Please join us at our new site: Project-Based-Homeschooling.com! We now have a working forum — yay!

You can now subscribe to get the blog via e-mail.

You can sign up for news & updates (we’re going to be offering some free e-books and another book is coming out soon).

You can see our book Project-Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners on Amazon or on Amazon UK. (Electronic versions rolling out as we speak…)

Whew. That’s a lot of new stuff.

Come celebrate with us!

See the book on Amazon

See the book on Amazon UK

Well, friends, as you know, I’ve been working on this for quite awhile but it’s finally (almost) ready to show you. The book will be available for sale this week on Amazon [note: it’s now available!], and we’re also launching a new site (and moving this blog over) to go with it, with a new forum as well.

Thanks for sticking with me, reading, and e-mailing your questions and your encouragement over the years. Your kind words kept me working and helped me finish this project.

Along with the book I’m also going to roll out some free e-books, and I’ve been working on a parent handbook & idea book that is a companion to the first book. If you want to be alerted when things are ready, please make sure to join our mailing list. And yes, we will have e-mail subscriptions at last! (And posts to read as well!)

Thank you again for your support — my sincerest wish is to pay it back with interest.

INTERVIEWER

You’re self-educated, aren’t you?

RAY BRADBURY

Yes, I am. I’m completely library educated. I’ve never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library. I used to steal magazines from a store on Genesee Street, in Waukegan, and read them and then steal them back on the racks again. That way I took the print off with my eyeballs and stayed honest. I didn’t want to be a permanent thief, and I was very careful to wash my hands before I read them. But with the library, it’s like catnip, I suppose: you begin to run in circles because there’s so much to look at and read. And it’s far more fun than going to school, simply because you make up your own list and you don’t have to listen to anyone. When I would see some of the books my kids were forced to bring home and read by some of their teachers, and were graded on — well, what if you don’t like those books? — Ray Bradbury’s Paris Review interview

COLBERT: What’s the best thing a parent can do for a child?

SENDAK: Love him, or her.

COLBERT: What does that mean?

SENDAK: Take them for what they are.

— Maurice Sendak’s last video appearance

hat tip: Maria

It's that time of year when people either announce their resolutions for the new year, keep quiet and mull them over alone, or loudly denounce having them at all.

Personally, I am pro-resolution. After all, how often do we see meaningful change where the first step wasn't a firm resolve to see that change occur?

In that spirit:

Resolution 1: It's not all or nothing.

Resolution 2: Break it down.

Resolution 3: Take real baby steps.

Resolution 4: Use the upward spiral.

Resolution 5: Quit.

An entrepreneur isn’t just on fire with an idea; (s)he is able to do what needs to be done to make it really happen.

Inspiration is not enough. Between the idea and the execution is a lot of hard work. How do children learn how to make their ideas happen? How do they learn how to forge ahead when things don’t come easily?

Talent and ability is not enough. Calvin Coolidge said, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

Being in charge of your own business — and your own life — is less scary when you have a lot of experience solving problems, finding collaborators, and making things work.

One of the great lessons of project work is that big ideas break down into a lot of small tasks, and when you complete all those tasks, you eventually get to see your big idea in action. That simple experience of doing what’s necessary to make things happen — over and over again — teaches an important lesson of building a company or a life: you have to get started, and you have to do what’s necessary, if you want to see your ideas come to fruition.

Children whose learning is centered around following directions and meeting the requirements set forth by adults may be well prepared to be employees. But will they be prepared to be in charge of their own business and their own life? Will they know how to make their own ideas happen?

Creativity is, quite simply, a genuine interest combined with initiative. — Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen

What you risk reveals what you value. — Jeanette Winterson

People often ask me about my research techniques. You would think this would be a relatively straightforward question, but the truth is that I have to keep changing my answer, because my techniques are constantly shifting as new forms of search or discovery become possible.

…

The discovery process is remarkably social, and the social interactions come in amazingly diverse forms. Sometimes it's overhearing a conversation on Twitter between two complete strangers; sometimes it's the virtual book club of something like Findings; sometimes it's going out to lunch with a friend and bouncing new ideas off them. It's the social life of information, in John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid's wonderful phrase — we just have so many more ways of being social now.

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Priming is everything. All these new tools are incredible for making rapid-fire discoveries and associations, but you need a broad background of knowledge to prime you for those discoveries.

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It’s been said it a thousand times before, by me and many others, but it's worth repeating again: people who think the Web is killing off serendipity are not using it correctly.

There's a lot here that connects with project-based homeschooling: embracing technology as a new way of learning and connecting, the importance of finding collaborators, the need for a foundation of knowledge to work with.