How much technology is too much for your homeschool?
There’s no single right approach to using technology in your homeschool, but here are some things to keep in mind as you’re figuring out your family’s perfect balance.
Technology can be a homeschooler’s best friend — but like any good thing, technology can take over more ground than you want if you let it. There’s no single right approach to using technology in your homeschool, but here are some things to keep in mind as you’re figuring out your family’s perfect balance.
“Learn how to use media responsibly.”
Technology is awesome, and whether you set strict limits or no limits at all, the most important thing you can do is teach your child how to use media responsibly. “Kids need to learn how to make media part of their lives, but in a planned, sensible way,” says Marjorie Hogan, a pediatrician at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The key, Hogan says, is to figure out a healthy media diet that balances technology with other parts of a full life. Kids should work with their parents to figure out the right amount of media consumption for their days and to understand how to make good choices about media.“We don't want to demonize media, because it's going to be a part of everybody's lives increas- ingly, and we have to teach children how to make good choices around it, how to limit it and how to make sure it's not going to take the place of all the other good stuff out there.”
“Enjoy the possibilities technology offers.”
Erin Elliot lives in a little town in South Carolina, but her 12-year-old daughter has friends all over the world who share her Minecraft obsession. Her town doesn’t have another homeschool family, much less a secular homeschool co-op, but Elliot’s daughter takes science and history classes online. “We couldn’t homeschool without technology,” Elliot says. Online classes and resources have made home- schooling possible for the Elliot family. Because technology is so important for her family, Elliot is very relaxed about screen time, though she says she would set limits if she felt like technology was creating a situation where her daughter didn’t have offline activities. “She plays outside, she takes karate, she volunteers at the library, she reads all the time, and yeah, she also spends a lot of time online. It’s how our homeschool works.”
“Be realistic about educational screen time.”
Online learning can be a big plus for homeschoolers, but researchers at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a nonprofit research and production institute affiliated with the Sesame Workshop, say families aren’t always realistic about the way their kids spend time online. Less than half the time the average 2- to 10-year-old spends online involves consuming educational material, they found. “A lot of homeschoolers think, oh, it’s online, it’s educational, and online resources have been a great boon to homeschooling families,” says homeschool mom and pediatrician Laura Reynolds, M.D. “But it’s awfully easy to default to device, and we’re often tricking ourselves into thinking that technological habit is more educationally based than it actually is.” Not all learning takes place on educational sites, but it’s important to have a clear picture of what’s happening online if you want to make the right decisions for your family.
“Don’t trade real-life social experiences for virtual ones.”
A group of California sixth-graders who turned off their devices for a week of outdoor adventure were better able to read facial and nonverbal cues than their plugged-in peers, discovered researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It only took five days to see a marked difference,” says Patricia Greenfield, a senior author of the study and professor of psychology at UCLA. “We really need to be sure that children are getting enough face-to-face interaction to be competent social beings. Our species evolved in an environment where there was only face-to face-interaction. Since we were adapted to that environment, it's likely that our skills depend on that environment. If we reduce face-to-face interaction drastically, it’s not surprising that social skills would also get reduced.” For homeschoolers who want empathetic, socially intelligent kids, this might mean prioritizing field trips, park days, and other face-to-face activities over — or at least proportionate with — online activities.
