Reviews and postings
THE ELECTRONIC WIZARD’S APPRENTICE I thought I would let you know our thoughts on this correspondence electronics course for children. We are currently on our second time through – we bought it first for James a few years ago, and are now in the middle of it again with Alastair (aged 11).
In summary, it is extremely good … and not for the faint-hearted!
This is such a good course of hands-on real electronics. It is galaxies away from the readily available clip-together circuits with buzzers and lights. Each month you receive a nicely presented box of bits and set of instructions. The theme is wizardry, and the style definitely “new age” but it is nothing beyond a style – the content is extremely thorough science/electronics.
If you were brought up like me, to be more familiar with a sewing machine than a soldering iron, then you will find it pretty alien territory. Either take the easy option and rope in an available man (as I have done) or be prepared to work that old grey matter. I don’t think personally that it is something many a child would manage without someone else’s input.
Examples of things you make are as follows. A solar charger with a switch which makes the batteries charge in parallel but output in series. A reed switch activated alarm using a transistor to make a latch switch. A variable timer, set off by charging a capacitor via a variable resistor. There is a lot of soldering involved, which Alastair has got very good at.
Many of the components are built up onto a neat plastic case (a video case in fact). The most recently added was a light detector element linked to an oscillator, so the pitch of the sound goes up as the amount of light falling on the box increases. Also recently added to the case was a set of contacts to make a tiny stylophone-type instrument, which you tune to a scale by adjusting the variable resistors attached to each note. You play it by touching each contact with a crocodile clip on the end of a wire, which you solder on.
Support is offered if you find yourself in difficulties. We haven’t personally experienced it, but my sister has done the course with her son and said they were very helpful. There is also a website linked to the course where apprentices can make comments and ask questions.
The course runs at particular times, and the next beginning at the time of writing is the 27th January 2010. They like you to sign up at least 2 weeks before if possible, so they know how many boxes to prepare. The price is: 3 terms of 4 boxes, price currently £99 per term; or £260 if you pay up front for the whole year
So, if you are looking for real hands-and-brains-on work, this would definitely be the course for you. It is very good.
Find it at: www.kidstuff.co.uk
YouTube Videos
Thanks to one of our members for making these videos in response to the Recommendations made by Badman:
Home Educators v badman
Dictatorship in home ed homes
Review of GalaxyZoo website: www.galaxyzoo.org
I have recently found a site that is really good! I heard about it on the radio, and its aim is to make use of some of the spare intellectual capacity of the world’s population for scientific research. Did you know that the creation of the whole immense amount of information in Wikipedia took up point one of a percent of the time we humans spend watching television? This project gets volunteers to use their brains in their spare time to do space research – and you can do it too!
It is called GalaxyZoo. How it works is that you view pictures from a database of images of galaxies taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and you answer a series of questions about what you see. There is a tutorial that you go through first that tells you what to look for. Thousands of volunteers all over the world are busy classifying too, and the results of every person’s classification are collated together to definitively describe each of the galaxies. So, if 100% of people who classified a particular galaxy chose the descriptions that it was a disc shape with a pronounced centre and 4 spiral arms, then that would be a positive classification. This sort of subjective description just can’t be done by computers – the best tool in the world is you and me!
Some of the images are really beautiful, and you get the option to save these to a gallery of your favourite galaxies. Some classifications are very quick – it is smooth, round, has no particular features, and nothing odd about it. Some involve looking at it very closely to see for example how many spiral arms you can pick out. The image can be colour-inverted, and it is surprising what a difference it sometimes makes in how clearly you can see the features.
Have a look – it’s great!
Helen, April 2009
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Review of 'My Story' history books:
A resource I'd like to share that I discovered recently; the My Story books! Or rather, my daughter discovered them herself. Written in diary form, mostly by a child of around 12 - 13, but sometimes older, they are a way of 'experiencing history first-hand, a series of vividly imagined accounts of life in the past.'
Me, I'm getting her more - second-hand from Amazon, using the HEC link, of course! - because it's the first time I've found her reading history voluntarily and voraciously and wanting more, more, more. She's devoured The Blitz, then the Titanic one, in one sitting each. They range from Egyptian princess through Pompeii, Roman Invasion, Tudor, Plague, Victorian (one by a mill girl, one by a rich girl who befriends a workhouse inmate), to WW1 and 2.
Suddenly thought I'd share this because many of the reviews I've been reading say things like; Our boy of 10 won't read - only read one book in the last year - after [one of these My Story books] he wants more, and even children's reviews conveying the fact that they love these books.
So I think they're good fun, good for history, and good for reluctant or could-be-quicker readers.
They're around £4.99 from Amazon new, I'd already bought a couple locally at £5.99 and £6.99, but am now getting them for 1penny and up(plus postage of course) from Amazon.
Linda, Oct 2008
Below are some of the titles available. Click on the book covers to go to Amazon and see the full selection:
