Category: Home Schooling

  • Speaking at NCHE again this year

    For the homeschoolers who read my blog, I’ll be speaking at the North Carolinians for Home Education (NCHE) state conference in Winston-Salem again this year. I’m giving my distance education talk on Saturday, May 26th, from 12:30 to 1:30 PM in South Main 3. A few of the points I’ll cover include:

    • Why distance education is a good alternative to traditional college for homeschool graduates
    • How I earned my own four-year degree through distance education
    • Which colleges currently offer distance education and how to choose wisely from among them
    • An overview of the different methods that can be used to earn credit through distance education (portfolio review, CLEP, etc.)

    There will be a few surprises too! I hope to see you there.

  • Teascript opens for beta testing next week

    Teascript is my latest Rails application. It’s scheduled to go live in mid-September. You can read more about it in the original announcement that I posted a few weeks ago.

    Beta testing for Teascript begins next week. I’m looking for a dozen or so people to help sanity check the application before I unleash it on the public. (I already have 8 signed up.) As a beta tester, you would receive full access to the product starting early next week.

    While I’m not requiring anyone who volunteers as a tester to send me feedback, it’s much appreciated! Interested? Shoot me an e-mail at matthew AT teascript DOT com and I’ll add you to the list.

  • Introducing Teascript

    Teascript is a Rails-based web application I’ve been working on for about a month. It’s targeted towards home school parents and students who need to design a high school transcript with minimum fuss.

    Traditionally, this process has been quite involved. My own parents and I designed my transcript using an Excel spreadsheet. It was painstakingly slow! Many home school books have transcript templates in them, but again, the process of photocopying and filling them out is time consuming.

    It is because of this that I decided to create Teascript. The application is still under development, but I have put up a teaser page highlighting some of its features. The page also allows you to sign-up to receive notification when Teascript goes live sometime later this year.

  • Distance education posts moved to new blog

    In preparation for my NCHE workshop next week, I decided to move my distance education posts to a separate blog. Distance education is such a compelling new option for high school graduates that I felt it deserved its own dedicated space for posts. I’ll be making all of my new entries there so I encourage you to bookmark the page or add the feed to your RSS reader if you’d like to keep up with my future thoughts on this subject. I’d also love to hear your own thoughts about this unique method of earning a college degree.

  • Distance education workshop at this year’s NCHE convention

    I’m excited to announce that I’ll be giving a workshop on distance education at this year’s NCHE conference. (NCHE stands for North Carolinians for Home Education; my brother and I were both home schooled K-12 and were members of the group at one point.)

    The workshop is titled “Distance Education: An Alternative to Traditional College.” In it, I’ll be sharing the story of my own experience earning a four-year degree in Computer Science via distance education. I’ll also be sharing the many benefits distance education offers over traditional college, as well as providing some pragmatic steps that parents and high schoolers can take to find a good distance education program and succeed in it.

    My reason for posting is two-fold. First, I want to let you, my readers, know about the conference in case some of you might want to attend. For a description of the workshop and more information about the conference, visit the conference web page.

    Second, and most importantly, I plan on sharing the URL of my blog during the workshop so folks can visit, ask any follow-up questions that they might have, and possibly even use a discussion board (I’m considering adding one to this site). I’ll be continuing to post about distance education and its role in today’s economy over the next few months for those who are interested in the topic.

    If anyone has any immediate questions or comments, feel free to post a comment here. I’d also enjoy hearing from you if you plan on attending any workshops at this year’s conference.