I’ve included a links section in the left hand column of the blog under the Recent Posts and Archives section.

Below the links is a quote. I’ll try and remember to change the quote often and the links sometimes 🙂

We received a letter from Centrelink stating that Douglas will receive the full amount of Youth Allowance. It says, “Your Youth Allowance is based on you studying full time at Home Study SA, yr 11 Secondary Studies with the course ending etc….”

Wow we’re thrilled to have this letter/decision. I’m glad I did my homework before going to see them though. To anyone else in this situation read up on it first before going to Centrelink and don’t mention an ‘Activity Agreement’. An activity agreement is a document basically saying you agree to do the things listed in it. This is pretty much saying that Centrelink doesn’t acknowledge home education as full time education and wants the young person to enter into an agreement to do certain things – look for work, do voluntary work, register with a job network, do study. These aren’t necessarily bad things but they are restrictive for a young person undertaking full time study – especially at yr11 or yr12 level.

I’m very happy to say that I’ve got dvds to work in Ubuntu! I’m documenting what I did so that if I need it again it’s here or it may help someone else.

edit /etc/apt/sources.list and put in the following lines:

deb http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sarge main
deb-src http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/debian sarge main

Even though these lines are for Debian Sarge it still works in Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog 5.04

then do these:
apt-get update
apt-get install libdvdcss2

Now Totem works with the dvds I’ve tried so far.

I’m enjoying year 11 with my son and year 8 with my daughter! Sometimes I wonder who’s learning more me or them 🙂 Doug is working his way through his yr11 maths book, learning system and network admin by helping me and reading copious books, notes, webpages etc. He’s also helping Jessica with her school work especially maths, science and geography. They’re both helping with the computer classes I/we teach, especially Jessica who has a real flair for teaching.

Much is said about what curriculum to use and what method of home ed to use. I’m not anti curriculum or anti methods, I just don’t get into all that. We use what works for us. It’s a combination of methods and curriculums. I don’t have a lot of money for curriculum so I don’t buy a lot of it. This year we were given a lot of text books by a friend who is using a different home ed method/model so that’s been a big bonus! We just picked out what we wanted to use. I love books. I’m always reading and the kids have inherited that too. We have heaps of books and always go to the library for more. Whenever we’re into a new project it’s off to the library for more books!

Being single, working and home educating is a challenge but I love it and the kids love it too. Thankfully I have the sort of work that the kids can come along to and participate in. This is something I’ve stuck to pretty much all their lives. If I’m doing something then it has to be something the kids can come to.

We’ve caused a bit of a ruckus at our local Centrelink(social security) office by changing Doug’s Youth Allowance details from attending a school to home education. They had no idea how to deal with it.

In South Australia home educated students need to be registered with a school and the Government grants them exemption from attending that school for the purpose of home education. Because Doug is 16 he is over the legal school leaving age and doesn’t have to attend school. He doesn’t have to be registered with a school (schools won’t register him) or with the Government. The poor, bewildered Centrelink worker kept asking me if Doug was registered somewhere. I kept explaining to him that Doug doesn’t have to be registered. The Centrelink worker, a nice guy, once he’d done his homework realised that there is a problem with Centrelink policy and SA education law and has raised this issue with their policy department. Meanwhile we’re waiting to find out what the outcome will be. Thankfully I read up on this issue before approaching Centrelink. I’ll keep posting about this.

We went down to New York for the long weekend. Despite the 16-degree weather, we walked down to Times Square – all the bright lights lured us the ten blocks from our hotel. When we got there, we stood like, well, tourists, gaping at all the electronic billboards. And then, across the square, I saw it: the world’s largest Windows error message – on a two-story high e-billboard (I guess everything really is bigger in New York). It was the only billboard in the entire square with absolutely no movement – since the PC running it had obviously frozen.

This was spotted by Romana Branden and posted to the LinuxSA Talk mailing list 🙂

Going through my email lists this morning and someone posted a link to TV Land http://www.tvland.com I spent about an hour reminiscing over favourite TV shows and listening to their theme songs! It has a tribute to Don Knotts all this weekend too. Have fun, enjoy, a great time waster though so be warned 🙂 I’m still humming Green Acres and Happy Days……