Below are links to more than one hundred other Web pages, beginning with other pages on this Learn in Freedom™ site, followed by links to other sites about education reform, homeschooling, or other interesting subjects.
Learn in Freedom™ Pages
Below are links to other main pages on this Learn in Freedom™ site,
listed by the order in which they have received visits in a recent two-month period. (Some of the pages listed link to subpages that are not listed here.) Most of these pages have recently been updated. Visit one of the pages you haven't visited before, and see something new and thought-provoking.
URL: http://educationnext.org/
Education Next is put together mostly by experienced education researchers and journalists who seek an education system that better meets the needs of learners. Some great research references are linked to from the Education Next site.
Whether it's education reform, homeschooling, or some other issue brought up on this site that you want to discuss,
on-line discussion groups are a great place to raise questions or ask for opinions.
I participate in some (but not all) of the groups mentioned on this site's On-Line Discussion Groups page.
Homeschooling Resources Sites with Helpful Information
Homeschool Success: High School Planning for College Admissions Success
URL: http://homeschoolsuccess.com/
Web site with much information about college admission issues for homeschoolers.
On-line homeschooling magazine "for creative homeschoolers," with
feature articles,
resources,
reviews,
a topical Web link index,
and more.
I particularly like the review of the Robinson curriculum.
General Resource site on homeschooling on Angelfire, which like Geocities puts obnoxious pop-up ads on Web pages. (You get what you pay for, sometimes.) If I recommend an Angelfire or Geocities site on this page, it means the site is worth putting up with the ads for, or in a few cases that the site has been properly programmed to keep the ads from appearing.
Jon's Homeschool Resource Page, now a whole site with hundreds of pages and countless links to other sites,
necessarily comes at the top of this list.
Jon's site is just about the oldest homeschooling site on the Web, and it is continually updated.
Jon's Homeschool Resource Page has as large a set of homeschooling links as I can recall seeing anywhere, and I've seen a lot of homeschooling sites.
One of the really innovative features of Jon's site is a
database of homeschooling resource sites (including this one)
with ratings for each site.
His site also includes a useful page with links to Web-based
homeschooling Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) pages, so that you and everyone else can look up the answers to the questions most commonly asked about homeschooling. Jon's site set up a new frames-based navigation scheme in 1997 for finding the site's many categories of links.
I have to note for the record that I don't find sites with frame-based navigation bars as easy to navigate as sites with table-based navigation bars,
but the frames probably make it harder for people to plagiarize the excellent material on Jon's site,
and I've been told that people get used to the navigation of Jon's site with practice.
URL: http://www.greeknstuff.com/
Greek 'n' Stuff is a site about learning Greek or Latin at home that also includes a huge links page.
The newest product produced by the keeper of that site is a workbook series called Latin's Not So Tough!.
I have had many parents tell me they like the Greek 'n' Stuff products, and I sure like the links page.
My son may start learning Greek soon (I already know Greek), so in a few years I'll have a personal testimonial to go with those of other Greek 'n' Stuff customers.
Main Heading of Page: HOMESCHOOLING RESOURCES (SCIENCE, MOSTLY)
Title of Page: HOMESCHOOLING RESOURCES (Bill Beaty's Homepage)
URL: http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/home.html
HOMESCHOOLING RESOURCES (Bill Beaty's Homepage) is a page with links to resources on homeschooling, education,
and especially about science prepared by Bill Beaty for homeschoolers, especially homeschoolers looking for science resources for learners of all ages.
So far this is the most plagiarized homeschooling site on the Internet. Many people, in violation of all honor and of the law, post the Yahoo links and descriptions as their own link pages. The Yahoo editors are deluged by requests from Web masters to index insignificant sites, requests the Yahoo editors tend to reject. But recently the Yahoo editors have caught up (for the fourth time) with updating and restructuring many of their directory pages, including the homeschooling page, removing many formerly listed sites. Yahoo is necessary, although not an exhaustive guide to the Web (or even a guide only to what is best), because full-text keyword searches on other Web indexes turn up too much chaff and too little wheat most of the time. The Yahoo homeschooling directory is, at the very least, a fairly good guide to which homeschooling sites started early, which may be (with some glaring exceptions) the same sites that are still ahead of the pack. And now that Yahoo is teamed up with Google, the best full-text search engine, Yahoo searches are even better than before at helping people find good sites about homeschooling.
A reader suggested I reorganize this section of this links page; now see the section listing on-line articles about homeschooling included in this site's Articles on Homeschooling page.
HSLDA is one of the oldest membership organizations for homeschoolers throughout the United States, and it has a large, informative Web site. I strenuously disagree with the approach taken to the Web site's design, which uses too many ASP pages and way too many useless graphics, which frequently makes it impossible for me to access the site's content at all because of slow access speeds. My friendly suggestion to the HSLDA Web master would be to read and apply the advice about Web site usability found on the Useit.com site (http://www.nngroup.com/), which I recommend to everyone. Some of the information on the HSLDA site is unique and very interesting, if you can stand the wait for the download.
NHEN was founded in 1999 consciously as an alternative to HSLDA. It strives primarily to be a national information-sharing network in support of "inclusive" statewide and local support groups. The NHEN site has substantially better site design than the meager average level among homeschooling sites, making finding information on that site quite easy even from across the Pacific. NHEN has no paid professional staff, so its Web site grows slowly as volunteers add content. There is already an interesting round-up of state homeschooling laws on the NHEN site.
Missouri has better-than-average laws about homeschooling and plenty of parents participate in homeschooling.
There are some great statewide resource pages put up by individual families.
Multipage site about homeschooling in New Zealand with updates since 1997. Much interesting information from a country with a high proportion of children being homeschooled.
Eleanor Sparks, organizer of a 1998 national Natural Learning Conference in Australia, has kept this site for a few years, now at this new location.
Businesses of Interest to Homeschoolers
This list does not pretend to be exhaustive.
Here I'm listing, alphabetically, a few homeschooling suppliers that are recommended repeatedly by many different homeschoolers,
about which I have some personal knowledge as a customer or reader of their Web sites.
Homeschooling materials publisher and bookseller with a very informative catalog full of interesting articles. Run by Chris Davis, an old on-line friend of mine whom I've met once or twice in person, and his family. I have bought books from Elijah Company and plan to do so again.
Homeschooling materials publisher and bookseller with interesting catalog of particular interest to unschoolers. They sell the excellent Miquon Math materials I use with my oldest son. Run by Billy and Nancy Greer, on-line friends of several years who I've met at at least two homeschooling conferences in the eastern United States. They take credit cards and have dealt with international shipping before.
Homeschooling materials publisher and bookseller.
Run by Rob Shearer, an old on-line friend of mine whom I have yet to meet in person, who has a strong interest in history.
A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.
John Stuart Mill On Liberty (1859)
Feel free to contact the Learn in Freedom™ site owner, Karl M. Bunday, at any time. Fill out this site's Google Docs comment form or email or send postal mail to the Learn in Freedom webmaster as you like.
webmaster@learninfreedom.org
Karl M. Bunday
P. O. Box 1858
Minnetonka, MN 55345