Katie is going to high school in a few weeks, a 10th grader. The school is much larger than the one she attended last fall – approximately the same population as my own alma mater when I was there.
I, at least, will continue to write here, as I’ve been interested in homeschooling and education much longer than I’ve had a child at home officially being homeschooled. In fact, I first heard of homeschooling as a modern reality right after I graduated in the mid-1980s, and was immediately intrigued. I read everything I could find about it, and have kept up that connection since then.
Katie is all excited, of course. I’m excited for her. I fear she may be dampening that excitement down a little because she knows that I’ll miss her, but she shouldn’t. That’s just a normal part of being Mommy. Letting go is in the job description.Trying new things is in hers.
So anyway, I meant to post about those Online Writing Labs (OWLs) that many colleges have put online.
Their contents and quality vary widely from one college to the next. They’re intended to help students write their papers at whatever time they get around to doing them, wherever they happen to be. Good ones include online access to reference tools such as dictionaries, thesauruses, and grammar usage guides, a link to the school’s library, any formatting standards established by his school in particular, and sometimes more specific material depending on the type of student expected to be using the OWL.
Unfortunately, some schools have slapped a list of links up on a set and called it an OWL. I won’t be recommending any of those pitiful little things.
Yes, it’s perfectly fine for others to use these sites. They aren’t behind the school’s firewalls, so they are a resource that has been generously shared with the public. If you find one especially helpful, consider sending an email to the site’s authors/editors, thanking them for their efforts
