My online storage system has recently allowed for the sharing of files publicly, so I’m testing it out with an electronic copy of the CD that was handed out at the KWCHEA conference earlier this year. You can now download one big zip file at the following link:
Download of KWCHEA CD package

The file will have to be unzipped or decompressed using any standard program. Then you should see 6 folders which all contain a bunch of pdf files:

- Articles Written by Sarah
- Ontario Ministry of Education High School Resources
- Ontario University Admission Policies 2010 (all were updated as of spring 2010 for admission in fall 2010)
- Open Universities (information about Canada’s open universities available to Ontario Students)
- OUAC e-info information on all universities and programs (Ontario institutions)
- Standardized Tests for University Admission (including SAT, AP, CLEP and ACT)

Let me reiterate: this is not leisure reading. It’s boring. It’s not particularly pretty. But, if you are applying to university in Ontario as a homeschooler without a traditional high school diploma, I can’t think of any information you need (before you get to the point of speaking with individual universities) that’s not included here.

I also want to be perfectly clear: everything except the articles written by me is freely available online. I’m not claiming to have authored this material; I only compiled it because frankly, some of it is pretty darn difficult to find on your own. You’d be amazed at some of the navigation paths, file names and various educational jargon that industry professionals think makes sense. There’s some information here that even I had to pull my hair out to find online, so my goal was simply to put it all in one place for those who have neither the time nor the inclination to track down the information for themselves.

As this information is available freely online, there is no copyright infringement by providing it to you. Some of what’s included are simply screen shots from websites, and in that case, it’s enough to provide you the basics of what you need to know, but also provides you with the website address and how to get there yourself to get more information if you need more than the basics. And, since this information is freely available online, I have not sold nor are you allowed to sell the contents of this file. I was not financially compensated from KWCHEA in any way for this project. (They offered to reimburse me for my time, but I insisted that any money they had should go towards creating as many CDs as possible for free distribution.)

By downloading this file, you acknowledge that this file may not be sold and agree not to sell this file. It simply hasn’t been created in such a way to make that legal, as it was never my intent to receive compensation for this work. But, I hope you’ll share it freely.

I believe the contents are extremely accurate, but of course, mistakes happen. Please do let me know either by email or in a comment below if you find an error. Also feel free to let me know how you’re using the information, or if there’s anything I haven’t included that you think would be helpful, and I can consider that for version 2.0.

Depending on your browser, the link above may initiate a download automatically, so be prepared for that. The file is safe to download, but if you experience any problems please do let me know and I’ll take immediate action.

College & University Preparation Program

Are you a blind or visually impaired student planning to attend college or university?

• Wondering how you will meet the challenges?
• Want to increase your chances of success?
• Interested in meeting other blind or visually impaired students?

CNIB’S COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY PREPARATION PROGRAM IS HERE TO HELP YOU!

CUPP is an intensive 5 day program designed to provide blind and visually impaired students with the skills and knowledge they need for a successful transition to college or university.

Classes focus on three areas crucial to your success: academic skills (writing essays, notes, tests & exams); self management skills (effective communication, stress management, money management); and technological aids. Lectures are combined with tutorials and fieldtrips. All classes are taught by credentialed professionals.

Date: July 7th – July 11th.

Location: CNIB, 1929 Bayview Ave, Toronto

For information contact Joeita Gupta at 416 486-2500 ext 8284 or email at joeita.gupta@cnib.ca

But, I do still very much enjoy online communities, and I had this crazy idea: since I’m usually in email contact with a lot of universities about their policies, what if I could bring the admissions people into the discussion?

So, I did a very brave (stupid?) thing. I emailed them all. I told them about the community I was forming. I gave them carte blanche to go ahead and advertise the heck out of their schools and programs. What do I care? They should *want* to advertise to you, to attract this segment of the population. In exchange for providing first-hand answers from the schools themselves, I thought the trade-off was a no brainer.

Now of course, I had to email them with the idea — because none of you were there yet. So, admittedly, I led them to the board, but there was not much for them to do. I told them that I was going to give them first crack at the board, and they could post a welcome message from their school, links to their site . . . whatever they wanted. And, that over the coming weeks, I would then mention the site here and at the upcoming Ontario conferences.

A couple of schools wrote me back and said they thought it was a great idea. Some have indicated that welcome posts will be forthcoming. One school (and if you want to know who, you’ll just have to visit and find out for yourself!) has posted a welcome message already. I can tell by the activity log that probably about 8 universities have visited the message board, but not posted.

I’m going to assume that some universities need to see people there first before they’ll know how to get involved, so I now unleash you upon them. Visit the site and ask your questions, and see who comes! There are specific folders for each school so that information can be easily tracked. If a school is slow to respond, then I’ll gently inform them that they have questions waiting.

