Planning My Techie Daughter's Homeschooling...Need tech advice..Following Charles Murray

Understood. Best of luck to you and your daughter. :)

Another thought: The university near us does “Engineering Day” in both March or April and October. They have activities from building water towers out of Popsicle sticks to bottle rockets powered by baking soda to marshmallow and toothpick bridges, along with q&a sessions with engineers, short lessons on different fields of engineering and tours of the college. These activities are free, and both my son and my daughter enjoy them.
And look for local colleges doing math related activities on Pi day, 3/14.

That’s fine. Most students do better in college if they don’t go to college right from HS.

Many of the bright ppl I have known are those who first learn hands-on, and THEN go to college, while then having the discipline and drive to complete it in four years. It also seems to put them well ahead of the book-only learners in testing and jobs.

Check out Make magazine. I have no financial interest in them. I just think you might find some kindred spirits there. I think of the magazine as the current version of the Scientific American amateur science column, the old magazines like Radio-TV Experimenter and Science Experimenter, and the Whole Earth Catalog.

>>>Charles Murray’s book on REAL EDUCATION

I just started reading COMING APART by Murray. Most interesting statistics.

On the high school education front, how about these:

http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/

He recommends Saxon Math.

And don’t forget to visit his newsletter site with the fairly recent article on model building and science:

http://www.accesstoenergy.com/2012/01/27/model-building-far-more-important-than-memorizing-facts-and-procedures/

Also, there’s Open CourseWare from MIT. Your daughter can order the college texts, read them as she follows the online videos, and then take the tests. All of this is free online. http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

And, also there’s Khan Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org/

College Board offers a fair amount of free online materials to pass Advance Placement tests.

Hope this helps.

I am going to get “techie” with you - what kind of technology is she interested in? There are any number of areas of industry that get lumped into the category of technology. I’ll give you an example -
Computers
Digital networks
Communications (such as telephony including cell phones)
Radio communications
Satellites
Electrical Engineering
Electronic Engineering
“Green” technology

So, what area of technology interests her? It’s hard to help you put together a homeschool curriculum without knowing that. If you want a GENERAL approach that will help her out, make sure she has plenty of math (Algebra, calculus and trigonometry) and physics. If she nails those things, she can go pretty much anywhere in hardware technology - UNLESS she wants to be a software engineer. If she wants to be a softare engineer, the math is good (but not so much; some calculus and probably no trig), but she will need to be comfortable with the different software applications and the develoment languages currently in use.

Chickensoup

This is an area of much discussion in homeschool circles and with homeschool parents. There are two topics here. What to teach her now? What to do about college?

1.) What to teach your daughter now? If you want to design and teach her that is great. You best know her interests and aptitudes and can tailor it to her. For example my son is on a space kick right now. We will be watching the Curiosity landing on Sunday on a NASA feed. We are doing some viewing in advance to get some back ground on Mars.

2.) What about college. Do you go to any homeschool conferences in your area? You may want to start going to some. I went to a big one and talked to some vendors about college and listened to presenter lectures. There is a lot of shared knowledge to be had. Also you can meet and talk to other homeschool parents about what they did and are planning to do. Anyone with kids in their teens is dealing and thinking about the same things you are thinking about.

There is a lot more than I can put in this reply but here are a few things that I came away from the last Homeschool conference that I attended in May. You may want to look at the work of Matthew Bullington and his site at UniversityReady.com and his contributions to the "Well Planned Day" homeschool planners. Matthews approach is that college is not for everyone but if you are going you must have a plan for high school first, college and what to do after college. Here is an article by him The Case for Organization

A few points I learned from Matthew:
- The primary goal for high school is not college but employment and to become an adult.
- High school is an important time and decisions can have long term consequences.
- If you are going to college you need a plan. If you are planning to take two years in community college and then transfer to another college first find out if they will give you credit for the Com College courses and get it in writing from them. Yes.

Look at the work of Ken Auer who mentors young teens into technical careers many without college. He is very hands on and walks the talk of mentoring. ken has developed a software program to customize mentoring.

Ken's site at Role Model Software does not highlight his work bringing about 20 now young adults into their individual high tech careers. I only know about his work from his presentation at a homeschool conference.

Other presenters suggested that taking one or two years out before going to college will help your child in being more prepared and mature. Especially if they do something in that time to show what they have done with the time out. Teachers appreaciate that more than you may expect.

This just brushes the discussion and I have not done it justice. Good luck.

Regards, Mr Sol.

I can see her in comm, although I assume that field is owned by the veterens also networks as well as computers. Thank you for the information.

Thank you for the information, I will look into it. I had one kid go straight to college and frankly I dont think she was well-served by that decision.

But not so much math???

Whether she goes into hardware or software or something else, the math is training to think abstractly. Consciousness expansion.

There are many paths to thinking abstractly and consciousness expansion. Hippies in the 60s favored LSD for both.

:-)

However, in my experience with software engineers, she would need less math and more philosophy, such as Inductive and Deductive logic. Today, however, the best training a software engineer can get revolves more around knowing specific languages (C++, Java and whatever new technology there is) or platforms that they want to develop in including Linux and its 50 bazillion flavors, Microsoft and whatever Apple is using.

You’re not getting rid of me that easily. What area of comm? Networks, computers, radio, satellite? And, I wouldn’t assume that everything is owned by veterans. All areas of communications are expanding (despite a lot of misperceptions) and the need remains great for people who understand the technology.

I have worked in communications for over 40 years, so I have a pretty good understanding of the industry. One particular area of specialization in communications is for RF engineers. The RF field used to be owned by veterans and “old-timers” who learned it in the military. However, after the colleges and universities stopped teaching RF technology and analog technology, it fell to these same veterns and old-timers to pass on their knowledge to the younger engineers, many of whom never spent a day in uniform. The schools thought that these technologies would be replaced by digital everything but, if you want to transmit a signal to the space station, or you just want your cell system to work, you still have to have an RF carrier.

The need for RF engineers is still pretty high and the technology is, essentially, in the “hand-me-down” stage where the old-timers teach RF to the digital whiz-kids who haven’t a clue! If your daughter is interested in doing that and can master the math, she could do quite well.

On the other hand, if she is interested in computer networking, there are two fields that are emerging with high demand. One is for cyber security people who can protect our computer networks and, more importantly, the data that travels over them. A related field is providing security for a lot of the new iPhone/iPad type devices that use a lot of IP networks and Internet infrastructure. Security there is a giant hole and these devices are particularly vulnerable to various nasty viruses, hackers and the like.

Coursera also.