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:

http://homeeducationwithcurriculum.blogspot.co.uk/

Mr Smile's Happy Blog:

http://mrsmileshappyblog.blogspot.co.uk/

YouTube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcLU3-z3qSim7HUnv72K1-A

Facebook

Inspire To Write:  https://www.facebook.com/InspireToWrite?ref=hl

Helen:  https://www.facebook.com/helen.mason.585

David (not that he ever logs on!):  https://www.facebook.com/david.mason.5454021

Twitter

Business @mason_creative- https://twitter.com/mason_creative

Helen @MrsSelfPub - https://twitter.com/MrsSelfPub

LinkedIn

Helen:  https://www.linkedin.com/pub/helen-mason/16/925/7a8

David (not that he ever logs on!): https://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-mason/3a/582/391

Experienced home educators' blog

Hello there!

I have started this blog specifically on home education following interest in posts on my blog that covered our self-employment, travel and home education lifestyle.  I decided that the home education merited its own dedicated blog.

We live in the UK and have six children.  We chose home education when the oldest two were 10 and 12 years old (they are currently 22 and nearly 24).  The younger four children are currently 10, 12, 14 and 16 years of age.

Back in 2002, we became increasingly disillusioned with the lack of breadth to the curriculum being forced on English state schools and the increasing drive for so-called "improved results" year on year at GCSE.  The emphasis on measuring pupils' performances seemed to mean that education, in the true sense, was deemed secondary to the statistics.  While we genuinely sympathised with the teaching staff's predicament, we voted with our feet and jumped out of the system.

Although initially we allowed a few months of autonomous de-schooling, it soon became apparent that the children responded to a structure for their studies.  This may have been because they had grown used to it at school.  We decided to opt for a home curriculum of our own design.  This focused on English and Maths while we found our feet; other subjects were covered less formally through museum visits, workshops etc.

I will post more information on our journey in coming weeks/months but suffice it to say that we succeeded in our aims and continue to do so with our younger four who have never attended school.

If you would like to learn more about our journey or ask any questions, please follow this blog.