And, perhaps it would be a nice gesture to acknowledge the school who was first to post, even before any of you guys showed up, by posting in that area, too.

These message board things are a tricky business. I know there’s nothing sadder than a low-activity board, but not only did I want a place where people could compile their information and experiences by school, I wanted to get the schools in on it, too. I think we can do that, if you make it worth their while by posting.

Not sure what to post? Feel free to introduce yourself in the general area. But also, remember that the schools probably aren’t going to know what to post either. Why not ask them something that’s not on their website — how many homeschoolers did you admit last year? How far in advance should a homeschooler contact your university? What’s usually the most difficult part about dealing with a homeschooler’s application? What can we do to make the application process smoother?

Statistics tell us that over 90% of people only visit boards and never post. But, I’m asking you to bite the bullet and share *something.* It can be a new question or in response to something already written. (I’m putting shorter “fact sheets” up there that aren’t meant to be comprehensive, but basic starter guides for different topics.) It can be something you’ve learned, or an experience you’ve had in the university prep/admission process. If you’ve looked into university admissions at all, you have something valuable to share with others just starting out.

So there you have it. This board might suffer the same miserable fate as most out there, but I hope that, when you go looking for info about Ontario universities, you’ll go there. Either ask your question directly to one of the university reps or post what you have found in other sources. Join us here:

http://messageboard.rainsberger.ca/index/

What can I say? That would make me happy.

So, I’ll leave you with something that should keep you and your kids entertained for about a week or so.

The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives has a few very cool interactive algebra tools online.

My personal favourite is the equation solver, which is done by first setting up your equation by creating a “balanced scale” (I often wonder, do kids today even know what those kinds of scales are anymore, or have they become an anachronism?) and then performing mathematical operations to both sides to discover the missing value for x. Of all the interactive websites I’ve seen to visually represent the process of solving equations, this one stands out as my favourite. (If you have others you’d like to share, simply leave a link in the comment field below.)

You can choose the option to use negatives or simply work with positive numbers (two different links) so even if your child doesn’t yet have experience with negative numbers, you can let him/her loose on the site and see whether he/she is ready for this tool.

Also, be sure to check out “Stick or Switch” which is “The Monty Hall Problem” and an excellent introduction to simulations.

One caveat: I was thoroughly unimpressed with the “Function Machine” and I hesitate to recommend it simply because at no point does it ever reveal what the function in use actually was.  And, the two times I tried it, the function machine was using (only because I know how to figure out the function myself) first a quadratic function and then secondly an exponential function — not exactly easy for your child to discover on their own.  (The patterns, yes.  The actual functions, no.) So, use this as a number pattern recognition game perhaps, but unfortunately it will not help teach “functions.”  (How can one learn about functions if you never see the function in use by the machine?)

So, be sure to visit the Algebra equation solver, either with negatives or without negatives, the “Let’s Make a Deal” simulation, and whatever other puzzles from the list you find interesting.  I’ll see you in early February!

Above and beyond the dollars provided by universities, there is substantial additional scholarship money available for student-athletes who pursue their education in Canada from other sources such as Sport Canada, Swimming Canada, Canada Basketball, the Canadian Hockey League and many other organizations who recognize the value of staying in Canada for education and athletics.

So, before assuming that the only way to fund your athletic child’s post-secondary education is to fly south of the border, check out this list of Ontario CIS schools with contact info, where you can also find a comprehensive list of all CIS schools in Canada sorted alphabetically, by region or by sport.

The College Board has compiled a collection of Canadian AP policies from universities accepting AP courses for university credit. Something to keep in mind during your university admissions planning.

So stay inside, heat up some hot chocolate, and browse the sites!

Don’t want to go it alone? Homeschool co-ops are a great option to consider. In a co-op, group activities, lessons and classes can be formed with different parents contributing their different skills to provide a comprehensive education to a group of students.

What’s the difference between this and school? Choice. You can choose to leave the group if it doesn’t work for you. You can pick and choose which “classes” or activities to join, and aren’t forced to sign up for “all or nothing.” The co-op can hire a specialty teacher, such as a French teacher, on a temporary or contract basis. If it doesn’t work out, it’s easy to make a change.

From this week’s Washington Times:

Teach your children well – - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper (Printer Friendly/Text Only Version):

Ann Cameron Siegal said she was “nervous” to continue home-schooling her daughter past the eighth grade until she learned about such supplemental resources as co-ops, online or correspondence courses and community college classes.

In the past five years, more gyms, museums, public libraries and other community fixtures have begun to cater to the growing home-school contingent by offering afternoon programs and classes, said Mrs. Siegal, of Alexandria, who has home-schooled her 16-year-old daughter for nine years.

