The Techies Who Are Hacking Education by Homeschooling Thier Kids
Chris and Samantha Matalone Cook are homeschooling their sons Simon and Parker. (Their daughter Lucy asked to attend private school for the time being.)

A couple of weeks ago, I wandered into the hills north of the UC Berkeley campus and showed up at the door of a shambling Tudor that was filled with lumber and construction equipment. Samantha Matalone Cook, a work-at-home mom in flowing black pants and a nose ring, showed me around. Cook and her family had moved into the house in April and were in the middle of an ambitious renovation. “Sorry,” Cook said, “I didn’t tell you we were in a construction zone.” A construction zone, it turns out, that doubles as a classroom.

We walked into the living room where Cook’s two sons, Parker and Simon, were sitting on the couch, silently scribbling. The boys, aged 12 and 10, had the air of young Zuckerbergs-in-training. Babyfaced and freshly scrubbed, they spoke with a somewhat awkward and adenoidal lilt and wore sweatshirts with the hoods flipped up and no shoes. The room around them was chaos—piles of art supplies were stacked around the floor and paint samples were smeared next to the doorways. The family’s two dogs, Dakota and Kaylee, wrestled loudly over a chew toy. The sound of pounding construction equipment drifted in from the basement. And yet the boys were focused on what I soon learned were math workbooks—prealgebra for Parker, a collection of monster-themed word problems for Simon.

The Cook boys are homeschooled, have been ever since their parents opted not to put them in kindergarten. Samantha’s husband Chris never liked school himself; as a boy, he preferred fiddling on his dad’s IBM PC to sitting in a classroom. After three attempts at college, he found himself unable to care about required classes like organic chemistry and dropped out to pursue a career in computers. It paid off; today he is the lead systems administrator at Pandora. Samantha is similarly independent-minded—she blogs about feminism, parenting, art technology, and education reform and has started a network of hackerspaces for kids. So when it came time to educate their own children, they weren’t in any hurry to slot them into a traditional school.

“The world is changing. It’s looking for people who are creative and entrepreneurial, and that’s not going to happen in a system that tells kids what to do all day,” Samantha says. “So how do you do that? Well if the system won’t allow it, as the saying goes: If you want something done right, do it yourself.”
Teach Different

“Do It Yourself” is a familiar credo in the tech industry—think of the hobbyists of the Homebrew Computing Club hacking together the personal computer, Mark Zuckerberg building the next great communications medium from his Harvard dorm room, or Palmer Lucky soldering together the Oculus Rift from spare parts in his garage. Progressive education is another leitmotif that runs through tech history—Larry Page and Sergey Brin have attributed much of their success to the fact that they attended a Montessori school. In recent years, Peter Thiel has launched a broadside against higher education, and Sir Ken Robinson’s lecture, “How Schools Kill Creativity,” has become the most popular TED Talk of all-time, with 31 million views. Now, all those strains are coming together to create a new phenomenon: the techie homeschooler.

This may come as a shock to those of us who still associate homeschooling with fundamentalists eager to shelter their kids from the evils of the secular state. But it turns out that homeschooling has grown more mainstream over the last few years. According to the most recent statistics, the share of school-age kids who were homeschooled doubled between 1999 and 2012, from 1.7 to 3.4 percent.

And many of those new homeschoolers come from the tech community. When homeschooling expert Diane Flynn Keith held a sold-out workshop in Redwood City, California, last month, fully half of the parents worked in the tech industry. Jens Peter de Pedro, an app designer in Brooklyn, says that five of the 10 fathers in his homeschooling group work in tech, as do two of the eight mothers. And Samantha Cook says that her local hackerspace is often filled with tech-savvy homeschoolers.

“There is a way of thinking within the tech and startup community where you look at the world and go, ‘Is the way we do things now really the best way to do it?’” de Pedro says. “If you look at schools with this mentality, really the only possible conclusion is ‘Heck, I could do this better myself out of my garage!’”

