Our Mission & Vision
At Eons, we understand that we won’t necessarily be for everybody. But, we’re for anybody, and that’s the philosophy that drives us.
This online resource does not directly make any profit. We don’t ask families to pay high fees to have access to a great education (though we do gladly accept donations to further our mission). We simply ask that students come ready to learn, and ready to learn in a way that might be a little different from the ways they might be used to. In doing so, students will enable themselves to become bright critical thinkers, who think about the world on a deeper level and strive to make it a better place. It is our sincere goal to cultivate tomorrow’s great thinkers and leaders in science, engineering, and technology. That said, we know that, despite our best efforts, not everyone will come out of this course wanting to be a scientist. We hope to give every student the tools and thinking skills that they need to succeed in any field that they want, while developing a basic understanding of and respect for science that will be necessary to thrive in a rapidly evolving 21st Century world.
This online resource does not directly make any profit. We don’t ask families to pay high fees to have access to a great education (though we do gladly accept donations to further our mission). We simply ask that students come ready to learn, and ready to learn in a way that might be a little different from the ways they might be used to. In doing so, students will enable themselves to become bright critical thinkers, who think about the world on a deeper level and strive to make it a better place. It is our sincere goal to cultivate tomorrow’s great thinkers and leaders in science, engineering, and technology. That said, we know that, despite our best efforts, not everyone will come out of this course wanting to be a scientist. We hope to give every student the tools and thinking skills that they need to succeed in any field that they want, while developing a basic understanding of and respect for science that will be necessary to thrive in a rapidly evolving 21st Century world.
Our Values
Equity
Because we’re online and free, our course can be accessed by anyone, anywhere. This removes key barriers to education like financial cost and location, such as for students who might live in areas where the resources available might not be quite as good.
Moreover, while we do go into what may be a more advanced level of understanding than many people may be used to seeing for young students (we are designed to meet and exceed the requirements of a 7th grade curriculum), it is our goal to start our explanations on a very fundamental level and build up from there. In this way, we hope to make challenging topics accessible for every student, regardless of past education.
Finally, there are no requirements for who can use this course. Do you feel that you may be able to understand this course better when you’re a little older? Take it then! Are you an adult realizing that you never really got a good grasp of the basics when you were in school, now realizing how helpful that fundamental knowledge might be? This course can be for you, too! Are you currently enrolled in school and don’t intend to switch to homeschool, but want additional resources to help you in your classes? You can use as much or as little of our resources as you find useful. Again, we are for anyone.
We know that there are still other really big problems to solve in fixing equity in education. We’re constantly thinking about new ways to expand our vision. But, we hope that this can be one big step in helping students to enable themselves to do more in life.
Fostering Understanding
We don’t just want everybody to have access to an education. We want everyone to have access to a great education. One of the ways that we strive to do this is through a re-emphasis on understanding over rote memorization. We know that there is an unavoidable level of memorization that is required to understand science, and we don’t shy away from fully teaching certain topics, including a bit of memorization. We also know that fully understanding some advanced concepts may come later in a student’s learning. While we do think that there are a few ideas that students might not yet be fully prepared to grasp, we think that students—including younger students—should be given more credit for their ability to understand big ideas. So, while we don’t expect students to memorize every advanced detail of quantum mechanics, biochemical mechanisms, or thermodynamics as it pertains to life, for example, we do introduce these ideas and others in ways that we feel students are genuinely capable of understanding. We do this because the details make more sense when the big picture is clear, like seeing a completed puzzle and not just the pieces. Perhaps more importantly, we do this because it’s exactly those big-picture ideas that enable us to see what’s fixed, what isn’t, and what we can start to change and make better through science.
Inciting Curiosity
We want students to love science, not endure it. Again, we know that some students are just naturally more curious than others and that not every student will love science. But, we also know that we can’t teach anything at all unless a student wants to learn. We strive to present science in a way that encourages students to start thinking about the ways that they can impact the world around them. We hope that students will become better able to ask and answer their own questions, using the knowledge and the tools provided in this course.
