Jon's List of Home-School Resources

I'll add links as I find them - or as you mail them to me.


New!
A home-school photo gallery - pictures of (primarily) home-schoolers who don't have their own home-pages. (It's awfully skeletal right now - UUEncode those pix today!)

Home-Schooling News Groups

As of July 27, 1994, there are two new homeschooling newsgroups! Here are their charters:

misc.education.home-school.misc is a forum for the discussion of any and all aspects of home-schooling: from completely unschooled and child-directed to rigidly curriculum-based and parent-led; from tips and experiences to meta-discussions of the nature of ideas and the structure of society.

misc.education.home-school.christian is a forum specifically for those home-schoolers who consider Christ the center of their life and the basis for all their decisions. Keeping all such religious references and justifications in the .christian group constitutes a vital fire wall that helps reduce tension between those who think that "secular humanism" is simply rationalism and those who think it is Satanism.

Home-Schooling Mailing Lists

While there are probably others, here are the mailing lists that I know of:
home-ed@world.std.com
The broadest list, with lots of often rather tangential traffic. (Don't get me wrong - it's a great list - but don't join it if you already have too much email!). Subscribe via a message to home-ed-request@world.std.com.
home-ed-politics@mainstream.com
Strong anti-government sentiments primarily from the "Christian" conservative / libertarians / anarchists end of the spectrum. Subscribe via a message to home-ed-politics-request@mainstream.com.
homeschool_train_up_a_child@mainstream.com
Entirely "Christian". Subscribe via a message to homeschool_train_up_a_child-request@mainstream.com.
learning@sea.east.sun.com
A low-traffic list with an emphasis on unschooling. Subscribe via a message to learning-request@sea.east.sun.com.
Taffie
Taffie is a mailing list for home schoolers in Texas. To join, send e-mail to listproc@jsoft.com with the line subscribe taffie Your Name in the body of the message. A subject is optional.
Taking Children Seriously
This list, sponsored by Sarah Lawrence of the eponymous British home-schooling magazine, Taking Children Seriously, is not strictly a home-schooling mailing list. Rather, it is devoted to serious, intense, and all too prolix discussion of what it means to raise children non-coercively, as human beings in their own right. (Just the list for anyone who thinks that the home-ed list is too concerned with nuts and bolts and doesn't have enough philosophy!) Subscribe by sending subscribe TCS-list [YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS] to listserv@netcom.com.
So far as I know, the only home-schooling FAQ file is the one maintained by Dave Mankins, who also runs the home-ed mailing list. It currently has a bias towards that list, but that will probably change as the newsgroups take off.

A fun variant on the FAQ is the FQA, or Frequently Questioned Answers file, also by Dave Mankins.

Web Pages (a home-school link farm)

A list of lists.
A list of off-net home-schooling resources, by state and special interest.
The Prodigy Home School Resource Guide
From Prodigy, via Karl M. Bunday, bunda002@gold.tc.umn.edu, misc.education.home-school.misc, and me!
Curriculum Vendors
A page of pointers to ad(s) (and to the appropriate sections of the Prodigy FAQ).
Jon's micro-reviews.
Reviews of books, programs, and/or games of interest to parents in general or home-schoolers in particular.
Home pages of other home schoolers.
(Send me your URL, and I'll add you.)
A home-school photo gallery
Photos (primarily) of home-schoolers who don't have their own Web pages.
The Home Education Resource Center
This is a commercial service with links to an online bookstore - and some good home-schooling resources.
The Parents Helping Parents Resource Directory
"a searchable on-line human services resource directory with a focus on the needs of children ..."

Other Home-Schooling Resources

A home-school gopher.
Not much so far, but perhaps it will grow.
The Web of Wonder education page.
A very good list of education resources on the WWW.
The clear-thinking page.
A page of pointers to documents on learning and logic.
Planetary Data System
A great entry point to all sorts of NASA pictures and information.
Various historical documents.
Marked up to look good on your Mosaic screen.
A few electronic books
Nothing fancy, just ASCII text.
ERIC
The Educational Resources Information Center
OERI INet
A gopher run by the US Department of Education. Lots of info and free educational software.
DNA to Dinosaurs
An online version of Chicago's Field Museum's Life Over Time exhibit.
More later ....

Jon Shemitz - jon@armory.com - 14-Jun-94..9-Jan-95