By Daniel Yordy
A young man wants a computer. To buy him a computer is not in the family budget. But there is money for his homeschooling needs. You have two choices. Buy the workbooks and unit studies and make him do what he has always done, or try something real.
Put in front of your son the chance to build his own computer instead of the workbooks and unit studies. Make a deal with him. Building his own computer requires learning about computers and electronics. He has to keep accounts of all money spent. He has to draw plans. He has to follow the advice of a computer expert who will make sure he is on the right track.
But in return, he starts by taking a pile of old computers all apart; he will work with a really cool electronics circuit kit to learn the principles of electronic circuitry; and he will end up with his own working computer when he’s done.
Then slip in the added requirement of reading books and articles on how to put a computer together using inexpensive and used parts and the big one, which is, “Hey son, you want to build a computer? You have to write about your experience, two reports and two articles. Is it a deal?” More than that, he will have to learn a bit about programming and installing an operating system.
I don’t know why a 13 year old couldn’t repair his aunt’s computer from what he has learned and pocket some spending money for his labor, do you?
The difference is motive. Textbooks are the worst books ever written. Textbook workbooks are even worse, if that is possible. What motive, essential and real, is there for a young person, boy or girl, in studying a textbook about computers and filling in a workbook to “prove his knowledge”?
Building his own computer puts his learning into an entirely different sphere. One pile of old computers, one set of tools, the directive to “take them all apart,” and everything else is forgotten.
A workbook administers learning like an IV, painfully and passively, with a dullness cast over everything. The chance to build one’s own computer takes learning back to reality, to health. Learning is now something your son reaches for himself, sorting through a pile of stuff, some useful, some not. Learning is finding what makes this grand thing work for me, putting the pieces together, determining why and how!
One problem with a workbook is that nothing is out of place. There is nothing that should not be there. How unreal is that? Real learning is pulling what works out of a chaotic bin of things that might work, but don’t, and fitting it all into a pattern that makes sense to the learner.
Then the lights turn on in his eyes and in his heart.
Fifty years from now he will remember every part of building his own computer and he will still be applying the lessons he learned to the practical problems of his work. But the workbook he did last year? Be honest. He will not ever find a use for the answers to those questions he had forgotten by the next day.
Building a Computer Project Guide Resource Page: http://www.yguide.org/Tech/BuildingAComputer.html
Daniel Yordy is the director of YGuide Academy, an Internet school serving the active-learning needs of families with students in 7th through 12th grades.
For more on project-led learning, visit us at http://www.YguideAcademy.com/ProjectLedLearning.html. We help you develop project ideas into meaningful learning experiences.
Copyright 2009 by YGuide Publishing, Inc.. Freely use without changes, including links.
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