One of the ways that we do this is through promoting hands-on, active learning guided by curiosity and creativity. Each lesson in this course is accompanied by an activity that we call an Exploration in Science, or EIS. While not every lesson lends itself easily to an activity that can be safely done at home with common household supplies, and in some cases we have supplemented with computer-based activities, we want students to see science for themselves. At the end of each unit, we ask that students do a small science fair–type project where they ask their own question, design an experiment around it, and carry out that experiment to find their own answer. These are not meant to be massive or cumbersome. We don’t expect you to go out and have to buy a million new supplies to do these projects. While there is a small handful of activities that make use of some less common household items, we have done our best to structure activities around items that can be commonly found in most homes, and we encourage students to use resources responsibly both for these activities and their unit projects. Science is a verb. It does us no good as an idea. So, we encourage students to do, to create, and to wonder.
Modernizing Education
While we believe that science is the most enjoyable and easiest to see when students create with it in their own hands, the truly modern classroom knows that great online resources, like videos, are essential to good understanding. So, we haven’t just taken a textbook and slapped it onto the internet. We've done the digging for you to find the best of what's currently openly available online to help you understand the most essential ideas in this curriculum.
Because we’re online and free, our course can be accessed by anyone, anywhere. This removes key barriers to education like financial cost and location, such as for students who might live in areas where the resources available might not be quite as good.
Moreover, while we do go into what may be a more advanced level of understanding than many people may be used to seeing for young students (we are designed to meet and exceed the requirements of a 7th grade curriculum), it is our goal to start our explanations on a very fundamental level and build up from there. In this way, we hope to make challenging topics accessible for every student, regardless of past education.
Finally, there are no requirements for who can use this course. Do you feel that you may be able to understand this course better when you’re a little older? Take it then! Are you an adult realizing that you never really got a good grasp of the basics when you were in school, now realizing how helpful that fundamental knowledge might be? This course can be for you, too! Are you currently enrolled in school and don’t intend to switch to homeschool, but want additional resources to help you in your classes? You can use as much or as little of our resources as you find useful. Again, we are for anyone.
We know that there are still other really big problems to solve in fixing equity in education. We’re constantly thinking about new ways to expand our vision. But, we hope that this can be one big step in helping students to enable themselves to do more in life.
Fostering Understanding
We don’t just want everybody to have access to an education. We want everyone to have access to a great education. One of the ways that we strive to do this is through a re-emphasis on understanding over rote memorization. We know that there is an unavoidable level of memorization that is required to understand science, and we don’t shy away from fully teaching certain topics, including a bit of memorization. We also know that fully understanding some advanced concepts may come later in a student’s learning. While we do think that there are a few ideas that students might not yet be fully prepared to grasp, we think that students—including younger students—should be given more credit for their ability to understand big ideas. So, while we don’t expect students to memorize every advanced detail of quantum mechanics, biochemical mechanisms, or thermodynamics as it pertains to life, for example, we do introduce these ideas and others in ways that we feel students are genuinely capable of understanding. We do this because the details make more sense when the big picture is clear, like seeing a completed puzzle and not just the pieces. Perhaps more importantly, we do this because it’s exactly those big-picture ideas that enable us to see what’s fixed, what isn’t, and what we can start to change and make better through science.
Inciting Curiosity
We want students to love science, not endure it. Again, we know that some students are just naturally more curious than others and that not every student will love science. But, we also know that we can’t teach anything at all unless a student wants to learn. We strive to present science in a way that encourages students to start thinking about the ways that they can impact the world around them. We hope that students will become better able to ask and answer their own questions, using the knowledge and the tools provided in this course.
One of the ways that we do this is through promoting hands-on, active learning guided by curiosity and creativity. Each lesson in this course is accompanied by an activity that we call an Exploration in Science, or EIS. While not every lesson lends itself easily to an activity that can be safely done at home with common household supplies, and in some cases we have supplemented with computer-based activities, we want students to see science for themselves. At the end of each unit, we ask that students do a small science fair–type project where they ask their own question, design an experiment around it, and carry out that experiment to find their own answer. These are not meant to be massive or cumbersome. We don’t expect you to go out and have to buy a million new supplies to do these projects. While there is a small handful of activities that make use of some less common household items, we have done our best to structure activities around items that can be commonly found in most homes, and we encourage students to use resources responsibly both for these activities and their unit projects. Science is a verb. It does us no good as an idea. So, we encourage students to do, to create, and to wonder.
Modernizing Education
While we believe that science is the most enjoyable and easiest to see when students create with it in their own hands, the truly modern classroom knows that great online resources, like videos, are essential to good understanding. So, we haven’t just taken a textbook and slapped it onto the internet. We've done the digging for you to find the best of what's currently openly available online to help you understand the most essential ideas in this curriculum.