Greetings ,

The ASDE Compendium: A Guided Cohort

The team here at ASDE has been working hard to develop a resource for the community that will support everyone on their SDE journeys — after more than a year of work, with over 60 creators and the aid of The VELA Foundation, we are excited to announce…

The ASDE Compendium! This is a rich collection of knowledge, wisdom, and lived experiences from practitioners of Self-Directed Education (SDE) around the world. 

Keep an eye out, as options to join our first guided cohort are coming in mid-March...

For the most up to date information about ASDE events, check out our Resource Directory Events page and subscribe to our newsletter. Don’t forget to also follow us on Substack!

Join other parents from around the world for three days of inspiration and community at The Unschooling Summit. At this free, virtual event: 

• You’ll have access to interviews with 40+ experts and advocates in the field of unschooling and self-directed learning.

• You can take part in live roundtables with seasoned unschooling parents discussing some of the most important topics that come up for unschooling families (teens, neurodivergent children, self-care, community, etc).

• You can attend live, interactive workshops. 

• You can join a closed Facebook group and connect with other parents from around the world who are exploring a different path with their children.

• ASDE has a few staff members also speaking at this event!

Whether you're curious about how unschooling could work for your family, looking for support on your journey or keen to delve into how unschooling can be a tool for social change and personal growth, there will be plenty there for you!

The Unschooling Summit takes place online from March 21st to 23rd. 

Get your FREE ticket here.

From Tomis Parker:

“I made Prism to solve some of the ongoing pain points that we’ve had at ALC Mosaic when it comes to documentation and building portfolios for our students. I was learning along the way that our problems were not unique to us. There are lots of tools that people have used over the years to document self-directed learning but none of them were designed with self-directed education in mind. 

I’m looking for a few more SDE communities, self-directed microschools, homeschool programs, and homeschooling/unschooling families to use Prism while it is in private beta over the next few months. Feedback from the 200 people already using it, along with anyone else reading this that wants to give it a try, will help inform the next round of updates, improvements, and features.

If you have any of these pain points around documenting self-directed learning and want to give Prism a shot, please reach out to me at tomis@prism.guide.

Also, I'm looking for the right technical co-founder. If you have experience building and scaling applications (React, Next.js, postgreSQL and using LLMs in web apps) and are interested in building a SaaS product that supports an SDE ecosystem, please get in touch.”

Read more here.

Do you want to write a chapter for a book?

Purpose of this book:

Due in part to the popularity of books like iGen and The Anxious Generation, many parents, teachers, and therapists have come to see digital technology as a pernicious force in childrens' lives. While these books do not represent settled science, they do offer a compelling and appealingly simple narrative about why children are having such a hard time and what we, as adults, can do to help them. We believe that this fear-based narrative around children and their screen use obfuscates the rich, complex, and nuanced reality of the digital lives of children. With this book project, we hope to give readers a window into that reality. We hope to counter the dominant narrative through stories of real children using digital technology to connect with others, find their place in the world, follow their curiosity, engage their interests, and pursue their goals.

We are seeking a diverse range of stories about how children are using digital technology today. If you are a young person and you want to tell your own story, or if you have observed how the young people in your lives are using this technology, we want to hear your story.

Possible chapter topics:

How I Learned About (law/medicine/music/cooking/sports/chess/philosophy/friendship)

Using Digital Technology

How (or Why) I Use (TikTok/Instagram/YouTube/etc.)

Who’s Afraid of Candy Crush?

What I Have Gotten Out of My Many Hours Playing (Minecraft/Roblox/etc.)

My Adventures with ChatGPT/AI

Also, if you are not comfortable with writing it on your own, we are happy to help.

Feel free to reach out to ben@macombercenter.org

Wild Roots Collective & Learning Community presents our first adult education opportunity, a virtual Spring Parenting Series. Join us for 1, 2, or all 3 of our sessions this spring as we dive deep into topics around parenting, somatics, and demand avoidance. One session is $35 or you can have access to all 3 for just $89! Attendees will engage in live Zoom calls with our experts and receive recordings of the calls post session, as well as a few complementary digital resources.

Register here.

For a full list of our Organizational Members, check out the bottom of our home page here.

In Solidarity,

The ASDE Organizing Team