Southeastern Homeschool Convention Speaker

March 14–16, 2013

TD Convention Center

(Greenville, SC)

I am thrilled to announce that I will be speaking this weekend at the Great American Homeschool Convention in Greenville, SC. 

I will be presenting a workshop on my book, Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects, on Friday at 1 pm in the TD Convention Center.  My publisher, The Critical Thinking Company, will be on site selling my book and their other fabulous teaching materials.

Session Description:

(102A) JENNIFER K. BROOKS (Critical Thinking Company) Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects
Jennifer Brooks and her husband, Greg, recently completed a field trip year with their three children where they traveled the USA and the UK as they homeschooled their kids. Jennifer taught in public school for 15 years with 10 of those years spent in gifted education. She is the author of Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects and the upcoming Surfin’ the Net Safari- Science. Whether traveling to world historic locations with her family or teaching a classroom of gifted students, Jennifer believes in the power of hands-on, interest-based education. Her popular blog, Brooks Sabbatical, documents her transition from public education to homeschool teacher and her family’s travels during their field trip year.
Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects
The curriculum in Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects allows students of all ages to explore their enthusiasm and passion for an individual topic of their choosing, within or without an assigned subject area. My session will demonstrate how parents can capitalize on their children’s interests to make learning complex technology research skills and computer presentation programs fun. I will demonstrate easy-to-follow instructions for creating dynamic, independent projects using three different media: slideshows (PowerPoint, Keynote), documentary movies (Windows Live Movie Maker, Photo Story 3, iMovie), and animations (Scratch). 

I am further excited about my Saturday workshop on Family Field Trips where I will be sharing information about our travel year.  This workshop will be at 10 am on Saturday in the TD Convention Center.  I will have a great travel games giveaway as well as many tips for road school families.

Session Description:

(102A) JENNIFER K. BROOKS (Critical Thinking Company) A Family Field Trip Year
Jennifer Brooks and her husband, Greg, recently completed a field trip year with their three children where they traveled the USA and the UK as they homeschooled their kids. Jennifer taught in public school for 15 years with 10 of those years spent in gifted education. She is the author of Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects and the upcoming Surfin’ the Net Safari- Science. Whether traveling to world historic locations with her family or teaching a classroom of gifted students, Jennifer believes in the power of hands-on, interest-based education. Her popular blog, Brooks Sabbatical, documents her transition from public education to homeschool teacher and her family’s travels during their field trip year.
A Family Field Trip Year
I will describe how my husband and I decided to take a year off from normal (and stressful) commitments to travel and “road” school our children. Our creative financial planning for our travels will be shared. My transition from public education to homeschool teacher enabled me to better understand my own children’s education needs. Our hands-on learning and field trip curriculum transformed our family, creating a closer bond between kids and parents- resulting in a happier outlook on life for all.

For more information about the Great American Homeschool Convention, please visit their official website: http://www.southeasthomeschoolconvention.com

Teaching Technology

Imagine what your life would be like if every student was interested in the content they were studying...

Wouldn't teaching be so much easier?  

My book, Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects, does just that: it will help you differentiate for each student in your classroom while teaching standards to the whole group.

• Each student, ages 8 to 18, may choose their topic of study- anything he or she likes as long as it is not violent or vulgar.  
• Each teacher instructs the whole class (2 to 32) on the common core standards of research skills, reference materials, writing styles, and the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S).  Each student applies the whole group lessons to his or her individual interest project.

Teachers teach whole group/ Students learn individual interest

Win/Win

Check out the free resources that accompany my book: Teaching Technology Companion Website.

Teaching Technology Workshop Presentation Preview

Home School Mom's Positive Review

The Internet is an amazing place!  In the interest of keeping up with technology and education, I created a Google Alert with the words "Teaching Technology" (With an alert, Google will email you when an article on the web matches your key word alert.)  After weeks of learning new and helpful technology tidbits, imagine my surprise when an today's alert mentioned my book!

A fellow blogger and home school mom wrote a rave review of Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects!  Thank you, Lisa Keva at Home School Circus for your positive words!  Check out her review: http://www.upatdawnreadytowork.com/2012/12/teaching-technology-through-interest-projects-review.html 

Technology Support Included in My Book

Teachers have the weight of the world on them.  Increasingly, they are responsible for more material including educating students in the common core, social skills, emotional intelligence, morality and citizenship, and the ever-changing world of technology.  Additionally, teachers must maintain a website, a blog, an electronic grade book, while constantly collecting and disseminating data on each of their students in their overfilled classrooms. (Wow! Just writing all that made me tired!)

In the mind of making teachers' burdens a little lighter, I insisted my book, Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects, include access to instructional slideshows and student examples.  I am pleased to say that my publisher created an amazing webpage that includes links to the very slideshows I use to teach my Interest Project curriculum in my own classroom.

Here is instructional slideshow for Activity 3 -  Would this help you teach?  If you answered yes, please buy my book!

Great Teaching Technology Sites

Start the week off right 

by learning something new!  

Let's face it, technology will outstrip us in the great race if we don't stay in touch with new developments each week.  In my never ending search for excellent sites for students and teachers, I have found few that I would like to highlight each Monday.

I'll start with some free stuff:

Free Tech for Teachers delivers excellent news on the latest in technology and how to download some freebies.

Free Scratch Download works on practically any computer and any computer operating system.  Scratch is the best critical thinking activity for ages 7-97 that I have found on the Internet.  Created by students at MIT (that's Massachusetts Institute of Technology- one of the most prestigious universities in the world), SCRATCH makes computer programming as easy as stacking Legos.  Use your stacks to program custom animations to tell a joke or teach a class about your Interest Project.  I love this program so much that I included it in my Teaching Technology Through Interest Projects resource book.  Click to see a sample Scratch Interest Project.

Student Documentary - Interest: Guitars

Here's an excellent example of a fifth grade student using his interest to motivate learning.  

• See how he researched his topic using the Internet and books.  
• Watch as he synthesizes his newfound knowledge into a documentary movie - with planned preproduction of shots and written narration script.  
• Finally, he demonstrates his understanding of technology through the application of iMovie to produce his video.  

Excellent work, Wyatt!