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Learning at home has a great many benefits like the ability to learn whenever and wherever you like. But distance learning is still getting an education and that means paying attention to the course material and presentations you receive online, and also the hard part of studying and doing your homework and assignments.
In order to be successful you will have to learn to avoid the day-to day distractions that exist in your current living arrangements and you will also need to develop good distance learning study habits. You need to create a routine and environment that is conducive to learning and the time and space to study and learn.
The basics of creating good distance learning study habits start with your physical surroundings. Your study space needs to be well-lit and ventilated and it also needs to be as free as possible from outside distractions like people, telephones, loud music and the greatest distraction of all, television. You wouldn’t let your kids do their homework in front of the big, blinking screen, so why do you think that you can learn while you are watching your favorite soap opera or reality show?
Create a special place in your home for your distance learning study program. It can be your kitchen if that is separate from the rest of your house. It can be your rec room or a newly cleaned storage area. It can also be your living room, as long as you turn off the television. As long as it is clean, uncluttered, and quiet it will work for you and your studies.
If you have enough room in your house or apartment then you might wish to consider purchasing a desk and organizing it so that you have everything you need near at hand and all in one place. Then find a good chair with strong support for your back as you listen and learn. It should be comfortable enough to study in, but not too comfortable that you want to take a nap. That comes after you have done your work. Organize all of your supplies and material around you and you are ready to get to work.
You also need to organize your time in order to develop good distance learning study habits. Set aside regular times to go online for your lessons unless they are pre-scheduled and allow for adequate time to study and complete assignments. Stick to your routine religiously unless an emergency happens and tell everyone, especially your friends that you will be unavailable during this period of time. Follow the basics to create a distance learning program that fits your life and your schedule and you will be well on the way to a productive and successful distance learning program.
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Let’s Google And Yahoo Our Kids’ Education
I love Google and Yahoo. With Google and Yahoo I can search the Internet on any subject that interests me, at any time day or night, in the comfort of my home. I was thinking how much fun it is to learn new things with Google or Yahoo, compared to the boredom or learning torture that public schools put millions of kids through every day.
Let’s consider the differences in how a typical child (we’ll call her Jenny) learns when she uses Google or Yahoo, compared to how she learns in her public-school classroom.
First, with Google or Yahoo, Jenny can explore any subject that fascinates her. She literally has the whole world at her fingertips. She can learn about tulips, cooking, dinosaurs, fashion, arithmetic, model airplanes, how to play the piano, or story books by thousands of authors.
When she is older, she can search dozens of Internet libraries, including the Library of Congress, for information on any subject under the sun.
In contrast, in her public-school classroom, Jenny must study only the subjects the teacher or school principal says she must study, even though these subjects might bore her to death.
Second, with Google or Yahoo at home, Jenny can spend as many hours as she wants studying any subject that fascinates her. If she likes flowers, she can spend all day learning about different flowers, how they grow, the best season to plant them, how sunlight helps them, or how much water each flower needs.
In contrast, in public school, Jenny usually spends about 50 minutes on each subject the school forces her to study. She has to go to a different class on a different subject every 50 minutes, even if she was interested in the subject she was studying in her previous class. This can strangle her interest in any one subject. For Jenny, public school turns learning into broken, disconnected bits of knowledge on subjects that often bore her.
Third, with Google and Yahoo, Jenny learns at her own pace. If she doesn’t understand something she reads about, she can ask her Mom or search Google and Yahoo to find the answer. She can spend as much time as she wants with a problem that intrigues her. Because she can learn at her own pace, she feels safe and comfortable learning with Google and Yahoo.
In her public-school class, however, Jenny has to learn all the material the teacher gives her in the specific time the teacher allows. Then (in later grades) the teachers will test her. If Jenny didn’t like to study the subjects the teacher told her to learn and did bad on her test, she can feel hurt and humiliated. She then associates learning with pain and humiliation. This in turn can extinguish Jenny’s joy in learning.
With Google and Yahoo, Jenny finds learning a constant joy. With public schools, more often than not, learning becomes a boring drudge or worse.
Government-controlled public schools will never give your kids the kind of joyous education they deserve, the kind your children can get in a homeschooling environment. At home, your kids can learn from Google, Yahoo, learning software, or hundreds of other low-cost education resources available to you right now.
So how can we Google and Yahoo our children’s education? Parents, you might seriously consider taking your children out of public school, permanently. Let your kids once again discover the joy of learning with education alternatives like Google and Yahoo, homeschooling, or low-cost, quality, Internet private schools.
I talk about all these great education alternatives for your children in my book, “Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children.”
By: Joel Turtel
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