Fall is here, leaves are brownish because we need to water a little more but our home is full of kits and online lessons to do!  I am very excited and even though I find the work needed by Learning Coaches to be intensive and not yet to the point of complete independent learner, I believe that with time and hard work, independence as well as interdependence soon will bloom.

The staff at OVS has been helpful and added a wonderful new tool to help us and our students be organized.  I have been wanting for a while to get a porfolio organized but often felt overwhelmed with possible choices, with how and most of all with time.  Time is a big factor in a homeschooling family’s day, as with any other family and especially for myself personally as an introvert I need frequent renewings to stay present, patient and able to connect to the needs of my other family members as well.  I still need to cook, clean, help with meals, take care of my body, my heart, my soul, encourage the children, spend just relationship time and manage the homeschooling.  Between teaching for the first time at the Omaha Homeschool Center and beginning this Omaha Virtual School, the fall and getting everything done without crazy stress has been an important goal.  Grace for myself and to others has been an important point to practice and I am so thankful for practical tools as well that enables me to stay focused on the bigger picture: of mastery, of overall growth and of staying connected in healthy ways emotionally to all of my family.

One tool I am just beginning to learn and am already thankful for it’s learning applications and staying organized is One Note 2016.

A recent tutorial from OVS staff focused on the following learning tools:

immersive text, dictation, copying text, inserting scanned creations/learning assessments

Especially since my son struggles to write and in his case without using too much time, I love the fact that with the copying and inserting history text into his One Note that it cuts down on the hand writing time he requires.

To access these tools you need to first check and see if the tab “Learning Tools” is at  the top, if so you may start experimenting with them, if not you will need to go to One Note 2016 website, https://www.onenote.com/learningtools, and scroll down and select the download.  Once you have downloaded the tools, you should see the “Learning Tools” tab across the top.

Next, go to one of your student’s courses, find an online piece of text, copy and paste it into one note if it is  a small selection onto a new page in their notebook.  If it is an entire document, stay in One Note, go up to the “insert” , hover, and a drop down menu will show you a couple of choices.  Click on “File Printout”, browse and select the document you wish and wait patiently for a few minutes, after a few minutes the entire document will be sitting in One Note.

Then, if you want your students to listen to a longer text to be able to answer questions or if you just want to encourage their reading fluency, go to learning tools  and select immersive text

A screen looking like this will show up with the text big and a play arrow ready to play:

Once it starts playing, each word is highlighted as read making it easier for visual learners and for those needing help focusing

The tool even allows you to pick a different voice or change the speed

In addition to that great tool, I am also very very thankful for another tool to help my son with telling his stories and demonstrating his learning without the slowing of his thoughts to writing by hand: the dictation tool!

Once this is selected, students can speak clearly towards the computer and it types for them as close as it is hearing. Especially since my son is hard of hearing, I love that it requires him to speak very specifically and carefully punching the sounds out so that the computer hears him correctly.  I envision this not only as a tool to encourage creative writing, telling stories,  narration but a great way of assessing true deeper learning, not just a retelling of facts.

And since it is in One Note, everything will and can stay in one portfolio, one place and is easily sent on to teachers, we stay environmentally friendly and can be shared or collaborated with in a easy way.

I love that Omaha Virtual School staff are so flexible that assessments can be taken by audio recording or video recording or dictation or insertion of a created project that has been scanned in and added to One Note.

After that great tutorial on One Note, then we had a great session with other Learning Coaches and a consultant getting ideas, questions and helpful hints on how to maximize the time.  One idea is to use both on and off line portfolios which not only allow us to demonstrate our student’s learning to OVS but also give us as families a way to build up to the long term for later graduation.

One parent shared that in order to help with time, she chooses the night before a literature lesson to make the children’s bed time story  the same story the literature lesson is built around.

Another Learning Coach shared how helpful it was to always designate the weekend as project day, especially for science or history, and even if the “to be done project” wasn’t done as the same day as the lesson that when lesson was later done, she could remind the kids of “remember when we made this?”  and the learning still happened.  I love this because it not only makes a great memory but the other spouse or family members can get involved and the whole family can have fun with it!

Another time saver is that if you take a look at the lesson objectives and think it is likely your child knows them, you can skip to the lesson assessment and if master is attained then you can skip that lesson.  You can do the same with a whole unit before you start if you have a good idea your student already knows it which allows you to start where they really need to be starting.  Just be sure to communicate that the lesson was skipped to your OVS teacher so that they can mark it complete on their end.

One realization from our session is that while K-5 go through the whole year with learning goals, and since 6-8 are on a semester based that 6-8 students are being encouraged to stay on pace a little more than k-5.  I am grateful that after talking to both liason to OVS and Wendy, that I know we are doing our best and I fully am confident we will only continue to do more and get on pace before the year’s end.  I firmly believe in getting mastery in being patient and as he and I get used to what’s expected of lessons out of us, how long they actually take us and what kind of time he either does or doesn’t need me for, I am sure that it will all work out.

How to return materials was another question that came up and here’s how to get to that information:

Select “my info” from the home page of your K12 account

Then select “My orders” from the left hand purple bar

Then select one of your order, for this example I selected Literature

Notice there is a symbolic icons representing whether information needs to be sent back, and if there is additional link,click on that to see more of the complete materials list and just send back the ones with the appropriate symbol

So even though the dishes may be piling up a little, and we really need to dig into the science, I am excited for how One Note can bring a little harmony, order and yet fun fun learning into our lives as we continue to navigate this exciting new homeschooling adventure!