Life at Oak Grove

This week question for the Blog Cruise is the following: 
Do you use technology (iPods, computers, videos, digi cams, etc.) in your homeschool?

My answer to this is the following…   YOU CAN BET ON IT!

Seriously, how can I not use the variety of technology available to spice up our homeschool.   

Computer is a given in our household.   We are techies in a way since we have a home business in the IT world.  There are plenty of programs that kids can use and learn at the same time.    Mathematics, language arts and sciences can now be covered with software.   In Canada, one company that I think do wonderful products that are also available for homeschoolers is Nectar Foundation.  Their products covers mathematics, language and sciences from kindergarten to high school.   

Over the internet, I would strongly suggest that you look into BrainPop and BrainPop Junior.    BrainPop offers one new video free per day which you child can watch and learn at the same time.  Afterward, he/she can take a little quiz to test their listening skills and their understanding.    It is wonderful.   BrainPop Junior is for K-3 and will have the same video for the whole week.    Again the child can listen and watch while learning at the same time.    Other sites available are BrainPop Spanish and BrainPop ESL.    Now I wish they had a BrainPop French.   I think it would be a wonderful addition to their wide range of fun educational websites.    The creators of BrainPop also have a site for educators called BrainPop Educator.   Believe me you won’t be disappointed with the quality of the little videos.   Mind you it is not a christian site so you might have some information about evolution and billions of years old kind of chat but still I find that basically these sites are worth it.

Videos – ah television is involve here.   First I must be totally honest and tell you that we don’t have cable.   The reason why we remove it was first the cost and second the quality of what was on these days.   By removing the cable, we can re-invest the amount in quality videos in English and in French.    We discovered wonderful DVDs on the Big Adventure as well as as nature.   We also invested in getting the well known French TV series Passe-Partout for our kids as we are primarily French Canadian.   And we keep an eye on anything educational out there.   We also use youTube when we do unit studies as well as other TV series available on the internet like How it’s Made.    This particular series demonstrate how things are made for example last year the kids saw how padlocks, hair clippers, wooden shoes and synthetic leather were made in one specific show.   The whole family enjoys watching these.  

The Wii and Nintendo DS can also be very educative believe it or not.   The trick is to get the games that will teach something like Wii Music for example or ZooTycoon.     I even found mathematics and geography games for the Nintendo DS.   There are a variety of fun games that either one or the whole family can play with.    Wii in itself can even be used for PhysEd with the Wii Fit or any other program that makes you move, jump, run and so on.    

Until this year, only my husband had the iPhone.  Now two iPods have entered our household….   *grin*   And let me tell you that you can have wonderful learning apps for it.    And one of the apps I particularly love it the BrainPop which allows you to keep track of your quizzing performance.    I also have other fun apps that cover mathematics, sciences,  English, French, geography and much more.    We are also planning to use the podcast of Focus on the Family to train our kids to write reports.    Alexandre, our oldest, will start this assignment this year.    We will choose the subject and he will have to listen to and write a small report on it to tell us what he has learned. 

However, like anything in life, too much of a good thing can become a bad thing.    What I mean by that is that it is necessary and ultimately your responsibility to limit the time your kids spend on technology.  Yes it is nice to have them but being addicted to it is not good.   Consequently I strongly suggest that you determine a time limit when your child is on the computer, the iPods, the internet, the television and so on.

Do I think technology should have a place in homeschool? Definitively.   I am so ever grateful to have the software, videos, and iPod apps on hand when I have a difficult day or when an unplanned event happens.