Leaping From The Box

I was recently contacted by an Alabama homeschool mom who wished to let homeschoolers in Alabama and Georgia know of this great offer! She wrote:

I homeschool in Alabama and recently learned that homeschoolers in Alabama & Georgia can receive, for FREE, the Discovery Education UnitedStreaming videos. Currently, through the end of March, the Homeschool Buyers Co-op is doing a group buy on this product. The annual subscription is normally $265, but the co-op has the price down to $129/year, but residents of Alabama & Georgia can have it for FREE any time by contacting their local public television station. I contacted APTV in Birmingham and they happily gave me a login to access the Discovery Education UnitedStreaming videos. This was all through their APTPlus program, which provides access to other things as well, all paid for by the state of Alabama.

She received this reply from APT (Alabama Public Television):

For home-schoolers to enroll in APTPLUS, please instruct the home-schooler to log on to the APTPLUS Web site at the URL listed below and click on “Contact APTPLUS.” Tell them to include their full name, address, phone number, their preferred e-mail address, the name of their Cover Group, the school district in which their children are registered, and the number and age of their children. APT staff will enroll them in the service and return their Username and Password to their e-mail address.

APTPLUS^TM is a free, online, video-on-demand, multimedia resource from Alabama Public Television (APT). It provides pre-K through adult education curriculum content, professional development, national and local video libraries, links to Alabama Learning Exchange, Alabama Virtual Library, Annenberg Media, e-Learning for Educators, the Library of Congress and PBS educational Web sites. Two password-protected databases designed specifically to serve the needs of educators, childcare professionals and parents are available upon enrollment. A single sign-on federated search enables enrolled users to search multiple databases simultaneously to access over 100,000 multimedia assets.

Discovery Education streaming (unitedstreaming) is a password-protected database of K-12 core curriculum content and professional development, aligned to Alabama state curriculum standards, that is available to educators and pre-service teachers free through APTPLUS.

PowerMediaPlus is a password-protected database of pre-K-12 core curriculum content and professional development, aligned to Alabama state curriculum standards, Alabama High School Graduation Exam and the Stanford Achievement Test, which is available to educators, pre-service teachers, childcare professionals, and parents free through APTPLUS.

Local Video Libraries offer access to “Discovering Alabama” episodes, the McWane Science Center Library (Einstein and Planet H₂O Key Concepts), What’s Up In Factories key concepts, and Alabama Reading Initiative.

Adult Education Video Libraries offer GED Connection, Workplace Essential Skills, TV411, and Going to School to APTPLUS users.

National Video Libraries provide “Frontline,” “National Geographic” and “Newshour” programming.

Additional Resources available to APTPLUS users are Thinkfinity (MarcoPolo) and Encyclopedia Britannica content.

I located this information from the Homeschool Buyers Coop website, where they are having a special promotion on the Discovery Education streaming videos through the end of March:

“Georgia and Alabama are considered “Free States” for the unitedstreaming™ Homeschool subscription. This means that if you are a homeschool parent in any of these states and you want to purchase unitedstreaming™, your local PBS station has already paid for the subscription. Contact your local PBS station for details.”

If you live in Georgia, visit the Georgia Public Broadcasting website or email their Education Program Department to request enrollment.

I was tagged by Sandra to list seven interesting things about me. Since I was tagged here at my LeapingFromTheBox blog, I will try to keep the seven items related in some way to learning/education. And maybe I will go the more personal route on my Musings, Mischief and Mayhem blog later.

1. I started out at college studying to be a history teacher, but quickly decided that teaching was not for me. Isn’t it ironic that I become a homeschooling parent?

2. I don’t really enjoy website building, html coding. I find the whole technical aspect of it extremely stressful. Yet I enjoy writing about our experiences, reviewing resources and sharing that information on the web. And I love tinkering with the layouts, finding what is visually pleasing, as you can tell from the fact that the theme of this blog just changed again!

3. I love the hunt of finding new resources, which has been both a blessing and a curse in our homeschooling journey. A blessing because I often stumble onto things that either my own family can use or that turns out to be useful for a fellow homeschooler. A curse because I can easily go overboard, overwhelming everyone with the options I find and stressing the budget with the choices I purchase.

4. I began the LeapingFromTheBox.com website because I was continually answering emails about homeschooling. I thought if I put my knowledge and information online, then people wouldn’t send me emails. Of course, they still send me emails, but at least now I can usually just redirect them to the appropriate pages on my site for answers.

5. Homeschooling math has always been a challenge for me. It is a subject that I always feel is just slightly out of my grasp, like grabbing a fistful of Jello. Just when you feel you have a handle on it, it goes squishing away again. I would like to know more about it, it fascinates me, yet I am not sure I really have the brain for it. It may be one of those subjects that I will always regret not understanding more.

6. I never even tried homeschooling science. Over the years I provided a lot of resources, we gardened, grew plants indoors, had pets, watched NOVA and read a lot of science books, but I never tried to teach science. I let my middle child make any scientific explanations that were needed, as his level of science comprehension exceeded mine at about age three. I know science information by rote, from what I learned in school, but I will never understand it at any level.

7. I will consider myself an unschooler even when I no longer have children being homeschooled. Once an unschooler, always an unschooler.

I am supposed to tag seven people, but I guess I will just let you tag yourself. If you blog this meme after reading it here, please leave me a comment with a link!

Did you hear that sucking sound over the weekend? No, it wasn’t the Patriots losing. It was my email program’s IN box contents, disappearing into a previously unknown black hole located somewhere on my computer.

So, if you sent me an email over the last five - seven days with church school info, support group info, co-op info, or anything else, and did not receive a reply from me, please email me again.

Luckily it was only my IN box … and I am now doing the back-ups I intended to do at the first of the year!