Homeschool World Forum

Scott,

I did a quick review of your website and will post the following comments and request that we discuss collaboration.

First, it is great that you are working to providing a free website. Over the past 10 years, I have been developing free materials, first in Excel for local use and then converting the information to a website for greater use and distribution.

As noted in my profile, I am president of a nonprofit group, Discovery Learning Program at www.DiscoveryLearningProgram.org.

My FREE reading website is www.MyBreakfastReadingProgram.com.

Comments and Thoughts:

1. From my perspective, there is to much talking for each page. Particularly for adults, they have probably heard this many times. If you move forward, I suggest you develop an instructional section covering each key idea for self pacing instruction or working with a mentor. Then keep the printed lessons more targeted and specific in the interactions.

I also need to build this type of information for my site - an area of possible collaboration?

2. It is good to show the synthetic approach when clicking on each word, but I believe you need to have an option to turn it off and also just present the word by itself. The idea here is to demonstrate the sound units, but eventually, the student needs to read the text with fluency. That is, the goal is to have the student read each word in less than 2 seconds. Through the synthetic phonics training, the skills are developed to attack unknown words. You need to provide the opportunity for the student to practice the same material for fluency.

3. I really like the response time of your site. I had originally built in actual recording similar to yours, but the response time was very slow. At first, I thought you were using Flash, but I don't see any "Loading" messages. I'd be interested in how you are programming this. To resolve the response time, I am relying more on Text to Speech tools.

As you review my site, you will see I have a Build Your Own section. The Text to Speech tools allows the student/mentor to create materials of their own interest.

4. I'm not really big on nonsense words. Here is my rationale. If a student cannot decode a word within 3 seconds, it is in fact a nonsense word from a skill perspective. In addition, if the word is not in their speaking vocabulary, then it REALLY is a nonsense word. As part of my program, I have built in the ability to build the vocabulary by using animated pictures, sentences in context and morphology (run, ran, running, runner). I'm still building this out, so again, some possible collaboration. In order to build fluency, the student must also be able to tie meaning to the words, so that "it sticks" after several exposures to the word.

Collaboration: Yes, I agree that you could spend a lot of time, especially if you only have 20% completed and your goal is only 1st grade reading level. Let's talk offline about how we could collaborate. You appear to have strong technical skills and a burning passion to help others read.

I was a struggling reader. I was also a Special Education teacher working with high school mentally handicapped and elementary students with learning disabilities in the 1970's. I left teaching and worked in the Systems Department at a Fortune 30 company for 27 years. I retired a little over two years ago to focus on the website development.

Again, I commend your interest and effort. Let me know offline if you would like to discuss. I can also set up a DimDim collaborative session so we can share computer screens as we talk.

My email address is: MyBreakfastReadingProgram@msn.com