to the interaction and each party takes something away.

This is the crucial issue which I’ve wrestled with for many years. Could I teach my children? Me with my quirks, abilities and difficulties? I often hated school, struggled to learn to read and still just don’t “get” Maths. But I can teach my children because their learning isn’t limited to my knowledge! We learn together all the time and they often go on further and learn more than me. (Doug is teaching himself computer programming at the moment and is learning more about the very latest computers than I can keep up with.)

The other part of teaching my children which I wondered about when the children were younger was could I cope as a single parent, being single and spending nearly every moment of my day with my children without a break. I didn’t homeschool the children when they were younger partly because of this.

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