“I think people are realizing more the opportunities that are out there in their communities,” she said. “It’s out there now, where it wasn’t a number of years ago.”

And, just in case you missed this statistic when it first came out:

According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, 52 percent of colleges in 2000 had a policy governing how to evaluate home-schooled applicants. By 2004, that number had risen to 83 percent.

Want to find or start a homeschool coop but don’t know how to get started? Contact your local O.F.T.P. representative, your local homeschool support group or post a comment here and find others who want to do the same.

Feel free to list your co-op here if you’re looking for new members or searching for someone with a particular talent to educate your group.

If you go looking for advice on how to prepare yourself for university, or how to be successful once you’re there, you’ll find no shortage of advice based on the premises that university is:

• difficult (or, a favourite phrase that Joe and I have adopted from a sushi take-out menu, “raw and challenging”)
• unlike anything you’ve experienced before
• requiring intense concentration, dedication and work ethic

The truth is though, that this isn’t the universal first-year experience. Some kids enter university extremely well-prepared academically with not only adequate study skills but also with a healthy curiosity and a solid knowledge-base. Gifted students and/or home schoolers who have studied particular subjects in depth may even find themselves somewhat disappointed at the general nature of introductory courses. They may similarly find themselves more than a little disenchanted by the interest level of not only their fellow classmates but also of the professors who have been given the “baby” classes. There aren’t many books out there about how to cope when university isn’t challenging enough for you.

It would be erroneous to assume that the problems these students face in high school magically disappear once they cross the threshold of a university campus. For some, they do. For others, there can be a profound disappointment when they realize that university life holds fewer changes from high school than they had expected.

Personally, I can only recall one “challenging” course in my five years at Glendon. For me, challenging meant that I had to sit with a text book for hours on end trying to make sense of it. I can’t recall a course that had too much reading for me to be comfortable with (including a women’s literature course in a 4 week summer session that included novels, plays, poems, essays and short stories), nor did I ever have so many assignments that I found it difficult to manage or meet deadlines.

Fortunately for my academic career, though, I wasn’t generally resentful or disillusioned. I took advantage of the opportunity to get involved socially and politically on campus. I didn’t skip any classes, although I easily could have gotten away with it academically, until my last year when I was extremely involved in extra-curricular activities. Even though my 100 person first year Intro to Psychology course had dwindled to more like 40 people during lectures, I continued to attend faithfully. I continued to attend even though:

• I did the lecture’s reading and made study notes before the lecture
• the lectures were overviews straight from the textbook
• the notes I had already made could have been the lecture

When people asked why, I told them that I liked the subject and I thought the repetition would be good for the learning process. It didn’t bother me that I had read it all before. In fact, it meant that instead of scrambling to take notes during the lecture, I could simply add annotations to the notes I already had and leave most of my brain free for listening. We like hearing the same stories over and over again, watching the same movies, listening to the same songs. . . I happened at the time to be fascinated by introductory psychology and I didn’t think this was any different. Besides, there might be something I’d miss if I didn’t go. There rarely was, but occasionally there were some gems to be had, like my professor slapping himself silly on the back of the head until he “saw stars” to demonstrate where the occipital lobe is, and how you can see things that aren’t really there when these neurons are adequately stimulated. (He proposed that this could explain “seeing ghosts” for example.) This I remember clearly 15 years later, and it wasn’t in the textbook.

It’s taken a while for this post to establish the link between university students and sales people, but here it finally is: little did I know that my tolerance for repetition in the hopes of finding just one new bit of information was an essential quality of successful salespeople. And as it turns out, being able to selectively tune in and tune out at will is just a handy self-improvement skill to have, whether you’re learning for credit, for professional advancement, or for interest.

Reg Braithwaite wrote about this on his website in response to people (computer programmers specifically) engaging in harsh criticism of each other’s ideas in an online discussion, but the point he makes has far greater implications than simply promoting tolerance. After reading his message, I think you’d be hard pressed not to look at education and training (especially the type that would normally make your eyes glaze over with boredom) in a new light.

The article is called What I’ve Learned From Sales, Part III: How to use a blunt instrument to sharpen your saw and isn’t entirely G-Rated, so I’m going to quote here more than I normally would of someone else’s post. Please don’t follow the link if a four-letter word is going to make you spit your morning coffee at the computer screen. The observation and analysis is brilliant, and I hope he doesn’t mind that I share a few paragraphs in their entirety with you here so that I can share the wisdom:

In sales, there is a very high, observable, and measurable correlation between attending sales training seminars and sales volume. One explanation for this is that the kind of people who take time off of selling to sharpen their own saw are the kind of people to be top salespeople.

