Home Schooling Online and Learn Home School Online Basics

The advent of the internet has brought about a revolution in the way homes schooling is conducted. The main advantages of home schooling online are:

• Children who are home schooling online are given access to a huge amount of resources and support material they would not otherwise have.
• Home schooling online teaching modules can supplement the efforts of the parent, especially in academic areas where the parent herself may lack competence.
• Children are exposed to other teaching personalities, concepts and philosophies. This will provide them with better perceptions and multiple viewpoints that one parent teach in one environment will not be able to provide.
• In home schooling online, the online classes are conducted at a fixed time which forces time discipline on both the student and parent. Home schooling may at times be affected by irregular schedules due to the parent’s need to juggle both the schoolwork and domestic duties.
• With regular home schooling, evaluation of work is done by the parent who may be both subjective and perhaps over sympathetic to reasons for poor performance (domestic issues). This will not be the case with home schooling online where the teachers will evaluate work purely on it own merits. This is better for the child who will not find the levels of sympathy a parent may have when he or she enters the job market or college.

This does not mean that home schooling online is a perfect combination of regular and home schooling. There are disadvantages which the parents must recognize before contemplating going in for home schooling online.

·         Online school standards vary. Make sure that the one you opt for has the right credentials and reputation.

·         On line schools have different teaching methods and philosophies. Parents need to ensure that the online school they choose matches their own concepts and ideas, failing which the children will become confused by the different approaches to the same subject.

·         Home schooling online does not mean that the parents can take a hands off approach to the children’s’ studies. What the child does while online has to be monitored – it is easy to be lured into gaming or chatting or other distractions.

·         Online schools suffer from the same major disadvantage that regular schools do – the pace of learning is fixed and will not take into account individual difficulties.

·         Home schooling online requires inputs and supports from the parents. Make sure that the inputs an online school requires of you are those you are both comfortable with and in a position to provide.

Home schooling online provides a more varied learning experience than a parent can provide at home. It brings the elements of external interaction and time bound study into a home school environment. But before parents decide to try it, they must understand the reasons why they have decided on home schooling in the first place. If it is because the child has special problems that would have made going to a regular school either difficult or down right impossible, bringing these elements into the home via home schooling online may defeat the very purpose of the home school.