Online education LOL!

I've been filling out paperwork -finally, finally, the Farm School @ Home has forms to fill out! Anyway, included in all that has been a "learning plan", which I really should transcribe onto this blog. Some of that will show up in this post. I'm also sending FS@H the addy for this blog as part of our "reporting" process. Now for the good stuff....

We've subscribed to Runescape! Rayan loves it. He's shifted his sleep cycle so that he's up most of the night. That cuts down a lot of the competition for the computer, which was starting to be an issue. Whew. If you don't know about Runescape, its an online role-playing game- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runescape. We were actually hoping for the fancier World-of-Warcraft, but at the moment it looks like our dial-up won't support it . Runescape is a simpler game in many ways, but it still has the online, realtime conversational feature that Rayan just adores.

He spends a great deal of his time sending and receiving messages, which I think is a good thing, especially in light of what I've been going on about wrt multiple intelligences. Direct communication is a big part of his learning process. I said something about that in the "learning plan", in the section marked "language arts": Emphasis on Language as a tool for communication and learning.

This is one of those places where self-directed learning gets really interesting, because this really is Rayan's emphasis. We're trying to work with that, rather than against it. Right now, Rayan values reading and writing as a means to communicate. That's great. Its, arguably, the purpose of all reading and writing anyway. There's a bit of Montessori philosophy that suggests that when a kid is struggling with a more sophisticated concept, to look at the subject from a global-historical perspective. I'm not sure I'd describe Rayan as struggling, but he's certainly resistant, at this point, to the idea of making use of reading/writing for anything more than fairly basic communication. Keepin' in touch and, the most basic of all: commerce.

In the "mathmatics" section of the learning plan thingy, I stated: Emphasis on real world skills and applications, and listed a few (like the kitchen) but virtual commerce is one of the totally independent ways Rayan is working in this area, largely on Runescape. I'm not talking about selling virutal stuff for real money, which is of questionable legality at best. I'm talking truely virtual commerce - doing virtual work and trading virtual goods and services. Sounds weird, doesn't it? On a philosophical level, I don't think its any weirder than alot of what goes on in public schools. On a real world "what's up with Rayan" level, he's using the virtual world to explore real world ideas like supply and demand, exchange rates, and market fluxuations. Wow.

But wait! there's more! The beauty of doing this right now in the "virtual" world is that Rayan is enjoying himself, rather than feeling pressured to "behave responsibly" in terms of money. Who cares if he blows a million gold pieces on dragon-scale armor just 'cause its RED? Its all a game, right? So we, boring grownups wondering how to get all the bills paid in the same month, don't have to fuss and stress about wasting money. That's a good thing. It lets him test and try and experience consequences that don't actually hurt him. To learn the kinds of things he's picking up on Runescape he'd have to be doing something pretty amazing and/or illegal in the real world, with all the stress and danger that goes along with that.

Okay, so this is starting to get long, and I have some deep-frying to do, while Ray's at the skatepark fulfilling his "phys ed" requirement . I think I'm going to try to go through the whole learning plan thingy essentially the way I've treated it in this post - that will remind me to post a little more regularly, and also give me some ideas if I'm feeling "stuck" in terms of what to say. I mentioned in an earlier post that the hardest part of independent learning is reporting it - its just a kid living his life!