Homeschooling Might Not Be the Answer

Homeschooling can be a wonderful option for people looking for an alternative to traditional school. However, homeschooling is not for everyone and it might not be the right choice in a number of circumstances.

Homeschooling: Requires Time

Homeschooling requires time. Homeschooling is a full time job, and if there is not an adult in the home that can dedicate full time to homeschooling, then homeschooling will be difficult to achieve. Homeschooling becomes a lifestyle, not just an educational choice. Of course, there is the possibility that two adults in the home could share homeschooling responsibilities and also maintain their jobs outside the home but it will require work and dedication.

Some states allow homeschooling by people other than parents, and if you live in one of those states it is possible to employ someone to home educate your children. Homeschooling rules are different in each state, and you should research if your state allows others to home-school your children.

Homeschooling requires a fair of time to plan lessons, and in record keeping. This time is in addition to the actual educational time. While it is not required to participate in field trips, time should be allowed for those also. Every opportunity that can enrich a child’s education should be taken advantage of, but travel and actually participating in field trips does require time. In reality, if you cannot home-school with the idea of providing your child with a better education than he could achieve in traditional school, then perhaps homeschooling is not for your family.

Homeschooling: Responsibility

Homeschooling is a large responsibility. As the homeschooling parent/teacher, you are taking on the responsibility that is normally handed off to a teacher and an entire traditional education system. As the parent/teacher you will be responsible not only for planning the lesson, but for teaching the course work, and grading the course work. You will be responsible for keeping the academic records, and recording progress.

Additional there is the fact that as the parent/teacher you will be required to make sure you and your child are in compliance with state and local education requirements. This responsibility also comes with a time commitment. Research must be done to determine the legal requirements to home-school in your state. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and this is never more true than when determining how to stay legal with your department of education when homeschooling.

Homeschooling: Not all students thrive

Some students actually thrive in the traditional school setting. They need the competition aspect of having other students around them. These students are driven to do their best by having others around them to fuel their climb to the top. Homeschooling might not work for these students because homeschooling, even in a co-op setting is generally aimed at the individual student and does not generally include other students. Even when there are other students in the home, they are usually not in direct competition with each other.

Homeschooling might not be for students who require a lot of special assistance or have special needs. These students might need reading labs, or occupational therapy, or speech therapy. Sometimes it is possible for students with these types of needs to get assistance at a school because of the requirements that public schools provide for these needs.

Schools can sometimes provide this for much lower cost than private therapies because the services are provided for more than one student, or in group settings.

Homeschooling: Everyone on Board

Homeschooling requires a lot of time, responsibility and flexibility. It also goes much more smoothly if the entire family agrees that homeschooling is the right answer for the family. If one parent is for homeschooling and the other is not, then every bump in the road becomes a point of contention. Every setback can become a reason to stop homeschooling.

Homeschooling is individual for each student. Sometimes more than one method must be tried before the right method is found. It becomes necessary for both parents, even the whole family, to understand that setbacks happen, and one setback does not constituted failure. If all members of the family are not in agreement then minor setbacks can be used to declare homeschooling unsuccessful.

Homeschooling might not be for every family, or every child in every family. However, if you have looked through the items mentioned and decided that they do not pose a problem for your family then homeschooling might be for you. There are many positives to homeschooling, but each family should go into homeschooling knowing that it is still not considered mainstream, that there will be obstacles to overcome along the journey, and that it is not for everyone. If you think you can overcome the obstacles listed, then go ahead and consider homeschooling. It just might work for your family.

Live Virtual Class: The Burgeoning trend

Education brings man out of darkness. As the society becomes more enlightened, education takes the centrestage. The synergy of Internet network has created a technically favourable environment for elearning. The Internet is now the world's largest learning resource. It has opened new gateways for learning through various digital learning tools and also brought in the concept of live virtual class, which imitates a normal classroom.

