Using The Public Domain

The public domain is an amazing resource for homeschooler, teachers and parents.  There are so many sites out there organizing the public domain through electronic book formats, audio recordings, videos etc.  All these sites are also free - supported through grants and donations.

Here are a few that I have found:

ManyBooks.net
World Wide School
Open Culture
Book Should Be Free
Internet Archive
International Children's Digital Library
LibriVox: acoustical liberation of books in the public domain

An Amazing Archive Site...

Okay, I'll be honest I love free.  I just found this Internet Archive site that I've only just beginning to explore, but I had to share it here because I think it could be great for homeschooling.

In trying to think the best way to explain it I thought it best to just let them do it from their about page: Link to it directly here:

About the Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities. 

Why the Archive is Building an 'Internet Library'

Libraries exist to preserve society's cultural artifacts and to provide access to them. If libraries are to continue to foster education and scholarship in this era of digital technology, it's essential for them to extend those functions into the digital world.

Many early movies were recycled to recover the silver in the film. The Library of Alexandria - an ancient center of learning containing a copy of every book in the world - was eventually burned to the ground. Even now, at the turn of the 21st century, no comprehensive archives of television or radio programs exist.

But without cultural artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. And paradoxically, with the explosion of the Internet, we live in what Danny Hillis has referred to as our "digital dark age."

The Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet - a new medium with major historical significance - and other "born-digital" materials from disappearing into the past. Collaborating with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, we are working to preserve a record for generations to come.

Open and free access to literature and other writings has long been considered essential to education and to the maintenance of an open society. Public and philanthropic enterprises have supported it through the ages.

The Internet Archive is opening its collections to researchers, historians, and scholars. The Archive has no vested interest in the discoveries of the users of its collections, nor is it a grant-making organization.

At present, the size of our Web collection is such that using it requires programming skills. However, we are hopeful about the development of tools and methods that will give the general public easy and meaningful access to our collective history. In addition to developing our own collections, we are working to promote the formation of other Internet libraries in the United States and elsewhere.

Find out

How to make a Monetary Donation to the Archvive

About our announcement and discussion lists on Internet libraries and movie archives

as well as our user forums

Grammar Rock Preposition

Grammar Rock Pronoun

Grammar Rock Interjection

Grammar Rock Nouns

Grammar Rock Verb

Grammar Rock Adjective

Grammar Rock Adverb

Schoolhouse Rock "Interjections!"

SchoolHouse Rock - Grammar The Tale Of Mr Morton

Conjunction Junction

School House Rock - A Noun is a Person, Place, or Thing (Grammar Rock)

I love these videos!  I'll post more all on You Tube.

 

neoK12

neoK12 tag line is:

Kids learn best by "seeing' the real world.

So, here's the best collection of FREE online educational

videos, lessons, quizzes, games and puzzles.

Found this video through this site. Many topics to choose from.

Imagine That - Ancient Ruins

Found this video on this website that gathers up free educational video that is out there on the internet. Great resource for teachers in school or at home. Cute video below about what an Ancient Ruin is. There are 20,000 videos in over 3,000 categories according to their website. Enjoy!

History through film

I found two fun websites I thought I would share with you all:

Have Fun with History    and  tV School House

American Sign Language - MY choices for teaching ASL!

Since, I am a Child of Deaf Adults (CODA) and hold a certification as an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter.  I thought you might be interested in my choice for teaching your children ASL.

For the elementary crowd keep it fun!

Signing Time - does just that.  It keeps it fun while teaching a lot of fundamental vocabulary.  Their website has a lot to offer.  See the links below.  They also have two series.  The first series focuses on vocabulary.  The second series focuses on putting it all together.

Signing Time Website
Sign of the Week

Search Amazon.com for signing time dvd set

For older children I recommend

ASL University - it is put out by a Deaf ASL teacher that has created this free website to learn ASL.  It is spot on and will give any student - young or old a great start in learning ASL.

The other part that you need to truly learn ASL is a community of Deaf people to use it!  You will never truly know the language until you can "read" a Deaf person signing to you!  This is the challenging part.