OStatic

Open Source Apps For Homeschoolers

Fellow OStatic blogger Mike Gunderloy wrote a great post at Web Worker Daily about his family's experience homeschooling and working from home. In it, he gives some terrific tips about finding a balance between having structure and staying flexible.

As a homeschooling mom who also works full-time from home, there are a number of open source tools I rely on every day to teach my kids and keep us all on task, while keeping myself productive and (relatively) stress-free.

My kids and I are dyed-in-the-wool space junkies so we've tried lots of different astronomy programs, but our current favorite is Celestia. It's a great way to simulate the night sky and travel through space checking out star clusters and constellations. There are many wonderful astronomy apps out there but this one suits my children well and is easy for them to navigate.

Computers won't be going away anytime soon so I think it's important my children learn to type efficiently rather than hunt and peck their way around the keyboard. Tux Type is a great little app for them to learn touch-typing, and it's aimed at a variety of age and skill levels.

Since my guys spend time on the Internet, I want to know that they're as safe as possible. In addition to other safety precautions, Glubble is a great Firefox add-on that keeps kids from stumbling onto Web sites they shouldn't. Like other child-oriented browser plugins, you can preset which sites are all right to visit. Glubble also has a neat extra feature that will alert you instantly via your open Firefox browser window when your child tries to visit a site that's not on the pre-approved list. Then you can allow or deny permission right away.

Juggling my schedule and that of three young learners -- plus all their extra-cirricular activities -- isn't easy. I need to be able to look at a calendar and tell who needs to do what (and who needs to be where) at a glance. To stay organized I use Chandler, an app so feature-rich that I don't even use it to it's fullest capability. I love the way it color codes whatever I throw at for easy sorting and retrieval. It also keeps a running to-do list for me, and it's a snap to create new events, messages, and tasks. I don't currently use Chandler's collaboration feature, but I may next year as my oldest son starts working more independently (although with recent departure of the project's founder, Chandler may not even be worth using by next year unless someone else picks it up soon).

These are just a few of the open source apps I use to manage my work-at-home / homeschooling life, but there are hundreds more out there I've yet to try. What are some of your favorite productivity and education apps?

• homeschooling
• chandler
• astronomy
• stellarium
• celestia
• kstars
• glubble
• tuxtype

by on Mar. 17, 2008

Thanks for the tips on Chandler. I was looking for a more visual way to keep my calendar.

0 Votes

by Mimi Yin on Apr. 15, 2008

Hi Lisa,

I'm the product designer on the Chandler Project. It's great to hear about people who are really making use of Chandler! The project is very much alive and kicking. We've been releasing monthly. The last release (0.7.5) was a significant one. Try it out if you haven't already.

We're also starting a series on the blog called "How I Use Chandler". Sheila (our product manager) and I have kicked it off with a couple of posts. We're looking to invite people from the user community to contribute posts as well. If you're interested, a post about how you're using Chandler would be a great way to help us spread the word.

I wrote a post on sharing a Home collection with my husband. Check it out, perhaps it will give you ideas about how you could take advantage of Chandler's sharing capabilities.

As always, it's great to hear from users. Send us email at chandler-users@osafoundation.org if you have any questions or just want to give feedback.

Best,

Mimi

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