Elearning technology has opened up a plethora of opportunities for students who require quality study support anywhere, anytime. The online classroom, which provides after school study support has become a much sought after option for students around the world. It creates a virtual collaborative learning environment and optimizes the learning process. The accessibility of virtual class is unprecedented. And at the same time students do not have to travel anywhere; they get teachers help from the comfort of home, 24x7.

Live Virtual Class is delivered on a platform truly built for a smooth, seamless interaction between the student and the tutor. Classroom activities like usage of white board technology and personalized attention make learning more interactive and stimulating. Online class makes the subject experts accessible to a wider audience irrespective of geographical boundaries. This promotes an effective dissemination of knowledge from tutor to student. The student gets an opportunity for one-on-one interaction with the tutor who allays the student’s concerns and answers all questions. It even enables a student to study with subject experts in real time - beyond the boundaries of school. Flexible and convenient in nature, these sessions allow the students to learn at their own pace.

Students may feel more confident in a Live Virtual Class, even during a real-time chat session, and can ask their queries without hesitation. Unlike a traditional teacher, the online tutor is available in real time to help the students. The subject experts deliver short lessons, which leaves enough time for practice and discussion to make the concepts clear. Short lessons are impractical in the traditional classroom setting due to the economics of travel.

Live Virtual Classroom allows dialogue and discussion to enable a better understanding of the complicated concepts. Further usage of state of the art multimedia tools enhances the learning experience. The online tutor uses power point presentations, SLMs, Mind Maps and other digital learning tools to explain the various topics during the online sessions .The tutor creates a learner driven study program which enables optimal interaction and active participation in the class. The online tutor improves understanding of the student through assessment features and regular feedback, which provide holistic study help.

If you have an Internet connection, a computer along with microphone and speaker, you can turn your room into a Live Virtual classroom at the click of a button. So if you are worried about your pending assignment, approaching exams, or just bugged by some mindboggling Math’s equations, just access the wonderful sites available online to help you score extra marks. Now is the time. Take charge of studies and put your best foot forward to ensure that you are at the helm of race to being the next class topper.

About the Author

Extramarks brings students, teachers and parents together on a single platform to ensure that a child excels academically. To know more about online education, live virtual class, e Learning, e-tutorial, school education support, CBSE, ICSE, and Rajasthan Board, log on to http://www.extramarks.com

Mind Maps: Maximize Your Learning Power

Growth in information and communication technologies (ICT) has brought an immense impact in the way education is imparted in today’s world. Elearning has emerged from being a radical idea to a mainstream-learning tool. The pervasive nature of Internet has helped in easy availability of sophisticated elearning technologies. The vast movement towards elearning is motivated by the extensive advantages that it offers to both the students and the professionals.

Elearning websites are a boon to this stressed out generation. Gen Z is turning to the Internet for help in learning and study support. New innovative websites are providing digital teaching aids to improve the teaching process. Various learning tools like Mind Maps, SLMs, Live Class, and Test Centre are making it easier for the students to study, comprehend and grasp intricate topics with considerable ease.

Mind Maps for students are important study tools as they augment the learning procedure and makes studying and understanding complex topics easier. These are graphical representational tools, which can be used to organize complex concepts through association and diagrams using key words. These simplify the learning method as our mind has a power to retain better through graphic and visual association.

Our brain functions best when it compares, integrates and synthesizes what is shown to it. It associates every word with an image or a concept. The mind forms associations almost instantaneously, and "mapping" allows you to write your ideas quicker than expressing them using only words or phrases. Various studies have proved that thinking visually improves our memorizing potential. These infact improve our creativity and foster innovative thinking pattern.

Mind Maps give an overview of large subject thus making memorizing the key points better. Through this tool, a picture gets embossed on our minds, thus, making it easier to recall. It becomes easier for the students to remember large amount of information through remembering a concise, but descriptive Mind Map. Due to their aesthetic appeal, students find them easier to recall, enjoyable to look at and study. Their attractive layout catches the eye and retains our attention, which makes it all the more easy to remember them.

