In my role as a mentor in the homeschooling community, I have observed an increase in recent years of homeschooling families and leaders who underestimate the importance of respecting copyright laws.  So, while it can be a delicate subject for some, addressing it in a number of informative venues, such as blogs, articles, and homeschool meetings, is a great way to bring attention to this important matter.  Copyright considerations represent a three-fold challenge at the student, teacher, and local leadership levels.

First, students are often not properly taught how to research and/or cite sources for papers that they write.  So parents need to be equipped on how to formally teach this often-forgotten skill rather than just assuming their student will intuitively know what steps to take when researching a topic or citing sources.  In our modern day of Internet resources, it's all too easy to cut and paste information verbatim rather than take notes, synthesize resources, and summarize properly.  Recently in Arizona, the seriousness of plagiarism and its consequences was sharply highlighted when an ASU professor was accused of violating copyright law in more than one resource that he had either published or presented as his own work.  Even more so in our culture of social media sharing, students need to understand how to research the root of a source to the original author.  Sources that cannot be traced to a reliable source should not be used.

Second, in an effort to be frugal, parents will often photocopy materials for their own family's use rather than purchase a new consumable workbook for a younger sibling who uses or will be using the same curriculum.  As a young homeschooler, I didn't realize the problem with this practice until I was educated about it from a fellow homeschooling friend and mentor of mine.  Also, out of a desire to be helpful, parents sometimes photocopy materials and distribute them outside of their own family.  Some families even share electronic materials that were originally purchased only to be used within their own family but then share it out to others who have not paid for their own copy of the resource.  If a family wishes to help another in this way, they should instead purchase a physical copy of the materials and gift it to their friend or simply donate their own original materials to them, assuming that they are done with it and do not retain copies of it.  In my role as the AZ State Ambassador for the Home School Foundation, our biggest annual fundraiser is via a new/used curriculum sale.  So it is encouraging when other families generously pass on materials that they no longer need for the benefit of others.  However, it is discouraging when some donations we receive are of photocopied materials rather than originals and all we can do with them is to recycle them in the trash.

Lastly, state or local support group leaders who are often called upon to formally speak to groups of homeschoolers in various settings can fall into a pattern of presenting information as if it were their own; using the work product and quoted ideas of published authors without properly citing or crediting their sources.  This issue can also translate to what such organizations publish on their websites.  I have personally experienced such improper use of my copyrighted materials and realize that I am not alone in this issue.  So leaders should be sensitive to this potential pitfall and ensure that copyright violations do not occur when attempting to help guide and inform home educators in their community.  Any such issues that do arise should be diligently addressed with promptness, courtesy, and integrity.  Related to this issue is the emergence of the co-op, where parents share joint teaching responsibilities for a group of homeschooled children.  In doing so, parents and co-op leaders need to ensure that participating families purchase the necessary materials and only distribute photocopied pages or multiple copies from an electronic source when the author has expressly given the group permission to do so. 

When I mentor moms on choosing and using curriculum, we go through a list of selection criteria I have developed called the "Four C's".  This issue of copyright violation is a fifth criteria consideration that I call the "Forgotten C".  So my goal here is to encourage homeschoolers to place attention on the problem on a meaningful scale.  As home educators, we should all take seriously the importance of complying with the law in every way, including copyright law.  Yet is often given minimal attention in the homeschooling community in general.  So let's all do our part to honor copyrights within our own homes and also help to educate others about this critical issue!

Can you pass the copyright quiz? http://www.homeschoolcopyright.com/copyright_quiz.html
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Other helpful links about copyright laws and guidelines:
http://www.home-school.com/Articles/frugal-illegal-homeschool-copyright-law.php
http://ihomeschoolnetwork.com/honorcopyright-homeschool-copyright-basics/
http://ihomeschoolnetwork.com/honor-copyright/
http://www.eclectichomeschool.org/articles/article.asp?articleid=388&deptid=23&resourceid=209

Recently Quartz, a worldwide digital-only publication for the business elite, produced an article entitled, "The concept of different "learning styles" is one of the greatest neuroscience myths".  Are they a myth?  Are adjustments educators and, in particular, homeschooling parents make to best connect their student(s) with the learning goal a waste of time?

If after reading the article you are left with a sense of bewilderment, then you are probably not alone.  After all, while the article cites the valid difficulty of studying such concepts scientifically, it provides no words on how applying a variety of teaching methods may prove to be useful in spite of the lack of science to back it up.  Instead the author dismissively indicates that just because students may have "fun" with the application of different methods, it doesn't mean that such adjustments actually make a difference in the learning process.  The vibe basically is that educators are wasting their time with these kinds of efforts.

Am I writing to say that I have scientifically valid evidence to debunk their observations?  No, that is not my point.  However, I am expressing my concern that just because there are not heaps of scientific evidence in support of the idea of learning styles, that educators are indirectly discouraged from innovating new and applicable ways to reach their students.  As homeschooling parents, we can and should actively seek to run our own observational efforts to see what does work best in our own families and variations in learning methods are a piece of that larger puzzle.  We all know that families can sometimes have students who work much better in a structured, text-book style approach versus those who need to attach new concepts to some combination of techniques including visual aids, auditory cues, emotions, movement, or interactions with others. 

This kind of experiential knowledge reminds me of when our oldest son was fighting leukemia and at one point for many months we lived around the country seeking options for him. For the message we received in each treatment institution was always framed by the maximum of what that particular institution could provide.  Phoenix Children's couldn't talk to us about double-cord blood transplants since they weren't versed in it.  Seattle Children's could provide transplant details but weren't very helpful when our son faced cancer that would not submit to their typical protocols to get back into remission.  The National Institutes of Health could offer a number of novel antibody therapies to attempt remission, but they only had access to their protocols.  Similarly, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital could only talk about their one and only treatment option and could not speak to other choices.  My point?  If we had only gone with what local doctors presented us, if we had only used what was available as accepted protocol in our area, if we had been unwilling to be part of the research process at multiple institutions, then our son would not have experienced the benefits he received from the various options we tried and would not have survived as long as he did.  If we had waited for tons of repeatable evidence to come in on every single option we attempted, we would have lost more time with him and he would not have had the good quality of life that he experienced during those twenty-five difficult months.  So lack of voluminous data and experimental repeatability in and of itself should not be a deal-breaker when seeking our best options in life.

Now back to learning styles.  How can homeschoolers respond?  We can make sure that we don't allow unhelpful articles discourage us into doing nothing.  Keep journals on each of your students.  Make notes on when concepts seem to more easily transfer versus other occasions where it is just "not sticking".  What tools, teaching approach, etc. do you use to make it all work?  Wouldn't it be great if homeschoolers could one day pool their observational feedback and grab the attention of the scientific community; possibly sharing how learning styles and other teaching concepts aren't such a myth after all?
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Interestingly, Quartz goes on in a separate article to report that "Most researching findings are false..."   and that many science experiments are designed with flaws stating that as much as two-thirds of published research is unable to be replicated.  That is a problem, but the article is unsurprisingly light on solutions that will impact us anytime soon.  No matter.  While any data we collect on learning styles or on related data as a homeschooling community or as individual families might not matter to the scientific community, we can rest in the knowledge that actual benefits were observed and realized at least within our own little corner of the world.