Technology in Education and in your Homeschool (Part 1)

Technology can be integrated into the educational setting (your classroom, your homeschool) as seamlessly and easily as it has made its way into your daily life.  Your computer, tablet, reader, iPhone, video machine and CD player all can supplement your teaching with the right tools.  Many kids already play educational games at home or on the go. Streaming video brings science and history to life.   Slip in a CD of your favorite audio book, language learning program and learn German, Spanish or French on the go! Have your students use one of the many free internet tools to create their own multimedia slideshow, video, poster or website.

Students can use technology to foster their learning in a multitude of ways: watching, listening, reading, playing, building and creating.

Video and Streaming Video

There are lots of places where you can find streaming videos.

  • Best known of course is YouTube where students can watch everything from a  frog dissection or the life cycle of a mosquito to video clips featuring Napoleon, the first moon landing or Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech.
  • Discovery Education Streaming (The link to the left shows you a list of the thousands of titles for the “Plus” version.) – We had a subscription to this one year. This has thousands of videos from most any field your can think of.  It has lots of series like Liberty’s Kids, the Magic School Bus and lots of history, science, math, preschool, foreign language videos, animated children’s literature like Rabbit Ears and Animated Hero Classics and on and on. I find the price a bit prohibitive for us ($200/yr even with 50% off through Homeschool Buyer’s Coop) since we don’t use video quite often enough. But it is an absolutely amazing resource.
  • Story of the World and Netflix Spreadsheet — volumes 1 through 4 (virtually all history from the Ancients through Nixon!). This is a very comprehensive spreadsheet of movies. She gives the SOTW volume and chapter each movie applies, lists the rating where available and lists whether they are documentaries or animated.  She also shows whether the movie is available to watch instantly on Netflix.
  • Story of the World Video Links–Someone is creating this wonderful resource of videos that go along with the Story of the World History series
  • Ancient History Netflix Movies — Another list Alia has put together to supplement volume one of the Story of the World — Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and everything before and after!
  • Another long list of world history movies from 8,000 BCE to the 1900s, but not necessarily available on Netflix, etc.
  • Khan Academy – Lots of math videos, plus Biology, Chemistry, Brain Teasers and more
  • 60 Second Recap — recaps of great literature such as 1984, The Catcher in the Rye it introduces literature in an entertaining way
  • Ted Talks  Ideas worth spreading has some neat topics up for discussion. For example,

Audio: listening

  • Don’t forget how useful the CD can be for learning a foreign language on the go. For example, we’re trying Pimsleur German CDs.
  • Story of the World audio CDs have been a wonderful resource for us. We got the entire 4 volume set (50+ CDs) used at Homeschool Classified for a phenomenal price.
  • Storynory has wonderful classic fairy tales, Greek myths and more that you can download free to listen on your iPod or to burn as a CD to listen to in the car

Interactive: educational apps

That’s it for this week.  I’ll be back with Part 2 of this Technology in Education series next Wednesday!

9 Responses

  1. Angel-lena says:

    One HUGE recomendation for older kids especially is to utilize subscription databases, these are expensive but most school, college, and public libraries will have several options and be more than willing to share remote access passcodes with a homeschooler. They are great for the obvious research paper sources, to be sure, but these days they are SO much more than that. Many of them offer multimedia results for common searches that include, pictures, audio, video, graphics, etc. along with books, articles, newspapers and primary sources that have been scanned or digitized in other ways! USE your library! It offers so much more than books!

  2. Angel-lena says:

    One HUGE recomendation for older kids especially is to utilize subscription databases, these are expensive but most school, college, and public libraries will have several options and be more than willing to share remote access passcodes with a homeschooler. They are great for the obvious research paper sources, to be sure, but these days they are SO much more than that. Many of them offer multimedia results for common searches that include, pictures, audio, video, graphics, etc. along with books, articles, newspapers and primary sources that have been scanned or digitized in other ways! USE your library! It offers so much more than books!

  3. Nina says:

    Thanks for many links to useful educational pages on the web. I really enjoy Khan’s academy videos to help my kids in math and it works very well with fractions worksheets from the site http://www.fractionsworksheets.ca this way kids watch the videos and get some hands on practice on math problems. http://www.math-aids.com is the other one I use to print math worksheets.

    Thanks for the great informational page, as I discovered other resources from this page.

    Nina

  4. Nina says:

    Thanks for many links to useful educational pages on the web. I really enjoy Khan’s academy videos to help my kids in math and it works very well with fractions worksheets from the site http://www.fractionsworksheets.ca this way kids watch the videos and get some hands on practice on math problems. http://www.math-aids.com is the other one I use to print math worksheets.

    Thanks for the great informational page, as I discovered other resources from this page.

    Nina

  5. Liesl Den says:

    Thanks Angel-lena! That’s a great point. We haven’t looked into that, but as the kids get older I’ll keep that in mind. We love, love, love our library!

  6. Somebody said the web sites each day and yes it assist me

  7. Somebody said the web sites each day and yes it assist me

  8. Excellent post at Technology in Education and in your Homeschool (Part 1) | The Homeschool Den. I was checking constantly this blog and I’m impressed! Extremely helpful info specifically the last part 🙂 I care for such info much. I was looking for this particular information for a long time. Thank you and best of luck.

  9. Excellent post at Technology in Education and in your Homeschool (Part 1) | The Homeschool Den. I was checking constantly this blog and I’m impressed! Extremely helpful info specifically the last part 🙂 I care for such info much. I was looking for this particular information for a long time. Thank you and best of luck.

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