RESOURCES Teaching & Learning At Home During COVID (will update often)

I have done these types of posts before but a conversation I had last night reminds me that this is the perfect time for an update.

God bless the parents and child-carers out there trying to do be parent and teacher. Hang in there.

Whoever did this is genius-level funny!

Here are some educational resources for you or for your children. I gathered these from around the internet and from some of my older postings. This is a great time for all of us to "school up"!

Old Blog Posts (links for all ages and activities)

• Life-long Learning Links All kinds of links here for everything from online universities to math learning, etc.
• Speaking of Learning A very old post worth mentioning because of the links for coding and app development. 
• Apps, Videos & Tutorials Mostly for adults and older teens. Links to "learning-tainment", online academies, and some why & how resources.
• The Lazy Intellectual Link to a book that older teens and adults might enjoy.

Resources Suggested by Others

Videos

• This page from  Kids Activities Blog suggests 10 educational YouTube channels for kids. Notice that there are other articles on the site with a breakdown by each stage of childhood. I have not perused the site myself.
• This particular Feedspot page does regular updates on a "learning, discovery, and educational" video roundup. This seems to be a site where YouTubers can submit their content so it should be a rich source for browsing.
• Medium has this interesting list of videos. I like how they break the list down into categories of educational interest. 
• This from CollegeInfoGeek is a long and random list of sites that I didn't peruse. Looks juicy full of rabbit holes though.

My YouTube List

For younger kids

• Math & Learning 4 Kids This channel sorts playlists by grades (Pre to 5th) and includes learning time.
• Mathantics - supposed to be for kids but some adults will use this one!
• Khan Academy Early Math (Be sure to also check out Khan Academy for free online classes in just about everything  Right now, they have a schedule of classes for ages 2-18 to help during COVID)
• Homeschool Pop - I don't know much about this channel but there are lots of playlists for you to check out

For older kids and adults

• How Stuff Works This has videos that are just random and run. 
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZDpC3RjbbcsQMV3iIb_lXQ/playlists - because I love stuff like this!

For Christians/Bible believers

• Science Confirms the Bible - this is a good video for the family
• 10 Top Scientific Facts in the Bible - I have not watched this but it's on my to-do list
• The Ultimate Proof of Creation - by a favorite teacher. I consider this to fall into the Science/Physics realm.

I'm really wiped out today, but I'll keep working on this list, adding things as I find them.

Peace
--Free

**EDUCATION** Life-long Learning

This isn't the first time I have posted links to learning resources, but it's been a while. A long while. The last posting has gotten so old that I've had to do a complete update.

I am always interested in learning new things and I like encouraging my family and friends to do the same. Here is a list of resources for anyone who wants to expand on their knowledge in various areas. I find these links via web searches, reading articles, and watching videos. I try to link to sites with content that is mostly free of charge. I will come back and do updates as I find more resources to link to. Enjoy.

• The Open Education Database (OEDb) is self-described as " the most comprehensive collection of online college rankings and free courses anywhere online". It can be a bit overwhelming. I suggest starting here at the open courseware collection and scroll down to the list of 'popular online classes' or further down to browse course by subject.
• DIY Genius is one site I haven't had a lot of time to check out. I do know that not all of the content is free. I am including it on this list just because of the free content.
• Wikiversity was on one of my original lists and remains a favorite. If you read the Introduction page, you will find that the 'versity is just like the 'pedia and is open to editing. I don't care; it's still a favorite. I must also link to Wikibooks but for all other links, please check the left side panel on any of the Wiki pages for more. It's amazing what we miss by not looking at the side panels of webpages. 
• Open Culture ("The best free cultural & educational media on the web") is another new one for me. Some of the listings are links to off-site resources. I do like that some of the textbooks are in pdf format to be viewed online. I can't wait to check out some of the links
  
  for learning languages. The one thing I don't like is that the site shows in Chrome as not being secure.
• Khan Academy has to be on this list. It's one of the best put-together sites online. I think the video lessons are a great teaching tool for people of all ages. KA is definitely another of my favorites.
• ** Stanford Online is, in my opinion, better suited for those already attending school or navigating a career. It's worth checking out, no matter who you are.
• YouTube - okay, this is where you have to kind of work for it. There are a LOT of channels for specific topics of study. I've seen playlists of videos for learning languages, one of the sciences, or for a specific culinary skill. The best way to learn via YouTube is to make up your own playlists ahead of time (for whatever interests you), then search for and add the different videos to your lists. I have playlists for everything from Bible study to Breadmaking to Hokkaido breadmaking. One warning: Make sure you are really focused or get ready to fall down a deep rabbithole...

By the way, I recently picked up a couple of tips from a news article:

1. When searching for any low-cost or free digital content - from games to writing apps - search for "open source" instead of "free".

2. Another way to reference or search for open-source items is to use the search term "FOSS" aka "free and open-source software".

I have to go now because my brain is tired.

Peace

--Free

**RESOURCES** For Writers and Students

As I've been working on (or juggling the work on) three different books, I've been OneNoting some resources to share with you guys. Here are the latest links I culled from my notebooks. Here we go....

Visualizing Words

• Visuwords (very helpful) read the About page
• Visual Dictionary Online (example for clothing) 
• The Visual Dictionary (not my fave)

Dictation Software

• Braina (Scary good dictation software, but be careful of the Pro trial. It's not totally free... Also, not expensive)
• Speechnotes (So easy to use, but no download as far as I know. It's all online, then copy or share to other utilities.)

(I use it on my phone and if I could ever get something as good as S Voice for my computer, I'd be one happy heffa!)

Other Lang & Slang

• Urban Dictionary (Good resource for us "geezers". Go look that up!)
• Online Slang Dictionary (I've not used it yet. Looks good.)
• DARE (for regional English)
• AlphaDictionary.com (you have to just go see this one. So good.)
• No Slang (Love it. To translate all the text & internet slang. Even has a "swear filter".)
• ESL Slang (I find it very cool that this is out there. Yay, Internet.)

What & Where in Time

• Time Maps
• African-American History Timeline (1900-2000) (from BlackPast.org which is a fave site of mine)
• TikiToki (a timeline creator for various uses) I linked to the FAQs
• The People History (I went to research music & saw how much else they cover)
• My Birthday Facts (Not just my birthday, but yours - or any day. Useful & fun.))
• dMarie Time Capsule (Great or details - like price of food & gas, etc. on a  certain date. I've used this site for years now!)

Too Good to Leave Out

• Site map for BlackPast.org
• Country Culture Index
• Fashion Era (site a bit old/info still good)

Enjoy & Peace

--Free