One of the things I love about web 2.0 is all the “socialization” we can be a part of online (hence, the tag “social media”).  So,  I’m going to share with you in this post how I like to use Delicious bookmarks (www.delicious.com) and why.

The cool thing is that I’m always finding new websites I like.  Not all the sites I stumble across follow the “rules” of web 2.0- in other words, not all sites are in formats like blogs where I can rate, comment, subscribe, follow, or chat with another reader online.  Sometimes I can’t follow a site the way I could easily when I sign in to Google or Blogger and follow a blog, or subscribe to an RSS feed with updates that show up in my Google Reader.

Don’t worry…if this is all jargon to you, just know that this is exactly why social bookmarking is key–and it’s very easy to use and work with, especially when you use Delicious bookmarks. (I promise I’m going to explain what that is in a moment…and no, it’s not tasty…just bear with me).

Let’s say you found a cool website with free video content for your kids and you want to bookmark that site to use the next day in  your homeschool.  Well, instead of bookmarking to your hard drive (the way we bookmarked years ago)…you can (and probably should) save your computer hard drive space and use a free social bookmarking tool where you can upload all your bookmarks online.  Free storage. Yay.

Not only that, but there is a “social” aspect to it (hence, “social bookmarking”).  If you want to view others’ bookmarks and the most popular bookmarks online or share your bookmarks, you can do that.

Or…if you are a more private person or prefer not to share your bookmarks, you can make all of your bookmarks private.

I use Delicious  bookmarks for all of my bookmarking online.  Once you create an account with them you can start bookmarking right away.  They even have little download tools that you install in your Firefox or Internet Explorer browser to help you easily bookmark and tag new sites as you surf on them.  You can organize all of your bookmarks by “tags”- little descriptive keyword terms- so that you can more easily find your bookmarks later on.  For example, I have bookmark tags like: mathematics, science, social studies, art.  But then I have social bookmark tag bundles like: homeschooling, christianity, freelance writing, technology.  (Bundles are bigger and you can place your smaller tagged items under each bundle category).

I can’t tell you how much of a life saver bookmarking has been for me- both in business and education.  When you constantly surf the web as much as I do, you need to have a system of organization.  As homeschooling parents, we are always looking for resources online to assist our children, and social bookmarking just does the trick in keeping me organized.

Try it out some time: www.delicious.com.

Over the years, I’ve spent a pretty penny on free stock photos and blog images online for my business.  Sites like IStockPhoto have great selections from professional photographers, but you have to put in about $20-$30 tops to get your account started, and individual photos run between $1-$30 apiece.

If you are a hobby blogger, there is no reason to pay high fees for stock photos if you can find good ones online for free.  The thing is, just make sure they are free to download and use. (Copying and pasting images you find online doesn’t work.  You need permission from the photographer or owner of the blog image to use it).

So,that’s why I am creating a list of places where you can download free images to use for your blog. These images were already deemed “download ready” for the most part, are generally under the creative commons license or available for public domain.

You should definitely be able to use these for education and classroom purposes (newsletters, handouts and worksheets, digital online projects, etc.)– though, I will have to say in advance, you won’t find much in the way of clip art on this list.

These are professional blog images (stock photos, to be exact) offered by photographers who don’t mind sharing their work.

This should work well for K-12 classrooms and homeschools (give or take a few listed below- do your research and make sure your students are protected by visiting each site ahead of time).

I won’t go into any details about each site…you’ll have to click there and read for yourself, but it’s pretty self explanatory and the sites are easy to sign up for and use.

So, here you go- a list of 42 places on the web where you can find free blog images for your own blog!

1. Big Foto
2. Public Domain Photos
3. Public Domain Image
4. Free Range Stock
5. Unprofound
6. Open Photo
7. Image Base Free Photos
8. Geek Philosopher
9. Free Stock Photos.biz
10. Every Stock Photo
11. Morgue File
12. Image After
13. Stock.xchng
14. PhotoGen
15. Free Images
16. Free Digital Photos
17. Stock Vault
18. High Resolution Textures
19. Cepolina Photo
20. Abstract Influence
21. Whoopy
22. PhotoRack
23. Free Pixels
24. Design Packs
25. Pixel Perfect Digital
26. Nations Illustrated
27. Historical Stock Photos
28. Kave Wall
29. Studio 7 Designs
30. Lost and Taken
31. PhotoRee
32. Design Begins Here
33. Photl.com
34. PicDrome
35. Toasto
36. PhotoXpress
37. RGB Stock
38. Mejuba
39. All Our Stock
40. PhotoVac
41. DougItDesign
42. Sunipix

My daughter enjoys her Didj.

A Didj is just a little handheld made by LeapFrog.

There aren’t too many game modules that I approve of (Hannah Montana, etc.), but she only has one game that she plays and it helps her with spelling skills:  Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Woodland Hills.

There is also the CD ROM that goes with it, which allows you to access the game downloads for extras and connect to the LeapFrog Learning Path.  You can customize your learning for each game and create your own Didji characters.

