The Future of This Nation, With the Present Generation

Chris Pugh asks:

I wanted to know how technology played a part in your home schooling experience.

I'm going to assume that by "Technology," you are thinking something beyond the blender and the cordless phone which -- while highly useful and certainly technological improvements -- don't really lend themselves to educating my dauthter. I'm going to go out on the old tree branch here and assume you mean computers and the Internet.

Simply stated: we wouldn't be having this adventure without the Internet. The Internet is infinitely plastic and creative, which also happens to be what we'd hope Alice's academic opportunities would be. Alice takes classes online, actually seeing and hearing other students (Consort says watching her in class is like watching one of those AT&T commercials, except this actually works). She is learning to code at www.codeacademy.com. Many times a week, when her father isn't home and I start to get a stricken look after she asks me a question, we both go to Khan academy and learn something (and one of us actually remembers it). Socially, she has email and stays in touch with friends she's met who live throughout the world, and friends who live ten minutes away but aren't always available to hang out at our convenience. Horror stories about identity theft, hacking, online predators and Facebook notwithstanding, I am inclined to think technology is good.