Here is a promising two-week professional camp run by Epicenter Pictures. They host 6 specialty tracks, including screenwriting, producing, directing, cinematography, acting, and editing. Each track learns independently and then all collaborate to produce several short films by the end of the camp.  The experience culminates in a mini-film festival on the final day.  Here is what Epicenter Pictures says:

The tracks are taught by peer mentors who, have already been working in film for at least five years and are eager to help you hone your art, develop your leadership potential and break into the film business. Additionally, guest speakers provide you with an opportunity to mingle with more established professionals.

What will you take away?

• A dynamic hands-on experience on your own live set, with the latest in indie-filmmaking equipment
• A short film that can be submitted to festivals across the country or incorporated into your professional reel
• A professional network to get you started in an industry where it’s all about who you know

Most film camps put a heavy emphasis on classroom work. Epicenter believes that you learn best by doing

If you are at all interested in film, this is a great program to check out. Registration is now open!

The moment many of you have been waiting for! The store is live with new downloads so you can begin reading and planning instantly!  Best of all everything is on sale! Just click to the individual product pages to see the sale prices.

If you have already bought some of the Countdown to College products, please visit the catalog pages and rate the products.

CollegeWorks provides great flexibility in preparing students for CLEP exams across the curriculum.  CollegeWorks helps students negotiate non-traditional degree paths with hundreds of colleges, not simply with the few colleges which have whole-heartedly embraced the credit-by-examination phenomenon. Families can begin by taking a consultation with Wanda to lay out a multi-year agenda for maximizing the impact of credits by examination on the degree programs at the top three colleges of the student’s choice.  Alternatively, students can simply take one of the 2-week CLEP preparation courses to see if it actually suits their learning style and schedule. In any case, the courses are offered on a pay-as-you-go basis, so they are supremely affordable compared to other distance learning institutions that charge a large up-front fee for a long-term program.

Wanda has a passion to make college affordable for as many homeschoolers as possible.  Typically, a credit-by-examination (CBE) program costs about 50% less, and gets the student out into the work world or graduate study about two years earlier than a traditional degree program. Many homeschooled  seniors graduate from high school with an Associates degree. Growing up as the daughter of a migrant worker, Wanda understood that her ability to get out of the fields would be absolutely dependent on her ability to get a college education. Now she helps homeschool families negotiate the complexities of credit by examination, while avoiding crushing indebtedness.

Over the course of her 25 years in the field, Wanda has developed relationships with nearly 400 colleges. Some have been eager to work with non-traditional students, but most have had to be persuaded. The University of Nebraska was the school most hostile to CBE students.  Mrs Burdick managed to get a meeting with the college Regents, and after her presentation, the university softened its position on CollegeWorks students.

An accomplished advocate for outside-the-box education, Wanda trains students to advocate with the college of their choice for the educational experience they want. “At the end of the day, colleges are businesses. Their product is over-priced for most people.  Non-traditional students are modern colleges’ best hope for financial survival.  We just have to make them see it,” says Wanda. CollegeWorks  prepares students to make a smooth transition to the final college, directing the student to establish personal relationship  with his top choice colleges by checking in with  admissions representatives about once a month.

A typical criticism of credit by examination is that the learning will be sub-standard. Since students transfer 30 to 60 credits earned by examination toward a degree, the concern is not trivial. Wanda emphasizes that the quality of learning in a CBE program is determined in the same way as the quality of any homeschool curriculum – by the investment of the parent and the student. CollegeWorks does its part to see to it that students have the opportunity to excel. Instructors with CollegeWorks have advanced degrees or professional experience. And the two-week intensive courses pack as much instructor contact as a traditional one hour semester long class, with homework and nightly quizzes.

Savvy homeschoolers know that academic credentials are not enough for professional advancement or business success. Public service, business experience and personal contacts are essential – and are often missing in CBE programs. Mrs. Burdick encourages her students to seek internships and professional apprenticeships to enhance their examination records and to begin to network in their chosen fields. She herself has negotiated internships for her students with GM, state and local government. She advises families to find out what companies in their regions do the sort of work that their students wish to pursue,  then “go to the top” to negotiate some kind of internship for their youth. As a result of her efforts to connect students with businesses, professionals now seek out her students for entry level positions.

Do CollegeWorks’ students advance? You bet they do! For students who are local to her, Wanda has established public speaking “Prestigious Tournaments” which allow students to showcase their talents for in-state college scouts. These events have resulted in scholarships for participants. Her students have been accepted in prestigious law schools like Georgetown. They have ended up employed at NASA, National Right to Life, even at the White House.  But the advancement Mrs Burdick most desires for her students is progress in godly character; no education is truly excellent or even complete without it.

You will find new features such as audio samples, downloadable books, downloadable videos and audio files.  Coming soon: a subscription section where you can enter discussions and workshops with other college-bound and launch-ready families, and private counseling.

Meanwhile, if you wish to purchase one of our products, email kim@countdown2college.net for a catalog and purchase details.

Coaching a Club: Seven Secrets for Forming a Successful Speech & Debate Club teaches principles of mentoring, networking, facilitating public service and preparing the next generation to change the world through the lens of developing a forensics club.  Kim has gathered the collective wisdom of her positive peers in the Christian speech and debate community over ten years of service to teens across the nation.  Even if you don’t think your students need speech and debate, you need this book!