Mostly, my daughter uses the handheld without the software, just for the Nancy Drew spelling game.

I like that the Didj comes with a port for headsets (because the music can be a bit loud).  I don’t like, though, that the battery life of this system doesn’t last long.  The Didj eats through batteries FAST!  It requires I think four AA batteries, and when she plays it for about 45 minutes to an hour, four days straight, the batteries are depleted.  It can get pretty expensive replacing batteries once a week.  That’s why we love the Dollar Store (and probably also why our batteries don’t last as long anymore!)

Anyway, check out the Didj system here at their website, and for educational purposes, look underneath the “Skills” option to choose between Math, Science, Language and Literacy and Learning For Life.

For all of you online homeschoolers (and those of you who love to  use free internet sites to help your kids with schoolwork), here is a great site to help specifically with mathematics skills:

Chicago Gear Up Alliance

Here’s what the site says about their vision for improving mathematics in the community:

COUNTDOWN is a challenging interactive television math program which has engaged tens of thousands of students through broadcasts on cable television in Chicago. Capitalizing on the one on one relationship a student viewer has with television, COUNTDOWN makes math “work”. Each week the program introduces a different math concept through direct instruction and reinforces lessons with literature, manipulatives, activities and related computer instruction. Student viewers are encouraged to call a televised phone number to participate in the show by responding to challenges presented by the on-air educators.

More than three hundred different COUNTDOWN programs have been broadcast exploring topics many elementary students might not see in their classrooms such as logic, perimeter, area, probability, graphing, congruence, integers and much more. Focusing frequently on “under taught” concepts, COUNTDOWN shifts the target age for its audience from season to season to maximize the program’s reach. COUNTDOWN also seasonally adjusts curriculum to incorporate specific instruction students need to sharpen test taking skills.

The interactive component of COUNTDOWN’s broadcast allows active student viewers to respond to math challenges without the distraction and pressure of fellow classmates but with the benefit of parental involvement at home.(A non confrontational parent tutoring is an added benefit of each COUNTDOWN broadcast.) COUNTDOWN’s call-in format also allows physically challenged students to participate more equitably than is often the case in a classroom.

This site helps with mathematics skills and has tons of videos taught by Dr. Diane Schiller of Loyola University (and her colleagues).

I have already begun using the multiplication videos for my third grader who seems to be understanding the concepts better.

You may want to check out this site for some of your older teens who like to stay organized – Toodledo.com

I wouldn’t rate it MUCh better than your MS Office task manager, but it is free and it offers the following:

• sharing
• scheduler
• goals
• files
• notebook
• history
• booklet
• forums

Here are some of the connections this software can work in sync with:

• Connections to Iphone/Ipad/Ipod Touch
• Email import/export
• Twitter
• Mobile PHones
• Google Gadgets
• Firefox add-ons…

It is fairly simple to use, although when I signed up for an account it took me a while to hunt and find the “add new task” button.

It is very, very basic, though, for a task manager, and is just the nuts and bolts (unless you upgrade), and even then, you are looking at a pretty basic screen (white background, blue text, with a couple of tabs).  If I could recommend anything to this company it would be for them to snazz it up a little and make Toodledo more fun and interesting to work with.  Also if they could add the collaboration and sharing option for free (since most web 2.0 users are accustomed to free widgets and embeds), that would be a real plus for them.

But if you are trying to teach your teens to manage their time, this is a good, beginning (and free) software that can help them learn to organize their day.  I imagine you can have them schedule their homeschool tasks and study time, after curricular activities, chores, volunteer or paid work, and free time.  Any tool that helps them be better managers of their time, is worth the try.

When I found Free K-12  Homeschool in 2009, it was just what we needed to get us through the school year.  We’d had a busy schedule, and I was needing a break of sorts.

Here is an overview of what they provide. Their site quotes:

Free K-12 gave me a semester to breathe.  I enrolled my oldest daughter in several of the classes (Grade 2 Math, Science, Social Studies, and Health). A year later I enrolled her in Grade 4 Art and Music and Grade 4 American History.  I mainly used these courses as supplements to other curriculum I was already using- but these programs were meant to stand alone as well.

In this program, you have your child read (or you read outloud) the text for each class page online.  Another option is to download a free text to speech software like Sayz Me.  I preferred having my child read it aloud to me.  Each lesson is presented in a way that is colorful and fun for children, with lots of breaks in text and pictures to make it more interesting.

At the end of each lesson is either a response question to answer online, an activity to do at home to support the lesson, or a video to watch from the video CD provided for the course.

Yes, you will receive video CD’s for each course, and many times a course e-book is provided as well.  These video CD’s are a high quality compilation of education video resources that Free K12 has compiled onto the CD’s for you to use for your child’s learning reinforcement.  Typcially (and depending on the class), these are free of charge along with registering for the class (with a shipping fee of about $5.00 per class material).

