Many parents I know want to limit the amount of time their children spend on screens, whether it be playing games, texting their friends or watching videos. Still, there is no getting around the fact that we live in a tech-connected world and most occupations require some level of technical skill.
Create online courses to teach your child, in minutes
Reasonably, you want to have some input into what your child is learning, that’s probably one of your motivations for home schooling. Maybe you are that perfect parent who sits with your child every moment while they are doing assignments. Or maybe you are a normal parent like the rest of us who have other children, other responsibilities.
Here is how to select from Google for Education to guide your children learning digital skills
First, go to the Applied Digital Skills page and sign up as a teacher. It is free to use. You may need to sign up for a Google account if you don’t already have one. Anyone can sign up as a teacher, you do not have to work for a school.
Second, create a class – it is as easy as clicking on the + sign you’ll see at the left of your screen.
Third, add your child or children to your class. They will need a Google account to be added. Then, you send them an email with the code to join and instructions. It’s very simple and the instructions on the site will give you a code. It says at the very bottom to share to Google classroom but it’s highly unlikely you will be using Google classroom at home. Just email your child or open the link below for them and and let them sign in with the code.
- Go to g.co/AppliedDigitalSkills
- Click “Sign in” in the top right
- Sign in with your Google account, or create a new one
- Click “I am a student“
- Click “Join a class” and enter class code (your code will be here)
Fourth and forever, after you have created your class, you can browse the lessons available and add whatever assignments you want your child to do to the class. If you have children at multiple levels, you can create multiple classes. The nice thing is, as your younger children move up, you can just add them to the next class by sending them to the same page and having them join.
If your children are new to using apps like email, Google docs for word processing, etc., I recommend starting with the Using Tools for Everyday Tasks lessons.
We’re going to start a new rating school here at homeschool-curriculum.org , because, why not?
One thumb up for ease of use: parent – easy for you, the parent, to obtain and implement. The interface is intuitive and the documentation walks you through the steps to create a class, assign students and assign lessons.
One thumb up for ease of use: student – most students from grade four and up should be able to follow these lessons. Please let us know if your student has any difficulty. All of the lessons we reviewed could be done by students independently.
One thumb up for cost – it’s free!
Half a thumb for interest – Students will probably be interested in the topics, like having their own email, setting a good password and making a presentation all about a topic.