Lisa Betts-LaCroix personifies this attitude pretty well. She is no stranger to the various obsessions of the tech world—she leads the Silicon Valley chapter of Quantified Self, the personal tracking movement; her husband Joe has helmed a variety of computer and biotech startups. She has homeschooled her kids for the last nine years (though she prefers the term “independent learning”). When she started, it was seen as unusual. Now, she says, there are more than 500 families in her homeschooling group—a growing number of them tech entrepreneurs like her husband. She sees it as the latest expression of the industry’s push toward disintermediation. “We are going direct to learning,” she says. “We don’t need to hold to this old paradigm of top-down, someone tells me what to do.”

Perhaps it’s not surprising that the tech community—a group not known for mastering the delicate social mores of adolescence—might pursue an unconventional approach to schooling. “I never really fit in,” says Flickr and Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake, who has homeschooled three kids (two of whom have since moved on to public school) along with her partner, serial entrepreneur Jyri Engestrom. “I grew up not watching any TV, excluded from pop culture, sitting around reading T.S. Eliot and playing classical music. But those things benefited me so much! I felt different in a good way—like I had secret superpowers.”

A World Apart

Feel free to roll your eyes at this point. There’s something inherently maddening about a privileged group of forward-thinkers removing their children from the social structures that have defined American childhood for more than a century under the presumption that they know better. (And if you want to see how antiauthoritarian distrust can combine malevolently with parental concern, look no further than the Disneyland measles outbreak caused by the anti-vaccine crowd.) I hear you. As a proud recipient of a great public school education, I harbor the same misgivings.

And yet, as I talked to more of these homeschoolers, I found it harder to dismiss what they were saying. My son is in kindergarten, and I fear that his natural curiosity won’t withstand 12 years of standardized tests, underfunded and overcrowded classrooms, and constant performance anxiety. The Internet has already overturned the way we connect with friends, meet potential paramours, buy and sell products, produce and consume media, and manufacture and deliver goods. Every one of those processes has become more intimate, more personal, and more meaningful. Maybe education can work the same way.

“It used to be you had to go to a special institution to get information about a subject, but we live in the technology age and you can find anything you need on your phone,” says Jeremy Stuart, a documentary filmmaker, who, along with Dustin Woodard made a movie about homeschooling called Class Dismissed . “The whole paradigm has shifted. It’s no longer about how to access information, it’s about how to use the information, how to sift through it to determine how to apply it to your life. That’s incredibly empowering, and schools are not doing that.”

“The Internet does a great job of providing access to learning,” says Albert Wenger, a partner at New York’s Union Square Ventures. He and his wife Sue Danziger, the founder of online video startup Ziggeo, are having their three children homeschooled. “Pretty much everything you want to learn, you’ll be able to find out there. So that puts a premium on, Is this something you care about? Is this something you want to learn?”

In Session

If you’re a parent who wants to homeschool your kids, there are a bunch of resources at your disposal. You can buy workbooks and textbooks. Many museums have special programs for homeschoolers. (San Francisco’s Exploratorium, for instance, leads science workshops; Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts offers an “artful adventures” program; and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History hosts classes for homeschool groups.) You can join a group of local homeschoolers and share ideas and projects. You can download a curriculum from a website like Teachers Pay Teachers, or cadge a syllabus from MIT or Stanford. Or you can access online tutorials from places like Codecademy or Khan Academy.

But at 11:30, after her kids are done with their workbooks, Samantha Cook is trying something new. Last week, she asked them to come up with an idea for a new business, and now she wants them to write a more formal plan. First, she asks them to write down their idea. Immediately, Parker starts whining.

“I need another piece of paper,” he says.

“Just write it on the back of that one,” Samantha urges.

“Does Simon have to use proper grammar?”

“You both have to use proper grammar.”

“Does that mean Simon can’t use all caps?”

“Don’t focus on Simon, focus on your own work.”

At this point, Simon interjects: “How do you spell restaurant?”

“Ooh, I like it!” Samantha says. “What kind?”

“Hmmm,” Simon says.

Parker hands her his piece of paper, on which he has written “Real Live Pokemon.”

“OK,” Samantha says, “and then maybe a brief description, one sentence of what the experience would be.”

Simon, meanwhile, has written “Mexican.”

Samantha: I’ll be your first customer! OK, one sentence: What makes your Mexican restaurant different from any other? Is it going to be vegan? Are you going to fuse it with another kind of food? Is it the atmosphere?

Parker: How do you spell genetically?

Samantha: I want you to try first.

Simon: Wait, are you going to…?

