Doing it our way: Striking the right balance with technology

Let's face it, technology plays a huge part in modern life. When it comes to home education, it would be much more difficult without the resources available via the internet. I have also seen much more happening via social networking in recent years. However, it is all to easy to let it run away with you until suddenly you look around and wonder how it came to be that you are spending too much time sitting on your backside in front of a screen and not enough time at a table (or elsewhere) with your children.

Our home education journey has come a long way since the early days. Back then, we were concentrating on teaching the children to read, hold a pencil, draw and do maths verbally. Progress led to workbooks and writing LOADS of stories. Diaries also worked very well. However, the majority of the days were spent playing with friends and going out en famille.

Time passed and workbooks became textbooks for the older ones whilst the early years projects started with the younger ones. More time passed and the phases shifted again. Exams: did we need or want to do them early? Yes, we did. Only at this point did the use of computers become more significant.

Now I look around me and see that too much time is spent in front of screens. Personally, I have to spend more and more time here than previously in order to run our business and earn the money to pay the bills, to fund the trips, to pay for the books de-da-de-da-de-da... this is increasingly the modern way. However, the example I set in doing so then seems to have given the rest of the family the idea that this is the example to follow.

I do not believe it is right and so I am going to re-structure our home education to return to our core values with selective and judicious use of technology.

Watch this space!

P.S. This means I may be writing shorter blog entries and automating the other "stuff". Here is a list of all my digital presences so you can see how it has taken over.

P.P.S. Whoever said that computers "save time"?

Inspire To Write main website

http://www.inspiretowrite.co.uk/

Full publication list on our website

http://www.inspiretowrite.co.uk/book-shop.aspx

Music CDs on our website and links to digital downloads

http://www.inspiretowrite.co.uk/music-shop.aspx

Listmania link to all the ebooks available on Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ebooks-by-David-J-Mason-children-s-author-and-poet/lm/R1PMWOFUSIVUGO/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full

BLOGS

Our experiences of self-publishing/epublishing:

http://guidetoselfpublishinguk.blogspot.co.uk/

Our home education blog: