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Homeschooling Newsgroups

Newsgroups are like message boards. To access them, you have to either use the news feature of your web browser or install special software to read them.

To access them in Internet Explorer, make sure that you have installed the Internet News program into Windows. When you find this program, open it & simply answer the questions. For name, fill in your name. You can leave the organization name blank. For your e-mail address & your reply to address, simply fill in your e-mail address (name@whatever.net for example). For server, your news server is usually news.server.com (server.com being the part of your e-mail address after the @ symbol). If this address does not work, you will have to get in touch with your internet server or, if you are with an on-line service such as Compuserve or AOL, try checking under the computer message areas or posting this question in those areas. Once you have finished setting up your software to read the news groups, you then have the option to subscribe to one or more newsgroups. Now you can either go to Newsgroups & simply click once & go to if you just want to check one out or double-click to subscribe - or - use the links below to access the homeschooling newsgroups.

To access them in Netscape go to Edit on the menu bar, choose Preferences. From that list, choose Mail & Newsgroups. Now choose the Newsgroup Servers. Choose the Add button & fill in your News (NNTP) Server. Usually, it will be news.host.whatever. For example, if your e-mail address is me@host.com, your news server will usually be news.host.com. If this doesn't work, contact your internet provider & ask them what it is. Then click on OK. You are now ready to check out some newsgroups! Now, pick Window and then Netscape News. Now you subscribe to these newsgroups by choosing File, Subscribe, and then choose the search tab. You can either put in the full name of the newsgroup in the search window or do a keyword search. The best keywords to use are home, school, education, or home-school. You may also be able to find some newsgroups that I don't have access to, & are therefore not listed here, using a keyword search. If you don't want to search through the newsgroups, you can also just click on the links below & go straight to them! If you get an error that no news program is set up, check under your news options & make sure that the program is set up as the default program. If the links still don't work, let me know the error message you receive & I will do my best to figure out the problem. Clicking on the links below will also allow you to access the groups that are listed on servers other than your own.

The specific homeschool newsgroups found on most servers are are as follows:

alt.education.home-school.christian - this one has the least traffic of the two Christian boards. It is a moderated board.

eug.education.homeschooling This group seems to be a general homeschooling newsgroup.

flora.home-based-learning - this one is Canadian & is definitely under used. At the moment, it is empty...maybe it is very new?

misc.education.home-school.christian - This is the high traffic Christian board. This one is currently under a vote as to whether or not it should be moderated.

misc.education.home-school.misc - This is also a high volume board & you will find all different types of homeschoolers there.

ott.education.homeschooling is aimed at homeschoolers in the Ottowa area.

thelinq.home-schooling seems to be new; I'm not sure who it is aimed at.

Here are a few other servers who only list one homeschool group. Just click on the link to get to them.

sff.discuss.homeschool is a new & busy newsgroup. It was ust started on June 22, 1998 & already has 108 messages in it!

Startext Home School Forum is a general homeschooling newsgroup. It is out of the Texas area & is currently made up of mostly local homeschoolers. It is hosted, but not moderated.

Once you have subscribed to these boards, you only have to open your news software to read them. On Internet Explorer, simply click on the mail icon & choose Read News. On Netscape, choose Window & then Netscape News.

If you have any questions, comments, or anything you would like to add, please feel free to e-mail me!

Enjoy!