Samantha: He’s going to make genetically modified Pokemon, I think.

Simon: I’m thinking my restaurant will have…. Karaoke.

After a few minutes, Parker hands his paper back to his mother. It reads “Genetically enhanced frogs that we turn into Pokemon.”

“OK,” Samantha replies matter-of-factly. “I want you to list the resources you’re going to need. You’re going to need a lab.”

Simon interrupts. “Did I spell that right?”

Samantha: There’s an extra E at the end of ‘employees,’ but otherwise yes, OK. Is there anything else that you think you’re going to need?

Simon: Tables and chairs?

Samantha: Yep!

Simon: I’ll just write ‘furniture.’

I sneak a peek at Parker’s paper. It reads “a lab, a fission reactor.”

Samantha says, “Next you’re going to have to think about whether you’re going to need any government grants.”

“Well, a fission reactor is going to cost quite a lot,” Parker says, stroking his chin.

“Yes, it is,” Samantha responds. She turns to Simon. “Is there anything else, or is this like what you feel you need to start?”

Simon: Yes.

Samantha: OK, so next to the things you feel you need to start, go ahead and estimate what you think they will cost.

Simon: For the furniture, I think that would cost, about—

Samantha: Let’s go with Ikea grade.

Simon: How much are round tables and chairs?

Samantha: I saw a set of table and four chairs for $120 for one set.

Simon: And we would need about three or four of them.

Samantha: Mm hmm. So if it’s $120 each, let’s overestimate and say we want five sets.

Simon: OK

Samantha: So for five sets, that would equal what? Five times 120?

Simon: I’m thinking.

Parker: How do you spell centrifuge?

Simon: Parker, what are you doing?!

Samantha: Try. You did well on the other.

Parker: But I knew how to spell fission reactor!

Samantha: Break it into parts.

Parker: [looking at his paper, holding his head in his hands] That’s not how you spell centrifuge!

Samantha: Let me see. How would you find out if I wasn’t sitting here?

Parker: I would ask Siri, How do you spell centrifuge? (He picks up his iPhone and shouts into it) SIRI, HOW DO YOU SPELL CENTRIFUGE?

Samantha (to Simon): So, for the building, will you just rent space?

Parker: I spelled it correctly!

Samantha: See? Do you feel validated?

Parker (shouting into his phone): THANK YOU, SIRI!

An Individualized Solution to a Social Need

The Cook family are not just homeschoolers but unschoolers. They don’t prefer homeschooling simply because they find most schools too test-obsessed or underfunded or otherwise ineffective. They believe that the very philosophical underpinnings of modern education are flawed. Unschoolers believe that children are natural learners; with a little support, they will explore and experiment and learn about the world in a way that is appropriate to their abilities and interests. Problems arise, the thinking goes, when kids are pushed into an educational model that treats everyone the same—gives them the same lessons and homework, sets the same expectations, and covers the same subjects. The solution, then, is to come up with exercises and activities that will help each kid flesh out the themes and subjects to which they are naturally drawn.

All of which sounds great. But, to put this in tech terms, it’s an approach that doesn’t scale very well. It seemed exhausting enough for Samantha to help her two sons write one-sentence business plans; it’s hard to imagine anyone offering the same kind of energy and attention to each student in a 20-person classroom. Indeed, that’s precisely why schools adopt a one-size-fits-all model. Unlike the Cooks, they don’t have the luxury of tailoring an entire lesson plan to the needs and proclivities of one or two students. They have to balance the needs of individual students against the needs of the class as a whole—including kids who come into school with different interests, skills, and abilities. That’s why so many teachers aim for the middle of the bell curve—hoping to have the maximum impact on the largest number of students, even as they risk losing the outliers on either end of the chart.

Of course, there are plenty of private schools, charters, or gifted programs pursuing some version of what’s called student-directed learning. But most unschoolers told me that even these schools were still too focused on traditional standards of achievement. (To be fair, it’s hard to imagine that even the most enlightened private school would be able to stay in business if it couldn’t demonstrate to parents that it was teaching their children how to read or add.) Unless every family homeschools their children—a prospect that even homeschooling advocates say is untenable—it will remain an individualized solution to a social need.

