If you are educating your child at home, there’s no reason to eschew help, and there are certainly some gadgets for home schoolers that will bring benefits to the home-based classroom, for both parent and child. You don’t have to fill your study space with a mass of technology to be an effective tutor for your child, but some well chosen gadgets for home schoolers will enable and ease the process.
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1. LCD Writing Pad
This looks like a tablet but you can write on it with a stylus and it acts like your PC monitor and tablet in one. It is one of the more high tech gadgets for home schoolers as they are quite expensive, but are very useful for anything from making mind maps to creating presentations. The animators for the TV show South Park use very large LCD tablet/writing pads to animate their shows.
2. Stop-clock Timer
Going from high tech to very low tech, this is one of gadgets homeschoolers will find useful if it is used correctly. Firstly, short timed bursts are good for concentration if they are kept to ten minute intervals, which work if you switch tasks every ten minutes. Secondly, set a timer to go off every 90 to 110 minutes to designate break time. The key is to enable your child to work very productivity for 90-110 minutes and then take a 20 minute break. This will make you both more productive than working in straight 4 hour stretches, and the amount of time lost through regular breaks is more than made up for in how productive you become.
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3. PC
It goes without saying that the PC is one of the most ideal gadgets for homeschoolers. It allows the student to do just about anything that they wish to in the academic world. They beat any mobile device easily and may be adapted to suit any discipline or academic subject.
4. Scientific Calculator
They are needed in schools these days because there are exams that require them, which means they are needed for home schoolers. Modern scientific calculators are more advanced than computers were 20 years ago and some students even discovered they could program their calculators to give out the answers. That is why students are asked to blank the memory of their scientific calculators as they enter, or are given a school owned calculator as they enter the exam.
5. Noise Reduction Earphones
These are handy for the sheer pragmatism involved. They are ideal for learning languages or listening to seminars where you have to hear what it being said in order to follow the thread of the piece. Being in a noisy environment may put you off, but these headphones allow you to hear what is being said without you having to be distracted by the people outside or the music and noise the rest of the family is making.
6. Smart Pen
Write on a pad and what you write comes up on the screen. It takes a little getting used to, but some graphic designers find it useful, and people who find the movement of a mouse difficult too. It is not ideal if you have to switch from writing on the keyboard to using the pen, but students who are used to working on screens may prefer explanations written on the screen than on paper.
7. A Digital Projector
Learning something via a large screen will have the content stick more thoroughly in the mind of the user. It is also a great tool for the home teacher and beats out the white or black board every time. It also allows the student to watch educational and non-educational movies. By watching presentations on a larger and more dynamic screen (such as a digital projector) it places the images more firmly into the student's mind than just seeing it flipped through a textbook. Size, color and impact does matter which is why months later a person is more likely to remember things seen at the cinema over things watched on a smaller TV. This is especially beneficial if your child is a visual learner type.
Are you schooling your kids at home? Are you sticking to traditional methods of textbooks and paper and pen, or have you embraced technology? What gadgets for homeschoolers do you recommend?