One reason for choosing to homeschool our child was to limit the amount of “screen time.” As mentioned in a previous post, the remote instruction of last spring did not work for our high-sensory child with poor eyesight. Meltdowns, headaches, and blurred vision were common occurrences. Homeschool allows use of print copies and time for hand-written notes, approaches I have encouraged my college students to utilize for years. Paper and pen positively affect learning in ways that a screen can not. (For a quick read on the connection between handwriting and brain activity, see Olsen’s article in Forbes.)
I also realize, however, that technology can enhance the learning experience in a multitude of ways. So in an effort to encourage our child’s computer science interest and expand our child’s technology proficiency, I purposely searched for educational technology tools that could seamlessly be integrated into our lessons and activities. The tools we chose had to be readily available online or via a simple download, offered at no or minimal cost (I already had a subscription to some tools that I had used in the college classroom), and had clearly delineated privacy and data use policies. Here’s a list of what we used this past year, with Canva being the tool that we used most often.
3D animation and modeling tools: Blender, LightWave3D, SketchUp
Bulletin board style collaboration tools: Padlet, Trello
Graphics tools: Adobe Spark, Canva, PiktoChart
Online whiteboard / mindmapping tools: Coggle, Miro, Popplet
Presentation tools: Prezi, Powtoon, VoiceThread
Video editing tools: Animoto, Camtasia, Filmora, WeVideo
Other tools: NoodleTools (citation), Pixton (comics), Podbean (podcast), Soundtrap (music)