Being a homeschooler can be difficult at times, especially when you have to keep track of all the educational changes.
It is very understandable if you’re slightly resistant to combine the fast-paced world of technology with your child’s educational needs.
You might be concerned about the communication and creativity skills that some kids seem to be seriously lacking today.
Yet, the world is changing with technology at the forefront so it is becoming increasingly important to include it as part of your curriculum.
It’s our job, as parents, to create and watch all the activities with our kids; whether it’s during homeschooling or with extracurricular activities.
That’s why homeschooling is so unique and can be successful.
You define the rules and the guidelines, you are your own principle and therefore your children are learning only your values.
You get to set the right balance between fun, education and faith.
Have a look below at some of the ways you can include technology in your homeschooling methods:
Online Books
These can play a huge role in homeschooling especially seems as buying hundreds of books can become fairly expensive, not to mention the need to store them.
We don’t have the luxury of a school library to keep them in. Ebooks can play an important role in a homeschool.
You can use things such as Kindle Fires, iPads and Android tablets where you can download complete book collections to refer to.
Rather than finding the space to store the books, you can store hundred’s on these devices.
Not only are they good for use in the schooling environment your kids can use them for extracurricular reading too.
These come especially handy when traveling, too.
Email is a brilliant system to use as a storage area for communicating documents such as lesson plans, pdfs, worksheets, assignments, and valuable websites or online courses.
It’s really easy to set up email accounts for you and your children to use.
Rather than having the need to store paperwork, workbooks etc in the paper form, they are able to store them on their emails.
They can even email back and forth with you in order the ask questions or request additional work or support.
It works as a permanent storage area for school assignments on a daily, weekly or monthly basis which means you always have somewhere to refer back to.
It gives you easy access to web-based educational sources that you might not otherwise use or benefit from if you weren’t using email.
Not only this will help to improve grammar, typing and communication skills all essential skills they will need when they go to university or work.
Online Course And Videos
Schoolwork is definitely going to benefit from online videos and e-courses. You can find many of them on sources such as Youtube.
Whether it’s a full course of videos that they are watching or just one educational documentary that you have found, online video sources can become your best friend for helping with homeschooling.
Especially when you don’t always have access to the same resources you would at a school.
It may be worth investing in some school headphones if you’re going to be making use of online videos and e-courses as your kids will be able to focus much better if they are different ages and using different devices.
Some of the major benefits that these includes are:
- Creates Visual Stimulation- A lot of kids will find it much easier to take on a concept or lesson if they have been able to view something that explains it.
- Reviewing- Using online courses and videos enables struggling students to re-watch the same subject several times, this means that they can review it in their own time and write down any questions that they might have.
- Memory Recall ann processing- using short video clips allows more efficient processing and will mean that your kids will improve their memory skills.
Google Apps
Anyone who has a Google account has access to their apps from any browser.
You can access email, drive (which is storage), Documents and sheets which are web-based programmes for creating documents simple to word and excel.
You can create anything from spreadsheets to letters and full pieces of course work.
Your homeschooled kids can use it to write/type letters, scripts, create graphs and even add activities in their own calendar.
You also have the ability to share documents directly with students and comments on their work whilst they are working on it.
Here are some of the benefits:
- Enhances their typing skills.
- They will learn how to be organised.
- Many workplaces and higher educational facilities use Google Apps.
- Strengthens their writing and spelling skills.
- You can have live comments.
- You can tailor the students you send docs to.
- Builds their creativity skillsets in writing plays/scripts
- Saves paper
Recording Videos
You don’t even need to go out and buy any equipment for this tool.
You most likely already have a smartphone with video capabilities that you can use.
Video recording is a brilliant method to use for ‘practise makes perfect’ you can try using it as a tool for perfecting public speaking, debating, narration and script reading.
Recording your kids allows them to see how they come across when completing this type of work and means they can see their own ways to improve rather than feeling picked on.
This will help kids by:
- Encouraging them to organize their thoughts orally before speaking out loud.
- Recording can be reviewed to teach improvement, it will help them to identify when they are using too many words like ‘um’
- Teaches self-control – it will allow them to assess their body language and communication skills.
Another great way of using video recording is to allow your students to video any talks to you give them so they are able to review it at a later date.
This becomes particularly handy if they have the assignment to complete or are a student who learns from repetition.
These are just a few of the teaching technologies that have the ability to make your life as a mom and teacher SO much easier.
They’re super easy to use and you’ll notice your kids won’t feel forced to learn them but take them on as second nature.
Do you have any other tech that can be useful for a homeschooler? Please share them in the comments area below.
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