With a crisis in the classroom, many parents and tutors are seeing a boom in homeschooling which allows parents to take back control of children’s education and relax knowing their kids are in a safe environment.
Homeschooling brings its own challenges as the dynamic classroom is replaced by the somewhat sterile home environment. Many online tools are capable of filling this gap, however, meaning kids can learn better than ever.
When you’re homeschooling or distance learning it’s crucial that coursework can be submitted in a timely fashion without any hiccups.
Showbie is a fantastic tool that lets you submit work and keep it organized. On Showbie, work submitted will be saved and scores are recorded and easily trackable. Tutors can also conduct assessments in-app to keep everything in one place.
When homeschoolers work it’s often in isolation, and so you lose out on the dynamic school environment that encourages creative thinking.
Spiderscribe is a way to recreate that in the home by encouraging and developing mind-mapping skills. This allows students to come up with new ideas whilst working independently.
Spiderscribe creates a visual map for students to apply their thoughts, so ideas are linked and organized in a way that really helps visual learners.
“My students groan at the idea of math,” says Thomas Y. Kriner, tutor at Writinity and Researchpapersuk, “so Desmos has been an invaluable tool at encouraging them to get stuck into numeral literacy.”
This tool makes mathematical literacy accessible to pupils who naturally shy away from the subject. Desmos enables learners to plot functions across a graph, create tables and matrices, and offers a visual platform for students to enter into mathematical study.
Gradeslam is an incredibly valuable tool that any parent will want to encourage their child to use while homeschooling.
Across multiple subjects, pupils can take great leaps forward in their understanding by using Gradeslam to access expert tutelage and guidance about how traditional homeschooling assignments can be undertaken.
Available online, this tool enables pupils to access personalized tutoring in multiple areas, giving students the opportunity to target gaps in their understanding across a range of topics.
As a tool for expanding pupils’ understanding of literacy and grammar, Quill is invaluable for homeschooling.
Pupils can take part in interactive guides that teach them how sentence structure in complex language works and corrections are provided in an intuitive manner along the way, ultimately expanding a student’s knowledge of language.
For tutors, the ability to track and monitor student progress makes Quill a great tool for conducting classes and saves much of the bureaucracy entailed in regular teaching.
Kubbu is a fantastic tool to have in your distance learning repertoire because it’s so fun to use. “In the absence of a lively classroom, homeschooling can be especially dull for pupils,” says Myra H. Thoreson, edtech blogger at Draft Beyond and Last Minute Writing “so a tool like Kubbu, which injects a little fun into the lesson, can lift pupils’ spirits and help them learn.”
Kubbu encourages learning through games by allowing tutors to create puzzles and word games that have a pedagogical pedigree, and the site allows for analytics to reveal where students’ strong and weak points lie in any given area.
For kids of younger ages learning to read can be a time-consuming challenge and for parents and tutors this is often deeply frustrating.
Farfaria is targeted at kids from the ages of one to nine and is an easy-to-use mobile app that supports learning to read in this demographic. Perhaps best used on a tablet, Farfaria guides children from the first steps to learning to read.
Homeschoolers need to become adept at research and organization in the absence of classroom support and Diigo is a great organizational resource that allows them to practice research and become excellent independent learners.
Students can organize and save websites and, with Diigo providing an overarching structure, complete projects in a timely fashion.
Neglecting to take advantage of modern tools for homeschool can be to the detriment of your pupils. Home learning can be fun and engaging with the tools outlined above. Class dismissed!