Taking an Online Class For the First Time

So are you thinking about an online class but you aren’t sure if it is right for you? Well, no worries. Here are some basics you need to know.

First off, online classes can be scary when it is new, but remember that they are just like taking a regular class, only with internet.

Most of the time, you will be given a link through email that once clicked upon, takes you directly to the online class. Other times, you will be given a phone number so that you are able to see the class happening online but you hear the audio over the phone. Whatever their set up, you should receive several emails once you register for the class that walks you through how to take the class, where to click, and who to call if you get stuck or have questions.

Once you are in the class, you will participate just like if you were in a classroom. You will be able to ask questions, and you will be able to hear and see what the teacher is talking about. Sometimes you are able to see the actual teacher, but that is not always the case.

Whenever in doubt, though, get a contact. Talk with someone else who is signed up or contact the people hosting the online class. There is nothing wrong with questions, and reputable people will love helping get you the answers you need so that you can be just as comfortable in an online class as you would in a traditional classroom.

Technology can be new and sometimes challenging, but it is also a great way to bring great minds from all over the world right into your living room.

Enjoy your classes!

  • PrintFriendly
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • AOL Mail
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon Wish List
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Technorati Favorites
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark

More than a distributor, we have our own curriculum

AskDrCallahan lists itself as offering a “curriculum” because we are not simply a distributor of Harold Jacobs’ material. We have used his textbooks in a couple of our courses, but what we do at AskDrCallahan is we take a textbook and we build a course around it.

What this means is that we have taken the textbook and we assign homework, assign certain weeks in which to complete that homework, as well as make up our own test, test grading guide, teachers guide, and several other materials that we provide for you to use.

In this way, AskDrCallahan is a curriculum (with our own method for teaching) as opposed to just a distributor.

If you have questions about our products, or need any clarification, you can reach us at support@askdrcallahan.com

  • PrintFriendly
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • AOL Mail
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon Wish List
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Technorati Favorites
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark

What is a composition function?

A Composition function is just one function inserted as the “x” of another function.

Typically the notation for a composition function will look like this:

But you can also write a composition function like this:

or this:

and it means the same thing. Everywhere you see an “x” in the f(x) equation, instead of inserting a single number for that x, you are now going to insert the entire g(x) equation.

To Watch a Video of  an example composition function worked out, click here.

  • PrintFriendly
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • AOL Mail
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon Wish List
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Technorati Favorites
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark

Looking For Feedback

Have you taken an AskDrCallahan course? Did you like it? What would you change about it?

We are putting together some customer comments and we would love to know what you thought about our homeschool DVD math courses.

  • PrintFriendly
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • AOL Mail
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon Wish List
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Technorati Favorites
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark

Explore DVDs For Teaching Home School Math

When you sit down to teach math to your home school student, you probably reach for all the helps and resources you can get.

To help things run smoothly, many parents turn to DVDs. But what are you really getting with a DVD education? Well, let’s take a brief look at teaching homeschool math with DVDs.


DVD instruction is essentially where a teacher is filmed teaching each lesson from a textbook. All of this information is recorded onto a DVD which parents can show to their students before their students study their lessons for that day.

A typical day with a DVD education system might look like this:

  • Open DVD
  • put DVD in player
  • navigate to section being studied that day
  • watch clip, following along in the textbook
  • Read textbook section
  • work practice problems
  • work homework problems as assigned
  • Review DVD as needed.

Click Here to view some sample video clips of DVD lessons by AskDrCallahan

Parents/Students who might want to use a DVD course include (but certainly isn’t limited to) those who:

  • haven’t studied math in a while and need some help remembering the concepts
  • independent/ teach themselves
  • want a classroom experience, but who want to customize the pace for what makes sense for them
  • enjoy/require visual preparation and review resource
  • things just make more sense when you can watch someone else work the problems on a board before attempting them yourself

There are many reasons and benefits to getting a DVD course. You can probably think of others that I didn’t list above. If you have a DVD course, why did you decide to go that route? Would you recommend DVD courses to other homeschooling families? Why?Why not?

  • PrintFriendly
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • AOL Mail
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon Wish List
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Technorati Favorites
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark

Home School Algebra 1: Which Teachers Guide?

Many homeschooling parents contact us when their math students are beginning Algebra 1. They are wondering what the difference is between Jacobs’ Teachers Guide and the AskDrCallahan Teachers Guide. In addition, they often wonder if they need a Teachers Guide and Solutions Manual for the Algebra 1 course. The answer is YES. and let me explain why:

For the AskDrCallahan Algebra 1 course, we recommend parents get the AskDrCallahan Teachers Guide and The Solutions Manual (Solutions manual ISBN 9780615315010). The Solutions Manual is a new (within the last year–2009/2010) product that Harold Jacobs (along with AskDrCallahan) put together.

