https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-put-your-laptops-away
https://newrepublic.com/article/135326/digital-reading-no-substitute-print
ok. You all get the point by now. Lol. Kids who read print and write notes instead of type them learn the material better.
D21 goes to an urban, lower SES magnet school in a large city. All kids get an HP laptop and nearly all the books are online. I hate all the blue light stimulation at night. We have purchased paper versions of a few of the books each year. She still takes written notes and prints her papers.
Our school district went to a mostly digital based curriculum 7 years ago. Every student from grade 3-12 are issued a district IPad. Families pay $40 for the year for insurance. All classwork is done through Pearson, Edmoto etc. a family can opt out and request a traditional textbook if they want. Free/Reduced lunch participants are exempt from the $40. Some classes/subjects also have a class set of Chromebooks. The reviews on this are mixed. Iâve found that some teachers hate the iPad and barely utilized them while others love them and have really creative uses. Some kids just use them to play on. The district has disabled all imessaging and texting because the first couple of years the program rolled out bullying became a real problem. There also is a special district App Store that was developed with Apple to control what apps can be downloaded. Elementary is very strictâŠMiddle School moderateâŠHigh School more lax. My kids barley touch the iPads during the summer lol. Iâm happy they donât have to lug around textbooks though because my kidsâ middle and high schools donât use lockers.
@homerdog - yes, I know; part of me wishes that they used paper, pens, and books, and people bring up this research every year. But weâre on year three in our house at the HS and it doesnât seem to be an issue at all and the kids seem grateful for the lack of paper and lightness of their backpacks.
I know each teacher is given a few copies of actual books and students can check them out for the entire semester/year if they want. I havenât heard of waitlists for the books so thatâs good.
D goes to a title 1 school in an inner city area. But it is the academic magnet. They canât afford to issue the kids textbooks, there is class copy. I buy D text books (always have) from Amazon, old texts from the best authors of each subject. she studies from those. She is a huge pencil/pen annotator of everything. She hates any reading online. Wonât do Khan because it is online. In other news⊠I canât believe the school is having the kids register for their AP test tomorrow. Donât know what the rush it but this is when the teachers of each AP will be available to help the students. Parents will pay 45.00 by Nov 1 and if kid makes 3,4,5 then parent gets reimbursed.
Thatâs because there is no used market. The online/ebooks cost almost as much as new physical books, and then you canât sell them when you are done, so they effectively cost quite a bit more. Whatever convenience there might be to be able to not have to carry around a physical isnât worth the extra cost.
@BingeWatcher and @3kids2dogs Both of my kids are like yours - big annotators! Given that learning outcomes are better with paper as @homerdog has shown, Iâm OK with paying the upcharge for hard copies if it comes to that. I have found good deals on Amazon, Chegg, and eBay. At Dâs school, they usually keep some textbooks in the classroom for use there so the student can keep their copy at home and have less back and forth in the backpack.
AP exam registration already @BingeWatcher, wow! Classes just started this week for us and we havenât heard anything about AP registration yet. Thanks for the heads up - I will ask at Dâs school when that deadline is.
Just received notice that school schedules come out next Monday. Will be curious to see which classes S ends up with as his GC last year said heâd make sure all Sâs preferred academic electives were approved, but then he retired.
Iâve learned quite a bit from this threadâs recent posts â as lifelong homeschoolers, my kids have had a mix of online classes and paper-books-in-hand resources. I had no idea that so many traditionally schooled kids had switched to digital texts over the past years. Interesting!
D21 begins her first in-person classes (for grades, that is) next week. She has three dual credit college courses, one at a state college and two at a community college. She is very excited. She already met with one of her professors and she felt like they hit it off. Iâm happy for her. Sheâs been homeschooled all her life to meet her where she was at academically, as the local public schools have always refused to accelerate her in her areas of strengths. Sheâs always out and about in the world with extracurriculars and work and volunteer activities, but she does now want to take as many classes in person as possible. Sheâs finally at the age where our local colleges will let her attend for dual credit (minimum age here is 16), so off she goes. She still has three online AP classes as well as the three college classes this fall (next semester I am assuming sheâll want another three college courses). Next year, she may opt to go full dual credit, which means three different colleges since the ones in which she is taking courses this semester have limits on the number of courses high school aged kids can take.
She has a preliminary college list which I hope she will narrow down (18 on the list right now! Ack!). It will be hard to accurately predict her matches. She will have standardized test scores and grades, but technically she is a homeschooler, so there is no Naviance or predicted best bets based on past studentsâ acceptances. She has regionally award-winning ECs and one EC in particular (her major passion since she was little) is very unusual and has gotten her a lot of press throughout her entire life, and sheâs published professionally with writing about that EC, and sheâs kind of turned it into a bigger thing that involves a bunch of other people â but itâs not like sheâs a recruited athlete so I am not sure the admissions folks will care about that EC all that much. I predict some will think itâs amazing and some will shrug and go âhuh?..meh.â Her list includes colleges that seem to really value the things she is into thoughâŠbut who knows. Predicting chances accurately is impossible â I have definitely learned that from reading a lot of CC over the years. So sheâll probably end up applying to a ton of places just in case, and it could go either way. She could get into all of them (statistically extremely unlikely, I know) or none of them except a safety. She does have two safeties she likes, but I also know she will be disappointed if she doesnât get into at least one of what we think are matches (based on her scores and grades). Acceptance rates for these colleges (as of last year) varied from 75% acceptance rate to 4% acceptance rate. I have hammered it into her (I hope) to treat anything with an acceptance rate less than 30% like a reach/lotto school, and to apply and give it her all, but to make sure she really loves the ones with higher acceptance rates because one of those is probably where sheâll end up based on the statistics.