And this is where technologists see a great opportunity—to provide differentiated, individualized education in a classroom setting. There’s a lot of excitement around Khan Academy because it steps in to handle a teacher’s least personalized duties—delivering lectures, administering and grading quizzes—freeing up time for one-on-one tutoring. Last year, Khan Academy launched the Khan Lab School, an offshoot that will create “a working model of Khan Academy’s philosophy of learning in a physical school environment.” AltSchool, a startup created by a former Googler, has launched a series of “micro-schools” in which teachers help students create their own individualized lesson plans.

Jyri Engestrom, Caterina Fake’s partner, signed up with AltSchool this year. The couple had been homeschooling for a couple of years, an experiment that gradually expanded into a 10-student “microschool” called Sesat School. This year, his students started attending AltSchool part-time, in what he calls a “hybrid” approach. He says it’s just one example of how a new crop of startups could use technology to create new educational models, somewhere between homeschooling and traditional school. He foresees a day when the same forces that have upended everything from the entertainment industry to transportation wreak havoc on our current model of education, when you can hire a teacher by the hour, just as you would hire a TaskRabbit to assemble your Ikea furniture.

“I’m feeling like something is brewing right now,” Engestrom says. “The cost of starting a company has gone down because there are online tools you can use for free. I can see that happening with school. So much of that stuff is just up for grabs.”

#DIY #education #Silicon Valley

> https://www.wired.com/2015/02/silicon-valley-home-schooling/

This pint-sized entrepreneur turns his passions into cash

“Do you have kids?”

That’s the first question John Louzonis asks commuters walking through Bryant Park.

Amazingly, harried New Yorkers actually stop for him.

Unlike other street peddlers hawking religious pamphlets or panflute CDs, John is a cute, bespectacled 13-year-old. But while most of his peers are learning algebra or reading “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the home-schooled, pint-sized “entrepreneur” is hand-selling copies of his $10 book, “Kid Trillionaire: How a Little Kid Can Make a Big Fortune.”

“I sell 30 books on average each day there,” the budding entrepreneur told The Post, though he admits he’s not a trillionaire — yet.

“That’s the question I get asked the most,” said John, who has about $5,000 in the bank. But he thinks it won’t take him long to achieve his goal.

“Maybe a couple years,” he guessed.

John made his first buck at age 10. At the time his family was living in London — his financier mother travels for work — and the kid noticed that their favorite cafe didn’t have a Web site.

“I built them one for $60,” said the tech whiz, who learned to code through an online course when he was 8. “It wasn’t much, but it was a start.”

‘Short of begging my parents for money every time I want a piece of candy, I thought I better earn some myself’

Since then, John — who now lives with his parents and his younger sister in Battery Park City — has been obsessed with finding new ways to rake in the dough.

“I don’t get an allowance,” he said, adding that the $50 he gets from his grandma for his birthday isn’t enough to sustain him for a year. “So, short of begging my parents for money every time I want a piece of candy, I thought I better earn some myself.”

At first, John tried emulating other kids, setting up a lemonade stand outside the house in Manhasset, LI, where his family lived until a year ago.

“I think two people stopped by,” the mini-capitalist recalled. “It probably didn’t help that my uncle was in the background mowing the lawn in his underwear.”

When he did his own thing, he was more successful. John fell in love with computers and podcasts, and his father, Daniel, who is in charge of the boy’s education, incorporated graphic design, website development and sound editing into his curriculum. In the past couple years, John’s been making most of his money from building websites, doing graphic design, video editing and producing podcasts for private clients.

Last year, John also had the idea to write a how-to-get-rich book for kids. The aspiring moneybags spent six months researching — or Googling — how millionaires earned and kept their wealth, often from a young age. He suggests easy first forays into making bank (selling scrap metal, tutoring, pet-sitting — “you can do homework while you make money!”), provides a list of cheap coding and app-development courses and dispenses other general advice, like how to save and invest cash and how to “milk how cute you are for as long as possible.”

He self-published 200 books in April through Amazon’s CreateSpace, and has since ordered two more printings. He’s sold 300 tomes so far, online (where he charges $15 instead of $10), on the street and at business conferences.

“I really hope that it lets kids see there’s another way — that they don’t have to depend on other kids to make money,” he said.