Other than Mind Maps, Smart Learning Modules also facilitate learning. They aim to simplify the subject and reinforce understanding with the help of various graphics, animations and presentations. The chapters are explained using these methods, which aid in increasing the student’s attention and the subsequent retention powers. The contents are mapped as per class; subject and chapter that in turn form an immense help for a systematic study program.

Live Classroom imitates a classroom, which means that classes take place in real-time and connect the subject experts and students through the Internet. Students can solve their queries and interact with online tutors who are available 24x7.

In addition, Test Center is another pivotal feature of online learning. It comprises of previous years solved board papers, model test papers and practice papers to name a few. This exhaustive bank of questions help the students in assessing their concepts by taking regular tests and thus makes them more confident in facing the exams.

About the Author

Extramarks brings students, teachers and parents together on a single platform to 

ensure that a child excels academically. To know more about online education, mind map, online class, school education support, CBSE, ICSE, e learning and Rajasthan Board, log on to www.extramarks.com

Hassle Free Online Quiz For Students

Author: Extramarks

Solving puzzles is an innovative way to develop an interest in the subject area. During the early years of student life they used to keep away from tests. Doing online quiz was a much-dreaded affair and students were under constant pressure from their parents to do well in the subject in test. As for students, the simple mention of words like formulas, theorems, trigonometry and probability could instantly send me into a state of distress. A student used to wonder why he has forced to learn these ‘mindless theorems' and what purpose would it serve to learn that formula. They has after all not really planning to do a PhD, But what possibly did not realize back then is the immense advantage that being comfortable with numbers brings to us in our lives in general.

With an online quiz you can usually choose from multiple question types to ensure you find the right one for your audience. With most software you will be offered a choice of at least true/false, fill in the blank, multiple choice and short answer question types. But some online quiz organizer has more variety of question types and allows you to shuffle questions and provide instant feedback to test takers.

A student should be fond of general knowledge! Co-curricular activities are part of our studies. And in co-curricular activities, general knowledge is important. For everybody however clever, general knowledge is necessary. Did you know that answering a free General knowledge quiz might provide you with some insight into yourself that you may not have known previously? So here is some exciting stuff for you! Here are some questions for you to improve your general knowledge with their answers. The questions are taken randomly from various fields. There are questions from Politics, Games, Current Affairs, Bollywood, Technology, Fashion, etc. The answers are provided here for you to not to be finding anywhere else. Read on and try to give answers yourself without reading answers. This questionnaire will help you improving knowledge and impress your friends with that.

The online quizzes offering course ware and general knowledge questions allow the students to recognize their individual errors, thereby creating an individual learning experience. Also several sites offering these informative online quizzes allow for detailed feedback report on the performance of the student. These reports contain detailed explanations of topics covered in the quiz together with correct answers for the questions. The student may even retry these online quizzes and learn from his/her mistake. Participating in these online quiz offering fun trivia and general knowledge questions is a fun to way to test ones knowledge and increase IQ.

There are many ways to do that on the Internet. One of most effective way is to join rewards based online quiz sites. Why these quiz sites are important? There are many reasons for that: First, if you want to test your knowledge, scores in these quizzes can easily tell your level. Second, you can use these quizzes to increase your knowledge because it also corrects you if you give any wrong answers. Third, many of online quiz sites are free to use, so you don't need to pay anything. Forth, you can play these quizzes any time of the day when you are FREE, which makes them very convenient and flexible. And last but not the least; you may also win some prizes, which gives you the feeling that at least you have not wasted your time.

About the Author

Extramarks brings students, teachers and parents together on a single platform to 

ensure that a child excels academically. To know more about online quiz, online test, supermind quiz, online education, e Learning, e-tutorial, school education support, CBSE, ICSE, log on to http://www.extramarks.com.