Excerpts

Commitment to Character

We can readily see that studying speech and debate will improve intelligence in these more traditionally academic categories. But if that is all we see, we miss the most important possibilities in forensics training.  Forensics offers young people the opportunity to exercise those academic skills in an emotionally-charged social setting very much like the real world. It offers coaches a nearly unparalleled opportunity to train students in interpersonal and intra-personal intelligence.  Taken together, these two are called “emotional intelligence” or EQ[1], and they encompass the ability to understand one’s own and others’ feelings and to use that information to make fine distinctions and to guide actions. Maturity in emotional intelligence is characterized by altruism and empathy. In Biblical parlance, we are talking about developing wisdom and character.

Commitment to Community

Collaboration is the concept of the moment.  From Linux to “Wikinomics”, it is becoming ever clearer that the future belongs to those who successfully create communities of interest and influence by exploiting the networking opportunities at hand.  So when you are trying to decide which of the many possible activities your teen will pursue during those swift, precious high school years, you’ll want to choose those that give your teen maximum connectivity for the long term.  Homeschool forensics has to be among the top 3 choices. We are not just training young people; we are helping to establish the grassroots network that will energize and support the next generation of power brokers.

Commitment to Continuity

Continuity. As we look ahead, we don’t actually have the continued existence of the particular club in view.  We are considering instead the continuing relevance of the vision, the continuity of relationships and the long-range usefulness of the skills developed here and now.  Sono Harris of Oregon’s Rainmakers admits that the longevity of the speech club was not a part of the planning. “We just jumped in and took it a year at a time.” The Harrises were looking for a challenge that would be a good fit for their children’s gifts and callings. Their passion as they built Rainmakers was to help the students “learn to use words well” (John Piper) for active service in the world. Competitive forensics in the NCFCA not only gave them skills with words, but many of the auxiliary resources they would need to launch out on their own as well: visionary peers, intergenerational networks, resume development and business connections, even scholarship opportunities.  We may develop our skills inside the Christian homeschool bubble, but they are emphatically not meant to stay there!

The book began with the compassion of one man – a poor man in India – who gathered up orphans from the streets and began to nurture them in the name of Jesus. “Papa” Thomas in Kota, India has now raised over 16,000 throw-away children from the streets of India and set them loose to extend the love that rescued them to others who still do not know the Author of love, Jesus. Profits from the book will assist “Papa” Thomas’s work Hopegivers International to continue the work of turning throw-away kids into arrows in the hand of God.

Practical as well as visionary, One Million Arrows tells dozens of stories of parents just like you who have stepped up to the challenge. Today on the One Million Arrows website, you can read about some of the Countdown to College Carpe Diem Cadre members. Petra Anderson is featured. Read it and get your parenting rejuvenation vitamin!

And today, you can join the party by buying One Million Arrows in concert with hundreds of other Christians in an Amazon Book Bomb. Let’s see how much we can contribute to this work in just one day.

Meet i-Tunes U, a fabulous collection of (mostly) free lecture series from famous universities from Cambridge to Stanford!  Some are audio only, but some are enhanced by video tracks as well. Search the database by subject or by university. They download to your computer or i-pod for maximum transportability.

This amazing resource is found by opening i-Tunes on your computer.  On the lefthand sidebar, click on “i-Tunes Store”. When the store loads, look in the lefthand menu column for i-Tunes U. When you click there, several featured lecture series will be displayed, and you can search as you like.  It is easy to see which lectures are free – most are. You can download a whole series with a single click or select just the ones that impact your study.

I will never have a dull drive alone in the car again.  And, of course, you will list those universities as resources on your course descriptions!

Some of my daughter’s financial aid award came in the form of work-study.  She would need to work all semester in order to earn the full amount, which was payable as she worked. Here’s the rub: tuition and fees deadlines hit well before the end of the semester.  If she paid late, she’d also owe hefty late fees, not to mention that she couldn’t register for the next semester classes until the full tuition was paid.

So she accepted a federal, no-payment-no-interest until graduation loan in the amount we expected she’d be able to earn during the semester.  The idea is that she would pay off the loan as she worked instead of directly paying the school. No late fees, no registration penalties and no long-term debt.

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Try the new Countdown to College e-book for a comprehensive strategy for earning scholarships and a glowing entre into your chosen post-high school destination.

• Inevitable Goodbyes

• Imitating the Perfect Father

• Fiery Harvest

• Celebrations that Sting

• Wind & Fire Parenting part 1

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Also try the new audio resource,

Quests & Homecomings

for more perspective on God’s parenting through the difficult transitions of life.

Instant access to the extensive information in the print Guide at a fraction of the cost! Download only the chapter you need or the whole guide.  Each segment just $6.50! All five segments only $25.00

Choose from:

Countdown to College part 1: 5! Assess Your Starting Point

Explore God’s workmanship in crafting your student for a specific calling.  Consider the different vocations of men and women.  Learn to help your student find a vision for his or her life. Try the world’s oldest personality assessment.

Countdown to College part 2: 4! Aim for Success

The future is a moving target.  Plan to be where you want to be when it arrives.  Evaluate various post-high school destinations and the most advantageous paths to them.  Discuss how to position your school and to describe your educational aims to best display your high school work.

Countdown to College part 3: 3! Acquire Credentials

Do you know when to say “No”? Learn how to invest your limited time in achievements in four areas critical for winning scholarships, job opportunities, internships and more.

Countdown to College part 4: 2! Account Assets

Learn to create a complete school counselor’s pack that educational professionals will envy.  Structure transcripts and resumes to showcase your student’s achievements to best advantage.

Countdown to College part 5: 1! Apply for Awards

Don’t be intimidated by the college application process.  Walk through the process of admission and financial aid/scholarship acquisition from research to recommendation letters.

Countdown to College Guidebook Digital Edition

All five Countdown to College segments

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