Last month, I mentioned that I would be hosting a homeschool talk show starting in July. Well, we are getting pretty close to that launch date and I actually have a sort of mock show planned for next week you are invited to join. This show will be a live, call-in talk show hosted at blogtalkradio. We will be discussing homeschooling, with a particular focus on homeschool advocacy and exploring different perspectives on home education. I will be covering some headlines which strike my interest, as well as presenting a topic for discussion each week. Topics will be similar to what I cover here at Principled Discovery, but in an audio format.
The home page is here: Home School Talk. There are a few details that might be of interest to those of you who would like to participate:
Show launch: July 7, 2008
Time: Mondays at 1PM CST
Call in number: (347) 996-3473 Unfortunately, this is a New York number. But you may call on a cell, or via a Voice Over Internet Provider (such as Skype) should you have one.
Guests: Interested? Email me at homeschooltalkshow AT gmail DOT com. Let me know what you are interested in talking about and we will see if we can develop a segment around it.
Participate: I am looking for audio from a variety of homeschoolers on just about any homeschool related topic. Maybe even from non-homeschoolers if your comments are homeschool-related. Record your thoughts, feelings, experiences, your children. Just try to keep them to about thirty seconds. Longer ones will be considered, but that is the ideal. You will receive full credit and links back to your website from this site and the show’s home page as well as mentioned on air. And lots of thank yous from me. Please email them to me. (Or ask me how to go about recording and sending it to me. I’ll try my best to help you through it.)
Test show: I will be trying this all out on June 16 with Scratchy the Cat from Life on the Planet’s blog. It is a mock show and very un-serious, but we would love to have you join us! Call in and tell us about your experience with pets and homeschooling.
Reminders: From the home page, you can request a reminder. If you select this option, blogtalkradio will kindly send you an email letting you know about your show when it gets closer to the date.
Live chat: During the show, the chat room will be enabled. It will only be lightly moderated. After all, I will be hosting a show! But you are welcome to come and “hang out” and just chat about the show, the weather, your children, or anything else on your minds while listening to the show. I’ll only moderate profanity or similarly unnecessary behavior.
Free downloads: The live show will be recorded and will be available for download once it has aired.
Play the show from your own web site: You can listen to the show from blogtalkradio’s site, my site or even your own site. The following strip of code will embed the player in your sidebar. It will not play automatically. Pressing play will launch the most recent show unless it happens to be live in which case you will simply join the broadcast where it is.
Create a profile: This is not necessary to listen to the show. However, in order to participate in the chat room, you will have to register. This allows you to create a little page that looks a lot like my show’s home page with a link to your blog at the top and an avatar of your choice. On that page, you can also keep track of the shows you listen to.
Link exchange: If you would like to help promote the show, Karen of Simply Amusing Blog created this great button for me for a very affordable price. I will be starting some sort of a link exchange in association with the show, so if you are interested in that, let me know. Email again: homeschooltalkshow AT gmail DOT com
Questions, comments or ideas for the show are greatly appreciated. My plan for the next two weeks is to start writing up a calendar, but I am always open to suggestions. Percival Blakeney Academy shared some wonderful ideas and I would love to hear some more. Am I forgetting anything?
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
Scratchy-Cat can’t wait. She lives for the limelight!
Me too. I’ve never interviewed a cat before.
Sounds great! Can’t wait to hear your voice!
I’m not going to have to wait until the HOTM conference….
Hi, Dana! I’d love to contribute some audio for you, but I’m not real sure how to start. My hubbie is quite a computer guy, so I think we can figure it out. Any particular details we need to know (file type, etc?)
Also - I can’t get the button or the radio show link html to work. Am I the only one?
I’ve had problems copying code from Wordpress to blogger before. Try going to the show’s homepage and copying the code from there.
If that doesn’t work, let me know.
I guess I need to get a headset, so I can call.
My husband has been wanting to get one anyway. He picked up a Bluetooth, but it doesn’t work with the computer. (Yes, we live in the dark ages sans cell phones, and I’m too cheap to pay for long distance.)
Yippee! I wish that part weren’t necessary. If I were rich, I’d offer an 800 number, but that may be awhile yet.
Woohoo! Let’s get this show on the road…
I never heard of blogtalk radio! I found the FlyLady again - didn’t know she was still around. I remember her from eons ago when there was just a static website.
I hope you do have a chatroom - backchannel discussions are often very valuable and contribute much to the show.
@Kerry the badge didn’t work for me either, so i used image code, downloaded the pic of the badge and then hosted on imageshack, put the resulting url in the image code. Then I linked to the show’s homepage.
Mrs. Duff - thanks for the idea! The HTML didn’t work for me, either.
Scratchy has done her show prep (http://lifeontheplanet.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/06/her-debut.html) and is good to go!
Oh, and thanks for making such a nice button. It matches my website beautifully, and we all know how important that is.
That sounds like a tremendous amount of fun — what a superb idea.
: ) jen