Free On-Line Interactive Learning

Sorry, this is just a screen shot, not a real video.

 Want to learn math?  Try Khan Academy.  Want to learn a new language?  Check out Duolingo.

Both of these sites are well-thought out, free and interactive, offering user-friendly courses that guide you (or your student) through learning new material at an individualized pace.

Khan Academy is a non-profit educational site that offers K-12 math all the way through Calculus; it even has a math level with basic counting, addition, and subtraction.  It probably works best for kids who already have the basics down, however.   The site includes video lessons, practice problems (with hints and answers) and mastery challenge tests, and allows students to earn points and badges as they work through various levels.  It can be used for supplementary help (when homework just doesn't make sense), review, or as the basis for a homeschool math curriculum.  Parents, teachers, or tutors can create an account and add their children in classes so that they can monitor their progress, or the students can work on their own either using their own account or just accessing the lessons as needed the website.

If the wedsite is used as the basis for a homeschool math course, I would recommend the student be provided with additional practice on paper, a variety of drills, as well as real-world math activities.  For example, a student learning his multiplication facts would likely need practice outside of the website, whether flashcards, games, songs, or whatever matched her learning style.  A student learning to measure would need actual hands-on tools-- rulers, measuring cups, and scales-- and real things to measure.  Learning about angles would require having an actual compass to measure actual angles.  Even the occasional pencil-and-paper worksheet (free to download from many sites) helps the brain process the material in a way that the computer screen can't always match.

Duolingo provides instruction in your choice of 16 different languages.  (Mostly European-- there is Russian, Turkish and even Esperanto, but sorry, no Chinese or Arabic at this point.) After creating an account, you can also download an app for your mobile device for lessons on-the-go.  You can start from the beginner level, or take a placement test to see where you should start.  Your progress is tracked through many different lessons.  You can set daily goals of 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes of daily practice.  As you progress through the lessons, you earn "lingots" to spend in the virtual store.  From the look of the progress chart on my screen, the lessons appear to cover the equivalent of a first-year course-- possibly two years at the high school level-- in a foreign language, at least as far as grammar is concerned.  I can't tell at this point how much vocabulary is involved.  Of course, if i were using the site as the basis for a homeschool foreign language course, I would supplement with additional reading, writing, listening and speaking opportunities.  Teacher's Discovery has a wealth of resources for the foreign language student, including beginning level readers, dvd's, music, games, etc.

I have just started using the Duolingo site myself, but it reminds me somewhat of Rosetta Stone in that it begins with pictures to identify.  Unlike RS, however, the lessons have you translating instead of learning by immersion.  For example, in the first few lessons of RS, you would hear the word in the target language along with a picture, and then later you would select the correct picture when you saw the word.  With Duolingo, I was asked to choose the word that meant "the woman," from several pictures labeled in the target language.  When I clicked on the correct photo, I heard the word.  Later, it asked me to translate the phrase and I typed in "the woman,"  then to label the picture, and I typed in the correct phrase in the target language. Obviously, this would not be the ideal program for someone who is a careless speller, but it was kind of fun.  And I like that the grammar is explicitly taught-- the lack of grammar is a common complaint with Rosetta Stone, or at least it was when I was using it years ago.  (Many people prefer RS precisely because it uses the immersion approach, which is the natural way that young children absorb language.  As an older learner, however, i like to know the grammar behind what i am learning so I can connect what I'm learning to what i already understand. Different strokes for different folks.)

So if you are looking for enrichment opportunities for you or your child, you might give these a try!  They are free and fun.