Advanced Advantage

A powerful new feature is now available in HomeSchool Advantage. This feature allows students to declare how well they know a fact. The students' self evaluation directly alters their review schedules.

Student now have dramatically more control over their studies in HomeSchool Advantage. They can go much faster and reduce unnecessary repetition. This feature is especially valuable when students already know a large number of the facts in a new course, but they do not want to delete the facts, they just want to review them more sparingly.

How does it work? When a student answers a question correctly, a set of blue boxes appears showing how well the student knows the fact. The student has the opportunity to change this evaluation.

The better a student knows a fact, the more filled blue boxes. The more filled blue boxes, the more time will pass before the student is asked a question about that fact again. This time can be as long as a year if the student presses "I will Never Forget It."

Students can also decrease the rating of how well they know a fact. A student can set their level to zero by pressing "I Don't Know It At All." In this case, the student will be asked to review this fact again in one day.

Students should be careful when telling HomeSchool Advantage they know a fact very well, we take it very seriously. The highest levels should only be selected when the student know a fact exceptionally well and doesn't need to review it for over a year!

Let us know if you have any questions. And please, tell us what your think!

What do the Stripes on the US Flag Represent?

Yesterday, I received the following email,
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To Whom It May Concern:
I love your program so far - I just had a question/comment. In the course about "Flag Facts," it says that the 13 stripes stand for the original 13 states but I believe it should be the original 13 colonies. Am I correct?
Thank you so much for this wonderful tool!

-TV
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So, what do the stripes on the US flag represent?

HomeSchool Advantage used as our source for the US flag questions, the preparation material created by the US Department of Homeland Security for students who were taking the Naturalization Test, which gave our answer:
http://www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/Flashcard_questions.pdf.

However, a new version of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services exam gives TV's answer:
http://bit.ly/aDGsO8

Clearly, this is going to be a bit more difficult. To defend our answer, the flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner had 15 Stripes!
http://americanhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner

They added stripes when we added the states Kentucky and Vermont. Clearly, they were originally thinking that the stripes represented States. Although, for the Star Spangled Banner Flag, Tennessee, Ohio, and Louisiana are missing. Technically, they were states by the time of the assault on Fort McHenry in 1814.

Would the founders say the stripes represented the colonies? Did the original states intend to create a flag that reminded them of their time of colonial servitude or of their independent statehood! I, for one, say independent statehood.

However, the early Republic clearly had a problem. It is one thing to add a star to the flag every time a new state is added to the Union, and another to add a stripe. So they stopped adding stripes at 15. After the war of 1812 an Act of Congress created the basic structure of our current flag. Perhaps to not provide the British so large of a target in any future engagements. I looked up that act to see if it would say what the stripes were to represent, even HomeSchool Advantage is willing to defer to a definition that was an Act of Congress.

An Act to Establish a Flag of the United States

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=003/llsl003.db&recNum=0456

Unfortunately for us, the Act is silent on the matter of what the 13 stripes actually represent. So, it is left to interpretation.

Does anyone know of an original source document from a founder saying the stripes represent the colonies or the 13 states?

What do you believe the answer to the question should be?

Can you support your answer with documented evidence? (No, wikipedia will not count in this case).

The beauty of HomeSchool Advantage is that we can leverage our highly educated community to improve both our questions and our answers! We want to hear from you!!!

Hurried Memorization is a Hopeless Approach for Retaining Information

The title of this post is my favorite line from this interesting article about memorization and cramming:

At HomeSchool Advantage we have been saying for years that cramming (hurried memorization) is a terrible way to learn. We need a better way, and that way is Spaced Repetition. We used spaced repetition to:

• Ensure the students retain and recall information over the long term
• Save time and energy
• Engage the student without boring the student

Of course, we didn't make this up, we have been following for years and years active research in human cognition. We have incorporated this research into HomeSchoolAdvantage to help you supplement your homeschool curriculum and make your homeschool as effective as possible.

Visit HomeSchool Advantage today and try a 30 Day Free Trial. See what spaced repetition and many other advanced study techniques can do for you!

The Basics

The Basics are fundamental concepts and vocabulary in a subject that are referenced frequently in the continued study of that subject.

If a student does not know the basics then they may not really understand the meaning of more advanced concepts they are learning. If a student knows that Sudan is in the Northern Hemisphere but does not know the definition of the Northern Hemisphere then their knowledge is incomplete.

Many students fail to grasp a subject because they do not fully know the basics.

There are a lot of basics and most of us are missing thousands of them in each and every subject. HomeSchoolAdvantage was created to change that!

We have added two new basic courses today. The two new courses are:

110 - Earth Basics
Definitions of the Equator, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, and more!

450 - Periodic Table Basics
Definitions of Groups, Periods, and Atomic Number, and more!

We will continue to add more basics at each subject level.

Of course, if an older student is taking a 100 level basics course the student may already know many of them quite well. When this is the case, the student should simply delete the facts they already know. For example, if a student already knows that the convention for most maps is to put North at the top of the map the the student should delete that basics fact when it is encountered.

Deleting the 100 level basic fact a student already knows is preferable to skipping the 100 level basics entirely, because it is almost guaranteed that even advanced students will discover some lower level basics that they never learned or that they did not retain and cannot recall.

HomeSchool Advantage makes it possible to retain and recall it all.

-Tom

New Course: US Measures

How many feet in a mile? In a furlong?
How many cups in a gallon?
How many teaspoons in a tablespoon?
How many ounces in a pound?
How many pounds in a ton?

These are now almost uniquely United States questions as most of the rest of the world uses metric units of measure. Our new course introduces 19 common facts about US Units of Measure.

Subject: Science
Level: 200
Course Name: 210 - US Measures

It is listed as a 200 level course instead of a 100 level course mainly because of its use of larger numbers.

Of course, the course is free to members!

New Subject: Spanish

One of the most important tasks when mastering a new language is to learn vocabulary in that language. HomeSchoolAdvantage now helps you learn, retain, and recall Spanish vocabulary. We've added 300 Spanish words in a new Spanish subject. Because of our unique system, you can now learn, retain and recall the vocabulary for years to come!

This beats other systems hands down, where you learn new vocabulary and then promptly forget it!

We are a powerful supplement to your existing Spanish training.

There are new courses in the 100, 200, and 300 level and more will be added over the coming weeks. A second language is an advantage you should have. We provide it here to you at HomeSchoolAdvantage.

As always, these new courses are Free to Members.

Seas of the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean Sea is central to European, Middle East, and North Africian history.

Perhaps the names of gulfs, smaller seas, and straits in the Mediterranean might be worth learning? Knowing these names will certainly make reading other history a lot more interesting.

Our new course, 525 - Mediterranean Seas, contains 17 different names for Seas, Gulfs, and Straits in the Mediterranean. Of course, this new course is Free to Members.