As for what he plans to do with his future trillions, John has one idea: “I would take a helicopter to my grandma’s house in the Hamptons,” he said. “It’s $800 a person. That’s a bucket list item for sure.

Why homeschooling is the smartest way to teach kids today

The core idea of homeschooling is the idea that kids need to learn at the speed, and in the style, most appropriate for them. In the education world, enthusiasts call the approach "personalized learning," and it''s in place in a number of schools already.

Homeschooling isn''t what it used to be.

What largely started in the 1980s and ''90s as a way for Catholic parents to infuse religion into their kids'' education now has more mainstream appeal.

Homeschooled kids have the same access to online learning, friendships, and extracurricular activities as the typical public school student — but without many of the drawbacks, like standardized lesson plans and bullying.

Here are a handful of reasons homeschooling makes sense in 2018.

Personalized learning is a strong method of instruction.

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are big fans of personalized learning, since it tends to use technology as a way to tailor lesson plans to students. In a recent blog post, Gates pointed to research that personalized learning helps boost scores in reading and math.

Homeschooling parents can take the method a step further. As parents, many are in the best position possible to know, and provide, the right kind of instruction.

Students can learn more about what they really care about.

Without formal curricula to guide their education, homeschoolers get the chance to explore a range of topics that might not be normally offered until high school or college. They can study psychology in fourth grade, or finance in eighth grade.

Some parents are capable enough to pass on this knowledge themselves. But many parents Business Insider has spoken with rely on online learning platforms like Khan Academy or workbooks. Some take their older kids to local community colleges.

While many homeschool families do teach English, math, science, and history, education is by no means limited just to those subjects.

Students don''t deal with cliques or bullying.

Homeschoolers don''t deal with all the downsides of being around kids in a toxic school environment.

Plenty of critics argue these downsides are actually good for toughening kids up, but kids who are bullied more often face symptoms of depression and anxiety, do worse in class, and show up to school less frequently.

Homeschooled kids are able to learn in a more harmonious environment.

Schooling isn''t set apart from the "real world."

Contrary to the name, homeschooling takes place in an actual home only a fraction of the time. A great deal of instruction happens in community colleges, at libraries, or in the halls of local museums.

These experiences have the effect of maturing kids much more quickly and cultivating "a trait of open-mindedness," as Harvard junior and former homeschooler Claire Dickson told Business Insider.

Since kids spend more time around adults in the "real world," they rarely come to see school as set apart from other aspects of life.


Students may achieve more in the long run.

Homeschooling makes sense from an achievement point of view.

Research suggests homeschooled children tend to do better on standardized tests, stick around longer in college, and do better once they''re enrolled. A 2009 study showed that the proportion of homeschoolers who graduated from college was about 67%, while among public school students it was 59%.

Students from Catholic and private schools fell even lower in college graduation rates, with 54% and 51% of kids, respectively, completing all four years.

Homeschooled en route to Harvard

The reasons to homeschool are as varied as the students who do it. Some want a more experiential learning environment; others wish to customize their subjects. Still others choose to homeschool based on family dynamics. Sometimes it’s a matter of convenience.

The students who come to Harvard by way of homeschooling exemplify all these reasons and more. The three profiled here share a spirit of curiosity and independence that continues to shape their education.

Claire Dickson ’19

Claire Dickson’s path to Harvard Yard began on Harvard Avenue. That’s the street she lives on in Medford, and where she studied math, read Melville, and played piano as a homeschooler.

“My family’s motivation was mostly from wanting to have a lot of experiential learning and my mom’s general dissatisfaction with the public school system,” Dickson said. “Why would you go to the same building every day and do the same thing every day? Whatever I was interested in, I just went for.”

Dickson, a psychology concentrator who lives at Lowell House, said every “school” day was different. Some were filled with classical and jazz lessons. There was endless reading. And she saw “Hamlet” for the first time when she was 9.

“There were so many cool things going on around Boston, and my parents supported whatever I wanted to do,” she said. “You have to be intrinsically motivated to do the things you want to do. Homeschooling really pushed me to do that. We saw a lot of live theater and music, tagging along with my parents to whatever they were doing.”

Her education became slightly more structured in middle school, when she would meet with a small group of homeschooled students for sessions in math, biology, and history. In eighth grade, she began to take classes at Harvard Extension School and Bunker Hill Community College.

