The Online Option

I'm a big believer in technology despite the fact that many aspects of my life are still residing in the dark ages, a fact that my kids are more than happy to point out. Despite my old fashioned ways, however, I do think it's important to be at least somewhat up to date when it comes to the modern world, and this is especially true for young people. We are not as tech dependent as probably about 90% of our friends, but the kids are still managing to live in the 21st century, and large part of that is having laptops and being connected to the internet.

One area where this has worked out well is with education. In addition to learning a lot about countless subjects online, they are an incredible number of academic resources that they can use, and we've investigated several of them. It has worked out well for a number of subjects, and I get a sense that we've only touched the tip of the iceberg. I'm not saying that online learning is the perfect alternative to being in classroom, but for things like programming you can't beat it, and all in all it's worked out pretty well. For things like math their online work is more of a supplemental situation, and language provides a foundation to build on. It has thus far helped to encourage the kids to be self-disciplined and motivated, it provides a good structured lesson plan, and we get some proof of completion.

It's also nice because the kids are fairly tech savvy and nothing helps alleviate the tedium and boredom of school than getting to do it on the computer, where distractions abound but they do a good job of getting the work done. So far so good on this end.

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Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Kokocentral for the pic.