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,
  • Just How Small is an Atom or
  • How Simple Ideas Leas to Scientific Discoveries or
  • Hands on Science with Squishy Circuits (playdough that conducts electricity)

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

• Apps: Because young children have trouble manipulating the mouse and keyboard, there has been an explosion of apps for tablets.  For example, my kids have been having a fabulous time with the Oregon Trail which we downloaded to our KindleFire.
• Top 50 free Education Apps
• iPhone Apps: My fellow Parent’s blogger, Leticia over at  Tech Savvy Mama has some recommendations for iPhone Apps:  4 iphone Apps to Reinforce Toddler Learners and 4 iphone Apps for Beginning Readers
• iPad Apps: Erica over at Confessions of a Homeschooler put together a couple of blog posts of iPad Apps she recommends for the preschool crowd: iPad Educational Apps for Preschoolers and Educational iPad Apps for young Learners
• iPad Apps: 40 Ipad Apps for Homeschoolers  from July 2011
• A list of the Top 10 Educational Apps for iPad and iPhone – This list includes a variety of recommended apps such as  foreign language, molecules, today in history, math formulas and more
• There are lots of wonderful interactive books.  DK books such as Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life are available for iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.
• Apps for Chrome (a web browser like Firefox or Internet Explorer): We’ve browsed through the apps on Chrome and found a neat one on human anatomy, among others.
• Online Games: Here are some of my recommendations for online Addition Games, Multiplication Games; you will find great interactive games all over the web for other subjects as well such as Spelling City. And I’m sure there’s endless others out there as well. Feel free to list some of your favorites in the comments below. I always love hearing about new things!

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