“If I was interested in something, there was nothing stopping me from making it happen for myself,” Dickson said. “I became interested in psychology so I started going to free lectures at Mass. General Hospital. I ended up doing research for a doctor there.”

Dickson said parallels between homeschooling and college — a given class a couple of times a week, combined with lots of independent study — made the academic transition easy. The social scene was a new experience, but she made connections volunteering through the Phillips Brooks House and singing in band.

“I’ve picked an alternative way of being at the School,” she said. “Lots of students are in suits, interviewing for jobs. I’m not doing any of that recruiting. Reflecting on that, it might be a result of being homeschooled. I kind of want to make my own way.”

Abraham Joyner-Meyers ’21

Growing up in Takoma Park, Md., Abraham Joyner-Meyers lived only a few blocks from the local elementary school. But the district stopped offering kindergarten just as Joyner-Meyers was about to enroll. So his mom, at work on a book in a home office, set up a desk for him next to hers.

“It went really well,” said Joyner-Meyers, a student in the five-year dual degree program with Berklee College of Music. “After a year of homeschooling, not only was it good with my relationship with her, but it also gave me enormous freedom to study what I wanted.”

A self-described book nerd, Joyner-Meyers read voraciously, learned math with help from his dad, and for a time studied acting.

“I loved the freedom to be at home and to go out in the community,” he said. “I went to book groups at my local library, which was the first place I walked to myself, and later into D.C. to art museums.”

Joyner-Meyers doesn’t think music would have the same prominence in his life had he not been homeschooled. His work with the acting group introduced him to older students who were thriving outside institutional high schools. Their enthusiasm gave Joyner-Meyers, a violinist, a model for interacting with local artists. He eventually expanded to Irish folk music and started playing at festivals, then in a band, then in his own group.

Joyner-Meyers is a student within the Harvard/Berklee Dual Degree Program. He travels to Berklee College of Music throughout the week to take classes and rehearse.

“In D.C., the Irish music scene is surprisingly alive,” he said.

Part of the first cohort of Harvard-Berklee students, Joyner-Meyers said he feels more empowered to shape his academic and musical education in dual studies than he would if he had enrolled in a conservatory-only program.

“The education is more diverse having the resources of two schools,” he said, adding that he has already performed with the Hyperion Shakespeare Company and been invited to play mandolin in a quartet. “My dream is to unite Shakespeare and music into some interest as an actor-scholar. It’s exciting to be one of the first students, and to think about how it’s going to work in the future. We’re lab rats just a little bit, and it’s worth it.”

Kemen Linsuain ’18

From his earliest years as a student, Kemen Linsuain’s interest in math and physics outstripped opportunity in his Pittsburgh school district.

Though his parents made the call on homeschooling, it was Linsuain who guided his own education.

“I have always had a bit more of an outsider’s perspective on things,” says Kemen Linsuain ''18.

“There wasn’t much of a plan or a long-term plan going in; I just took classes I was interested in,” said Linsuain, who was attending college math and physics courses by age 12 at Carnegie Mellon and Penn. State (where his dad taught at the time). “Next to CMU is the public library and science museum [Carnegie Museum of Natural History], so between classes I would just hang out there.”

The Kirkland House resident, who works in the lab of physicist Philip Kim researching low-dimensional materials, plans to move to Washington, D.C., after graduation for a position as an analyst with the consulting firm Dean and Company.

“I have always had a bit more of an outsider’s perspective on things,” he said. “During the job recruiting, I found that view pretty useful. I really had no preconceptions or stereotypes about things in the process. It was kind of nice. I was a little more free to be myself.”

Why I home-schooled my daughters - Supriya Joshi of TED India

10 Reasons Every Homeschool Student Needs a LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn has become an increasingly popular professional network among high school students looking to package and brand themselves for the college admissions process. It’s a platform that can be incredibly useful for students who want to:

-  Build their professional networks early
-  Present a professional appearance to the world
-  Connect with potential professors, mentors, and college admissions officers

It’s especially important for homeschool students to take every opportunity to present themselves as well-rounded, accomplished individuals. As a homeschool student, LinkedIn may prove to be an especially helpful tool for showcasing your unique combination of skills, interests, areas of expertise, and experiences. Creating a professional LinkedIn profile is a way for you to “brand” yourself and stand out professionally from the rest of the pack.

