TECHNOS

February 4, 2012

TECHNOS QUARTERLY Summer 1999 Vol. 8 No. 2

At Home and On Line

By Rhonda Rieseberg

A recent resurgence in the home schooling alternative in this country has been aided by the use of technology, especially the Internet.

Parents and caregivers dial in to the Internet and post their messages. “I live in the country,” one writes, “and I plan to home school my grandchildren. Where can I find low-cost curriculum ideas?” Another parent wants to find electronic penpals for her children. Still others share their frustration over criticism they have received in their communities.

These messages on the Home's Cool Website (homes-cool.com) show one of the powerful ways computer technology has transformed the solitary nature of home schooling, an increasingly attractive alternative to public and private education. A 1997 study published by the National Home Education Research Institute estimated 1.23 million children were home schooled in America during the 1996–97 school year. Factor in the 15 percent annual growth rate home schooling has enjoyed since 1990, and that means an estimated 1.7 million children were home schooled during the 1998–99 year.

This steady growth may accelerate as parents reconsider their options in the wake of the recent shootings in Colorado and Georgia. Violence in schools-from verbal abuse to physical contact-is one of the reasons parents choose to home school their children. Other reasons include religion, political ideology, and dissatisfaction with public or private education.

Those who home school often use computer technology, especially Internet access, to supplement their curricular materials and, more important, to connect with other home schooling parents and students. Before the advent of the Internet and its browse-able World Wide Web, home school resources were more geographically defined. The home school parents' ingenuity, local home school network, and nearby resources, such as the local library and regional sites, helped define what and how a home schooler learned. Home schoolers with access to computer technology and the World Wide Web, however, can travel the world electronically through interactive software, CD-ROMs, and educational Web sites.

Wired home schoolers have a growing number of opportunities to interact with each other. Jon's Homeschool Resource Page (http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/) is one of the best sites for home school resources, with hundreds of links to news groups, mailing lists, Web discussion boards, chat channels, and Web pages. One active discussion board, Kaleidoscapes' co-hosted Discussion Board for Home Educators, only has room for messages posted or modified in a two-day period and has a cap of 500 messages. This high volume demonstrates the enthusiasm of some home schoolers for building an online community. In the two-day period ending June 5, discussions ranged from Bible curriculum and summer reading programs to 100 field trip ideas and phonics methods.

As many as three of every four parents home school for religious reasons, and there are many Web sites that offer an online community for these parents. Christian home schooling Web sites include Christian Homeschool Forum (http://www.gocin.com/homeschool/) and Emmanuel Home School Center (http://www.homeschoolcenter.com/). Muslim and Jewish home schoolers can direct their information requests to their home schooling Web sites.

Unfortunately, the Web also has a seamier side with pornographic and adult Web sites that children can stumble onto as they search for information. For the unwary, the interactive aspects of the Internet-bulletin boards, chat rooms, and email, etc.-also pose the very real threat of electronic “stranger danger” from sexual predators looking for children who might naively provide their names and other personal information. Because of these problems, some home schooling parents do not use the Internet. Those who do, however, can direct their child's use through filtering software and side-by-side monitoring. In addition, family-friendly Web sites have begun to include filtering software in their sites. The HomeSchool Channel at http://www.crosswalk.com offers free Internet filtering and searches to home schoolers.

Although the Internet can be a dangerous place for unsupervised children, some home schooling parents and advocates view it as a medium through which they can collectively have a voice and effect change in political, educational, and cultural arenas. In the article “Let's Get Wired,” columnist Mary Pride urges home schoolers to go online to “be able to react instantly to any and all political threats,” to “become a nationwide support group,” and to “transform the entire face of American education” (Practical Homeschooling No. 888, homeschool.com).

Home schooling parents may not have yet formed an online community that can change American education, but with the number of home schooled children nearing two million and certain to grow, the signs of such a community evolving are found throughout the information highway.

Rhonda Rieseberg, a former associate editor of TECHNOS, was director of publications at National Educational Service (www.nesonline.com) in Bloomington, Indiana at the time this article was published. She has since earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Warren Wilson College and is a freelance writer/editor who concentrates her efforts in the nonprofit sector.

Photo courtesy of Annalese Poorman.