I have also learned that I am starting to get too stressed out over all this, and that if I am stressed, D21 gets stressed. So I will probably stay off CC and all other college-related sites this year unless I have specific questions or need to research an aspect of a specific college. All of this research and info-gathering was fun for me last year and the year before, but now it is all VERY REAL and right around the corner, and my anxiety levels are starting to skyrocket. If Mama has a calm and fun attitude, then so does the Teen, and if Mama starts to freak out, then so does the Teen. At least that is how it is in our home.
So thanks for reading this novella and I wish all of you and your teens the best this year!! I will lurk here and there but only allow myself to be a regular contributor once I know I wonât stress too much about the process. 
Happy New School Year, everyone.
Had a fun moment with S21 yesterday. He came with us to Penn State main campus to move in S19. And while S21 had tagged along on almost all of the college visits for S19, he had never seen Penn State. The verdict? âUh, yeah. This is WAY too big. And WAY too in the middle of nowhere. A definite no. I will not be going here.â
S21 likes schools in or near cities. So with Penn State now an official no, he actually has a pretty solid list. Having him tag along on the visits with S19 is saving us a lot of time. Oh, and maybe I am a bit (?!?!?) more chill the second time around now that I have learned so much thanks to CC? LOL!
Ugh. Trying to weigh my âlet her take care of itâ vs. âmaybe I should make a callâ options. D21 is taking BC Calc this year and the teacher who is teaching it is on maternity leave until early November. Unfortunately, the sub (according to my D and her friends) doesnât seem to know the material. He was making mistakes on the practice pre calc review problems the first week.
At first D and her friends said - weâll give him the first full week and if itâs still bad, weâll go to the department head. Now he seems to be staying about 1 day ahead of the kids - they can tell heâs not confident in what he is presenting to them, but he is at least presenting the information without the kids chiming in with mistakes he is making. D said they would probably just tough it out until November. She said, âI see a lot of Khan Academy in my futureâ
I feel bad for them - why would they assign the second most advanced math course in the curriculum to a teacher who they knew would be gone the first 12 weeks of school (she had her baby during finals week in May)? It must be hard to find a BC Calc sub. Youâd think they would have given the full time teacher lower level courses this year so the sub would be able to do a good job (the teacher of BC Calc switches around year to year, so there are other qualified teachers) Or have another full time teacher be the sub for BC Calc and then have the outside sub be a sub for a lower course (which they did with Chemistry and AP Chemistry last year - the AP Chem teacher went on maternity leave and instead of the outside sub teaching AP Chem, a different teacher in the department taught AP Chem for 12 weeks and the sub taught Regular Chemistry that period.)
My daughter is really good at Math, but I feel like sheâs going to get a potentially shaky foundation in this course because of this sub. Iâm sure thereâs something they could do - itâs a four HS school district, so BC Calc is taught at the other three schools - maybe they could skype in if itâs the same class period; or just record one of those classes daily and allow Dâs class to watch the tapes as a supplement to their classroom experience. Anything to help them out.
Itâs just a tough situation when you are not there to see whatâs happening and you want your child (and her friends) to develop the ability to advocate for herself.
Not really looking for advice, just kind of complaining/ranting.
@3kids2dogs , that really sticks. BC is so important for higher math. Have you heard of âProfessor Leonardâ on YouTube? I lurk on the Reddit sub forum for engineering students and they say he is one they owe their degrees too. He comes very highly recommended for his teaching of calc 1, 2 and 3.
@3kids2dogs I feel for your daughter. My D20âs Calc BC teacher was out from end of first semester through mid March. It was PAINFUL! She did her very best to leave detailed plans for the sub, but it was just awful tbh.
Sorry to read that about the BC teacher. My son took AP Physics 1 in 9th and the teacher went on maternity leave in early March. She basically checked-out though around Christmas break but tried to stay on as long as she could. She was worthless and he had to use lots of youtube tutorials. He still pulled a 5 on the exam (the A was an easy one as they did very little in class) but he was very uncertain about it until the scores were posted. Good luck!!
@JanieWalker I donât homeschool but based on what I have heard from parents that do, those standardized tests as independent validation seem pretty important for admissions - AP exams, SAT subject tests, dual enrollment courses, etc. It seems like the two of you are already on top of this. Having gotten one kid through the college process, I am firmly convinced that there are many good fit schools for every applicant and Iâm confident that your daughter will have great choices in 2021.
Anyone elseâs kid have a 5th section on the SAT today? I googled it and seems to be unclear if counted or not. D opens it is because she felt like she killed it so that probably means it doesnât! Lol
@NJWrestlingmom Yes, my D had the 5th section too. I read on Reddit that everyone not doing the essay would have the exact same experimental section. It does NOT count.
My daughter took the SAT with Essay today and had a 5th section also - she had a third math section. She didnât get out until 1:40PM! Kidâs exhausted. Now we wait until September 9th for the scoresâŠ