Online Learning: Utilizing Technology in a Home-school Setting

Technology and the knowledge of it are becoming more and more important every single day. As home-schooling parents, you may or may not be well versed in new technology and expanding uses of the internet. However, as home-schooling parents, you are in the unique and enviable position to use your dual role as a parent and teacher to learn technology skills along with your child. Build upon those skills to make your home-schooling experience that much better. Technology is, in short, important to incorporate in your home-schooling curriculum and design.

The first step for home-schooling parents to incorporate appropriate technology into their lesson plans is to buy a computer and read the instructions carefully. You may even consider signing up for a class or seminar at you local university or community college. It is important to get the basics down if you don’t already know them before introducing the technology to your children. Although you may need to learn the basics from someone else, you and your home-schooled children can do a lot of exploring and learning together. Recent research shows that 97% of teachers learned something new about technology and computers while they were teaching their own students how to use them. You too can use the teaching experience to learn something about technology yourself.

Another great benefit of appropriate technology to home-school and home-schooling families is the time management benefits. It is faster to research topics utilizing internet libraries and databases than it is to drive to the library for research projects and papers. Word processing on a computer is also faster and neater than on a typewriter. This can be utilized by your children and by yourself as you keep records of your home-school activities and home-schooling lesson plans. Indeed, over 75% of traditional classroom teachers reported that technology helped them improve classroom management and nearly 90% said that technology helped them improve lesson planning and instruction. Home-schooling parents and home-schooled children can both benefit from this increase in productivity. You can focus more time and attention on learning the content and doing hands on activities and spend less time on paper work. Furthermore, learning to use technology will help your home-schooled children keep up with and surpass their peers in traditional schools.