Overall, I would say we had a wonderful experience with Free K-12 HOmeschool.  It is a very flexible program, and, again, if you prefer to use the courses as supplements to your homeschool (as opposed to a full program), you may do that as well.  Additionally, if you prefer to be more hands-free of the actual teaching, you can upgrade to the instructor-led program so that your child is participating in an actual virtual course with other children as well.

This is a wonderful, online educational resource that I would recommend to families either just beginning homeschooling or those who wish to add some additional resources to your homeschooling program.

We started using Sense-Lange Typing last year when my oldest daughter was seven.

It’s a neat typing program, completely online and absolutely free, which helps our kids to learn to type.

There are quite a few typing tutorials here.

Everything is pretty much laid out in order for you.  First thing you should do when you get to this site, is to read the Instructions.  That is the first link option when you arrive at the site.

Once you’ve read the instructions to your child, I would go ahead and choose between the Typing Tutorials or the Keypad Tutorials.  I would start with the typing, since that is the most important initially when your child is learning to type for writing or grammar classes.

Then have your child play a few typing games just for fun.    This will help cement the idea of the typing pad’s key lineup and help them remember it better.  Lastly, maybe wait after a few more typing tutorials later in the week or so, but finally give them the typing test.  The test will tell them how many words per minute they type, how many mistakes they made, and how many words they typed correctly.  There is a success percentage score given, and you can use this to keep up with your child’s progress in typing.

Overall, a pretty good typing program online.

If you haven’t already noticed, I haven’t blogged here in a few weeks for 2 reasons:

1. My domain name had expired!  I can’t believe I let that happen…but I did…and thankfully, I caught it and got it fixed before I lost the domain for good.  And…
2. because I have moved my homeschooling blog over to:Natural Homeschool Mama.

Visit my new homeschooling blog when you can, to find all my older posts.    Meanwhile, I am in the process (as you can see) of changing this website into a tech/web 2.0 information and review site for homeschoolers.  I will keep a few of the tech-related posts here, because I think they fit where I’m trying to go here.

I also have some other projects up my sleeve that may change the scope of this site for good… and I am really excited about that.  So in the wake of all of my shifting, changing, moving, and growing pains, I hope that you’ll grow with me!!

Thanks for hanging in there.

Okay, don’t shoot me.

But remember my last post about the homeschooling web project I was thinking about starting?

Well.  I started it.

And I am having a BLAST!  Finally, I feel that I have freed myself to work on a project that I am fulfilled with online where I can not only help myself (as I learn more about home education myself), but help other homeschooling families.

So that is exactly what I am doing over at Start Homeschooling Easy.

I checked my subscription stats in Feedburner for this blog…and even after about a year being up, I still don’t have more than about 15 subscribers or so…not tremendously big at all (slight understatement)…

So then I don’t feel QUITE so badly about moving.  Once I move officially, I will probably have this site redirect and use the techiehomeschoolers.com domain name for another web project in the future, so it is not a complete loss.

If you want to bookmark my new site and blog, follow me on over to this URL (for the blog):

http://blog.start-homeschooling-easy.com/

Let me just tell you this as a sneak preview (it is going to be even better than this blog – oh, I really hope!!!!).  Here’s why:

• YouTube videos of me and my family homeschooling in action.  Wow.  Can’t get much more personal than that.
• All prior posts and comments from this blog should be shifted over to the new one…so you shouldn’t miss anything (all techie stuff plus other homeschooling topics rolled into one!)
• Lots of different homeschooling topics.  Curriculum reviews (you provide them, in fact! — or okay, I can provide some too…)
• Contests
• Hopefully a PODCAST to come.  I hope, I hope, I hope. That all depends on participants.  Who wants to be on my podcast?  If you’re a homeschooling mama, give me a holla and I will interview you.
• A newsletter. ..and maybe a chat room to come soon.

So, there is more in the works (if I can pull this off)…and why do I want to do this?

Ahh…like I said in my last post, it is a project of a lifetime.  I enjoy meeting people and helping people online – whatever that entails.  For a season in my life it meant website design or helping others with techie projects, or it meant praying with others who met at my christian women’s site.  This is just a new season and a new opportunity and I want to embrace it.

Will you please join me?

Here is the site URL again:

http://blog.start-homeschooling-easy.com/

Hope to see you there.

I found a resource that will be valuable to our home school this next upcoming school year:

ClickSchooling.com

I love that they embrace the idea of using so many of the FREE educational resources online.  I am surprised I haven’t found this site sooner.  If I had known about this site, I would have signed up years ago and may have happily homeschooled with these suggested resources alone.

It’s never too late.  Thankfully, I’ve signed up and well on my way to having an abundance of online resources for educating my 3rd grader right at my fingertips.

Here is what they have to say about the services they provide on their site:

Get 1 FREE, Web-Based Curriculum Idea Every Day — Monday Through Saturday!

ClickSchooling brings you daily recommendations by email for entertaining websites that help your kids learn.

This leads me to another topic for another post…