With homeschooling on the rise, there has been the need for easy and faster access to information, collaboration, and engagement amongst instructors and students of distant learning. And to facilitate learning, educators have opted for technology, deploying various educational tools and equipment to enable access and delivery of content.
In fact, technological trends like collaborative tools, learning management systems, assistive and online productive equipment has ensured faster and easy homeschooling. Now, institutions and instructors can effectively offer online classes and assessments regardless of the location of learners.
However, one major challenge while providing training, especially homeschooling is finding the correct type of technology that favors all kinds of homeschoolers. Here are some of the key considerations while choosing educational technology for homeschooling.
The technology used should:
Be Easy To Use
Though it’s good to introduce different techniques to support homeschooling, the technology used should be easy to navigate. Teachers and students do not have to struggle to find what each feature does or navigate the application.
So, choose the technology that is quick to respond and can perform different actions with less effort. Also, ensure the application or software used is intuitive; that learners can seamlessly maneuver through various dashboards, checking, doing, and submitting assignments.
Learners get discouraged when they have to operate cluttered platforms, and the chances are high they would be frustrated and log out. Therefore, you must ensure you get a technology that makes it easy to get what you’re looking for. Those that are readily identifiable to speed up the learners’ learning curve.
Accessible
Students would want to log in and access various functions like tests, assignments, and other learning resources. So, ensure the technology you choose is easily accessible. The students can get the content they need from any part of their world.
You must also ensure the learners have every tool and equipment needed. For instance, provide the students has access to laptops, tablets, and stable internet, among other electronic devices. These would ensure they complete a task and catch up on other learning materials.
Ensure the Technology Is Easy to Integrate
To make learning more effective, educators need to have technologies that can easily talk to each other; technology that allows the integration of different devices. Besides, students would easily be engaged and motivated if they find a more lively technology.
For this reason, ensure you choose technology with response features to allow students to get and send feedback to various concerns. Through the feedback features, the students can adjust and interact in real-time.
Let the feedback options be kept loop even after the classes are over. This would further students’ interaction and engagement as they can collaborate or ask questions, or share issues amongst themselves.
Also, ensure the technology allows various means of communication and collaboration like videos, audios, images, and tutorials. This ensures that the students get content in different formats, increasing their knowledge board.
The Technology Should be Customizable
Effective technology should have the capacity for customization. For instance, there are situations when the instructors and learners need to adjust, edit or make some changes to their works. The technology chosen should give the chance to devise the platform to suit their needs.
Offer Consistent Feel and Look
As much as new developments and inventions would be, the technology use should not entirely change its appearance. Besides, it is not that there would be some experts to explain features to learners continuously. Therefore, consider choosing technology with consistent features across the board regardless of the device used. This would ensure that the student experience is dynamic, especially when looking for assignments, among other resources.
Cost Effective and Time-efficient
Before you decide on using technology, it would be wise to consider your budget. So, factor in the amount of money the technology will cost. There could be cheap options that would break or fail to work for long. Also, there could be expensive education technologies with minimal maintenance costs. So, it would help if you had long-lasting and effective technologies that would best serve you for long.
Also, consider the efficiency of the technology. How fast or slow is the technology? Therefore, go for technology that would quickly help prepare the digital content, thus saving time.
Conclusion
Technology plays a critical part in every aspect of our lives, and homeschooling is not exceptional. It ensures faster interactions and collaboration between teachers and students. And to enjoy the various benefits, you must ensure you choose the technology that suits your needs.