So, do you need a LinkedIn profile? Most likely, you already have a presence on social media. When you graduate and enter the workforce, you’ll have a LinkedIn presence anyway—so why not create one now?

With a LinkedIn profile, you’ll be able to:

1. Showcase academic achievements, work experience, volunteer work, and more

As a homeschool student preparing to enter the college admissions process, you want to cultivate your competitive edge as much as possible. One way to do this is by including your full scope of experience in a LinkedIn profile. Academic achievements, awards won, on-the-job experience, and even volunteer work are all fair game. You can also get creative with a profile headline by creating a descriptive title like “Aspiring Social Media Marketing Manager,” “English Tutor/Robotics Enthusiast,” or “Honors Student in Mathematics.”

2. Present a professional appearance with a headshot

3. A polished, professional headshot gives college admissions officials and potential employers a good look at how you’ll be presenting yourself if you meet or interview in person. It also gives your network a face to pair with your name. Carefully choose an image that both conveys who you are and presents a professional, mature persona.

4. Use LinkedIn Publisher to exhibit your writing proficiency

If you have a blog or are thinking of starting one, LinkedIn is the perfect place to publish your content. Your connections will be able to view, share, and comment on your posts. What’s more, they’ll get to know you, your writing style, and your point of view. It’s a fantastic opportunity to share your experiences and expertise through your concise, proficient writing.

5. Create a customized URL for your name

When you edit your LinkedIn profile, you can create a vanity URL for your name, removing the difficult-to-remember numbers from the automatically-generated URL. This will make your LinkedIn address easier to share, and it will look more attractive at a glance. It’ll also increase your chances of a potential contact remembering how to navigate directly to your profile.

6. Include your LinkedIn profile link in applications to colleges

When you fill out your college applications, be sure to include your LinkedIn profile link. This will give admissions officials a chance to connect with you online if they haven’t already. It will also add another dimension of your personality, accomplishments, and education to the materials you’ve already provided in your application packet.

7. Get endorsements and recommendations from employers and instructors

A LinkedIn endorsement is like a virtual thumbs-up from your network that adds credibility to your skill set. A recommendation is like a testimonial from someone who knows your work ethic and abilities. You can get recommendations from employers, instructors, or coaches that will highlight your accomplishments, abilities, and potential as enter college and, later, the workforce. As you build your connections, each person you connect with will also be given an opportunity to endorse you for specific skills.

8. Network with professors, instructors, career professionals, and more

Interested in communicating with professors from your college of choice or professionals in the industry you’re hoping to enter after you graduate? LinkedIn is a great way to find and connect with these individuals so you can start building a relationship and rapport with them before you even begin your first semester of college. Don’t be afraid to send out carefully-selected connection requests—and be sure to ask mutual connections for introductions if you’re unsure or unable to send a direct connection request to someone you want to virtually “meet.”

9. Highlight unique skills and accomplishments

You can use your LinkedIn profile to showcase specialized skills and accomplishments that may help you stand out from other students your age. As a homeschool student, you have an opportunity to include skills and accomplishments that public and private school students your age might not have been able to acquire, depending on the curriculum they’ve followed at their school.

10. List transferable skills from activities, sports, etc.

If you don’t have a work history to include, you can list any skills you’ve acquired through other activities (sports, performing arts, volunteering, early college courses, clubs, etc.). Potential colleges and future employers will see that you’ve got experiences like leadership, written and oral communication, management, organization, and more that can transfer into a professional career.

Use the media section to display graphic design, websites, video, photography, and more

The media section on your LinkedIn profile is the perfect place to add blog posts, video, graphic design, and more. It functions as a portfolio of sorts that allows you to showcase some of your best work. If you’ve pursued interests in media, writing, graphic, or web design, this is a great opportunity to share your work with potential colleges and employers.

The bottom line

LinkedIn could help you get the attention of college admissions officers, professors, instructors, and even career professionals. As you establish your LinkedIn presence, remember to keep the content you share professional. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, LinkedIn is appropriate for professional-level sharing only.

Matthew Bass is an entrepreneur, homeschool graduate, and founder of Transcript Maker, the high school transcript app.