Technology Can Help … If You Want To Start Homeschooling
When we think of apples and technology, we often think of the Apple Watch. But apples are also associated with teachers in the old west.
Children would bring their teachers an apple, placing it on the teacher’s desk. And so began the association of apples and education.
For many parents, it can be hard to decide how to provide homeschooling for a child. Do you have what it takes to become a good educator?
Most parents have no formal training in education. While we all were students, it is quite different being a teacher.
The Internet Allows Some Of These Skills, To Be Outsourced
Textbooks, schmextbooks! With the internet, your child can practice reading from a wide variety of sites, books and published material. And studies show that a student will read more if they are interested in the subject matter. Specialized websites, and Amazon search, allow a parent to put together a set of reading material on any subject. And if your child changes interests, digital books can be erased in a second. This means the web is like a library in your own home.
Online videos allow expert professors, who have been teaching for decades, to record their best lectures. Edit their lectures, and present them in your home – often for free. Go YouTube!, my favourite YouTube channel.
As a child grows, the political world, special interest forums and discussion event, foster stimulating discussions. So many sites offer current articles for a valuable way to learn. It also instills analytical thinking skills, which is an important life skill.
This fills part of the void in home schooling for parents. With all this expert content, a parent can focus on helping the student with study skills. Something that technology is not the best at. Parents start this by studying with their child at a young age. As the child grows, they can use a number of applications for study time management.
This means it’s the parents job to make everything a learning experience. Or at least make sure a student is using technology to learn, and not just play games. Pay attention to how your children communicate and make necessary corrections.
It’s Not All About The Student – Technology Can Allow Parents To Home School
The financial impact of homeschooling, in the past, meant quitting a job to stay home. But technology to the rescue. Today, a parent can find work-at-home jobs, that allow parents the flexibility to stay home, or at least, stay home part time.
Working at home, also allows a parent to be a student too. Part of being a teacher is to understand learning styles – and how to apply them in the classroom. It’s no different for homeschooling. Lots of instructional videos offer info about different learning and teaching styles; which allow a parent to customize techniques for their child. It also prevents a huge problem in homeschooling – often a parent teaches in the style in which they learn best. That may conflict with the learning style of their child. Online videos allow a parent to learn to teach in the student’s style.
All these teaching resources are online, and we have not even looked at software and apps which teach. A parent today can use technology to become a super teacher – or at least a learning facilitator.