Homework
South Carolina law requires a full high school credit to be 120 hours of work with a passing grade. That time is easy to spend in a public school, but home school requires home work.
Administrivia
Some of the homework requires, what we call, "administrivia." That is, work that must be done, but isn't terribly challenging. Often these assignments are self-explanatory but may require reading the assignment in detail. Some of these will be like "make sure you have installed this program" or "turn in this assignment in Google Classroom." Not completing a simple assignment results in zeroes for homework grades.
Typing (aka Keyboarding)
Some of the homework will be assigned typing practice. We expect that new students in this class can comfortably type in the double-digits range. By the end of the school year, if they keep up with their typing homework, they should reach 30-60 WPM.
Why teach typing?
- Faster typing speed helps all other high school and college homework complete faster
- Typing is a professional skill that everyone should have, especially highly paid office workers
- Typing proficiency produces improved test scores on computerized tests
- It creates more confidence with a computer and less frustration
Thinking and Computing
Some of the work we assign may be difficult. We may assign coding, programming, 3D modeling, or digital photo editing. These can be mentally taxing activities that may take minutes-to-hours of arduous thinking, trial, and error. It's challenges like this that cause our brains to grow. One cannot experience the growth of intelligence without a struggle, much like building muscles.
Find out if you are stuck. How do you know? Staring at it for 10 minutes without changing anything is a good sign. If you're stuck, do this:
Review the slides from the current week. Check the speaker notes. There are a lot of answers in there.
Are you getting any errors? Google the error messages to see how to resolve it.
Try explaining the problem to someone older than you. This almost always solves it.
Contact your teacher or other classmates, leave a note in Google Classroom, publicly or in the assignment, or send an email to your teacher.
Most of these assignments are graded on effort - don't erase what you've done, turn in what you can.