The other possibility is that there is something abut the seminars themselves that make salespeople better. I have asked salespeople about it, and generally I get a variation on the exact same answer: If I can learn just one thing that improves my sales skills, the seminar will pay for itself.

Think about that. They go to an all day seminar, where they will probably hear twenty, thirty, or forty tips. They will probably sit through tip after tip thinking “Yawn, I knew that, tell me something new.” Or they hear something and think: “That is the worst suggestion I’ve ever heard.” But then, suddenly, they hear something new, and they profit from it.

In sales, you are used to making call after call, facing rejection after rejection, but you keep dialing because… the next one could be a winner. So the kind of person who can keep on dialing after rejection ought to be the kind of person who can sit through a seminar waiting to pounce on one new thing that can improve their income.

He goes on to point out that we non-salespeople often take a different approach to learning, or at the very least, others’ attempts to inform us. Here are some of the things we all do, to varying degrees and from time to time, instead of sticking it out waiting for that one idea that could be earth-shatteringly transformative:

• Feel annoyed that we are “wasting our time” with things we “already know”
• Hear one thing we disagree with, and as a result immediately discredit everything that person has to say
• Attempt to correct or argue with someone else to convince them of the error of their ways
• Make an overall judgment as to whether what we heard/read/saw as a whole was any good

Braithwaite recommends instead that computer programmers participate in online discussions with this mentality: most of what I hear won’t be new; a good portion of it I’ll completely disagree with; however, if I can find just one small thing that makes me a better programmer, the experience will have been worth it and I personally will profit from it.

I say, what a fantastic approach to learning! Think of what we open ourselves up to if we relax our natural tendencies for categorization and consistency and instead allow ourselves to learn from sources without embracing them in their entirety.

When we stop trying to evaluate our sources of information (books, websites, films, people) as “good” or “bad” we can turn the focus inwards on ourselves, and on how that information can be used for our own learning or self-improvement. This works equally well in a university lecture as it does in a training seminar, info session or online discussion.

This is a healthy attitude for all students, not just those wondering why they should attend a lecture to hear what they already know or those who feel their time is being wasted in class discussions with people stating the obvious. But, I think this idea can give real comfort to those who already feel “different” or “out of place” even in a university classroom. They don’t have to pass judgment on those around them; they simply recognize that good ideas can come at any place, at any time (even from bad ideas). And it’s not contradictory (or an embarrassment) to learn something from someone “not as smart” as they are, nor is it a betrayal of one’s principles to be enlightened by someone with a different religious, philosophical or political affiliation.

Did you know that direct mail campaigns (junk mail, envelopes filled with coupons etc.) are conducted with the knowledge that they have a 1% success rate in converting into purchases? Sales people understand that striking out comes with the territory. Ball players are considered star-caliber if they are successful at the plate a mere 30% of the time. Students, however, are indoctrinated with a much higher standard of success. The sooner they realize that “the real world” is all about the journey towards savouring the occasional sweet success, the easier it will be to relax the need for themselves and for others to conform to their expectations of perfection. And then, they just might learn something in places they never expected!

Saturday April 5, 2008 – KWCHEA Conference
1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. University Admissions for Homeschooled Applicants
3:00 – 4:15 p.m. Standardized Tests for University Admission

Saturday April 26, 2008 – OCHEC Convention
10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m. University Admissions for Homeschooled Applicants
12:45 p.m. – 1:45 p.m. Standardized Tests for University Admission

Saturday May 3, 2008 – Ontario Federation of Teaching Parents (OFTP) Conference
Tentative date – schedule not finalized

Due to my hectic travel schedule between now and the conferences, I’ve requested to only give the two admissions related seminars this year. I am planning a couple of new seminars, but I’d rather not be putting the final touches on them in Finland, right before the conference!

The University Admissions seminar will be more or less the same one I’ve given since 2005, just updated to keep pace with the changing times. What ends up being really valuable, I think, in these sessions is the Q &A. Every time I give this session, a question prompts me to add something else to the program for next time.

The Standardized Testing seminar was first given last year at KW and had all the buzz of the U.A. seminar when it was new. Since I know only about 30 or 40 of you have ever seen it, I highly recommend coming if you’ve already seen the U.A. seminar, but yet still want the comfort (and comedy!) of a signature Sarah performance. I don’t pretend to understand it, but I can tell you that people seem to leave my sessions in a good mood, relaxed and with much less fear of the whole university admissions process. If standardized tests such as the SAT Tests, ACT, and/or AP exams are in your future, I highly recommend trying to fit this into your schedule.

When details of the O.F.T.P. conference have been finalized, I’ll post the details. So far, all signs point to May 3, which would give us a great excuse to be back in Toronto for a Blue Jays home series over Joe’s birthday weekend! I have yet to confirm details of my speaking, but so far I think they want me.