Techie Homeschoolers

Here’s what I think…

The educational community at large is on the roll when it comes to understanding where we are in the 21st century at keeping our kids on top of learning about technology.  (Pulling off the actual programs to make it happen may be another issue- but to the credit of those schools that are succeeding, I must admit that I have read about some of those schools who are doing a great job at integrating tech and ed in Edutopia).

That said, I think the homeschooling community (of which I am a part) does a good job of remaining open to the unique possibilities available in modern education: distance education, to be exact.  This can only be done through the use of computers, hardware and equipment, plus software which allow for communication between children and teachers who are physically far apart from one another.

Our kids (as well as the parent teachers) must learn how to adapt to and utilize the technology so that we can do the work (for those of us who do use distance learning, and in the homeschool arena there are quite a few).  It would be cool to find a statistic on that.

There is one thing, however, that I want to encourage home educators to pay close attention to regarding technology use, and that’s: not ignoring the potential benefits of web 2.0 and multimedia use in the home classroom.

This whole technology thing goes way beyond the idea of our students being able to look up a few key phrases in Google and do a web search on the virtual library.  It’s also more than the idea of we (the parent teachers) blogging about our students’ achievements (although this can be a real PART of how we introduce technology to our children)…but I believe it is only a small fraction of what web 2.0 has to offer.

Just my opinion–and I am passionate about this topic because I’ve been really pondering this, studying and reading about this topic for years.  Society is moving along, and it’s imperative that we at least offer opportunities for our children to stay abreast of what’s happening, and giving them the tools to learn them.

One of the things I studied in grad school was how online collaboration efforts improve learning in kids by drastic measures.

It’s the notion that a student can take his or her idea, type it up in a document, read it as a script into a computer mic, save it as an audio file, upload it to the web via FTP, create an RSS feed and wrap it in Feedburner, promote it via her own website as a podcast, upload the podcast into Itunes for the world to listen and enjoy…

That is an educational experience.

(And I didn’t yet mention the ongoing blog that could accompany the podcast, and so many other venues that could add more depth and meaning to her experience online, plus subject mastery.)

Which brings up another point: internet safety.

We can’t be teaching our kids how to use all of this stuff without the means to protect them from harmful material online.

What I am advocating is a balanced approach to tech ed.

Just how do we pull it off?

That’s a great question.  I have some ideas, and I’ll keep sharing those in later posts!

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