It contains step by step solutions to every single problem in the book and functions as a significant improvement over his previous teachers guide (Teacher’s Guide 0716710757). The previous book was designed to accompany his textbook, but it only contained some solutions and they weren’t detailed so once this new book came out, we stopped carrying the Harold Jacobs teacher guide that was originally designed to come with the textbook.

Probably there are still articles in the blog archives that mention the old manual, but our Algebra website (http://shop.askdrcallahan.com/categories/Math/Algebra/Algebra-Full-Course-Bundle/) as well as our current article material should point you to the new manual. If you should have questions about which manual to purchase (or any questions for that matter!) please contact us, we will be glad to help. support@askdrcallahan.com

  • PrintFriendly
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • AOL Mail
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon Wish List
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Technorati Favorites
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark

What materials are required for Algebra?

For the Algebra Course, we recommend our Teachers Guide (which contains the syllabus, tests, test grading guide, and additional resource material like activity suggestions and pacing information–download here). In addition to our teachers guide we also recommend the Solutions Manual( Solutions manual ISBN 9780615315010).

That said, many parents find that they can purchase just a textbook and our DVD set and do fine. The reason is because the dvd set contains a cdrom with pdf versions of our Teachers Guide and The AskDrCallahan “Solutions to Selected Problems”. This “Solutions to Selected Problems” is where AskDrCallahan has compiled detailed step by step solutions to only the problems we assign for homework. There are 60+ problems per lesson in this textbook and we do not assign all of them for homework, so we created this smaller manual for parents that intend to use our syllabus and therefore might not need the larger book.

To view more information about Algebra click here.

You can also download the Teachers Guide and other Algebra resources for free, by clicking here.

  • PrintFriendly
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • AOL Mail
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon Wish List
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Technorati Favorites
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark

Algebra: Optional Lessons?

Chapter 16 and 17 in the AskDrCallahan homeschool Algebra course are considered optional. We consider these algebra lessons optional because chapter 16 covers inequalities which is material you will see again in later courses (see in the immediately following course if you’re using our typical math sequence) and then Chapter 17 covers number sequences, which is material you will never see again unless you choose an extremely technical (and rare) study option. Even if you are this rare student, you reach this technical level at college, and they teach you this concept from the ground up. Both chapters contain good math material, so feel free to use them, but you do not have to cover them at the Algebra 1 level.

Also, you should note that you are still getting an excellent Algebra course without those chapters, and you are not hurting yourself if you choose to use them. They are not more advanced than an Algebra 1 student can handle, they are —just as they are labeled—optional. Good if you want to use them, but you don’t have to.

  • PrintFriendly
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • AOL Mail
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon Wish List
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Technorati Favorites
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark

Online Classes and Tutoring This Fall

THIS FALL (August 2010) Tim and Cassidy Cash (“the homework help people” for most of you) will open the first AskDrCallahan Homeschool Class and Tutoring Center. We are so excited to finally be able to offer these great AskDrCallahan college prep courses to students “on the ground” and in-person. The classes will be held in Alabaster, AL, but students may also take any of the classes offered as online courses too. This gives you direct access not only to a live teacher for your class experience, but you’re getting hands on help and attention from the people who created these courses. PLUS! the Homework Help staffers that help students over email, will be on hand to offer in-person tutoring services to anyone who might want to take advantage of that. Right now the specific location is TBA, but subject, times, teacher information, as well as information on the online classes are listed below. Find the subject you are interested in and contact us about it to get started. :)

Things To Know Before Taking an AskDrCallahan Course

Classes Available:

Math Classes:

Pre-Algebra

This course will be focused on covering the pre-requisite material for Algebra 1. Students completing this course will be able to move smoothly into Algebra 1. This class is designed for students grade 7-8th.

Course Instructor: Cassidy Cash(support@askdrcallahan.com)

Course Time:

Course Location:

Algebra 1

Algebra 2 With Trig

Geometry

Language Classes:

Spanish 1

Spanish 2

Spanish 3

  • PrintFriendly
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • AOL Mail
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon Wish List
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Technorati Favorites
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark

Where to find Video Samples of Math Courses

If you’ve been looking around at homeschool courses and you like AskDrCallahan, but aren’t sure where to find video samples of our math courses, Look No Futher! :)
Here are the links to the website where you can find video samples of all our homeschool math courses.

Click on the Photo to be taken to

that math course’s video samples.

We’ve even divided them up here by course name, so you can go directly to the course samples you’re after.

Algebra

Geometry
Algebra 2 With Trigonometry

Calculus
  • PrintFriendly
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • AOL Mail
  • LinkedIn
  • Amazon Wish List
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Plaxo Pulse
  • Technorati Favorites
  • StumbleUpon
  • Share/Bookmark