Find out why WizIQ is the best platform for homeschooling

Home-Schooling is becoming commonplace in the United States. According to the National Home Education Research Institute, there are more than 2 million children being educated at home, and the population is growing by 2-8% each year. Home-based, parent-led education is also growing in other countries, such as Australia, Canada, Hungary, Japan, Kenya, and the United Kingdom. Families that home-school know that students do not need a “School” to learn.

WizIQ is a platform for online teaching and learning. It is a virtual space where people- even children- can learn together, from their own homes. Classes can happen at a certain day and time with live communication or can happen asynchronously. In the asynchronous classroom, students work from the same videos and learning activities, but they watch the video and do the learning activities whenever it is convenient for them.

How WizIQ support home schooling?

Parent-teachers can easily use the WizIQ platform to explore ideas or share curricula with other children. The classroom is equipped with:

1. White-boards, that parent-teachers and students can write on, and that everyone can simultaneously see. The white board can be blank, or preloaded with the class’s material. Images, photographs and text can all be easily and quickly shared.
2. An audio-visual projector. Videos can be found online or created especially for the class. Parent-teachers can pause the video as needed to provide background information or ask questions to be sure that the students understand the concept being discussed. Also, students can create videos and easily share them with their classmates.
3. A library of unimaginable proportions. Before class, parent-teachers can upload content from their personal files or from the Internet into their WizIQ library. They can also use educational resources such as Khan Academy, which makes hundreds of lectures available for free. When they want to use the material in class, it can be brought up almost instantly.
4. The ability for students to speak and write with each other and the teacher. The teacher is in charge of the controls and can allow students to talk and interact with each other.
5. Intuitive feedback methods. When there are too many students to allow all of them to talk, students can respond to teachers by clicking on the “thumbs up” or “smile” button.

How WizIQ can support home school learners?

1. Time and Space to Process Ideas: While learning together has a definite power, one of the wonderful things about web-based learning is the ease with which students can repeat lessons. All of the lessons on WizIQ are recorded, so if a student needs to watch something several times to understand it, he can. At the end of the day, a parent can actually see the class, and can help a student with anything that was misunderstood.
2. Engage Multiple Ways of Learning: Web-based curricula are often organized to engage multiple ways of learning. Curricula will have a reading, videos, online activities, and actual activities for children to do, as well as questions for them to respond to. With WizIQ, the student could do these activities together, so that they could discuss the results as they were happening. Kids would be able to read, talk, observe and watch videos about the concept that they were trying to understand. Furthermore, they can watch the whole class again later if there was something that they needed to review. The Mysterious M&M curriculum is wonderful and fairly typical of what can be found in just a few minutes online.
3. A Safe Online Environment: Along with the world of possibilities comes a world of concern. The Internet is simply not a safe place for students to be exploring, unless a parent is immediately present. Even news stories have become the stuff of nightmares, and there is reason to be nervous when your children are simply doing a routine search on a topic of interest to them. The beauty of WizIQ is that there is no unchaperoned exploration of the World Wide Web. Your children will not accidentally stumble upon a news story of cannibals or serial killers. They will log on to their account, where they will be greeted by a teacher whom you know and trust.
4. A learning community: Kids simply need other kids. Children will rally to write something that they know will be read by their classmates, but bristle when mom wants them to write. The research done by The Teacher’s College reading and Writing Project of Columbia University found that real authors and writers create for an audience, yet we continually expect children to create for a teacher or a parent. They found that by creating an authentic audience of peers, children’s motivation to write and to create immediately increased. Having regular, pleasant contact with a learning community makes all other aspects of the learning experience easier. How WizIQ can support home school learners: 5 How WizIQ Can Support Home-Schooling Families Parents who home-school also recognize that their kids need this community, but the peer group is geographically separate. The WizIQ classroom is a solution. Students could meet together once each month in person and then once each week online, or on some other schedule that would provide them with continual interaction. The kids benefit from each other’s learning, but no one has to get in a car.
   While the WizIQ classroom is a really great place to teach, it is also a fun place to “be”. The whiteboard is equipped with gadgets and tools that are utterly delightful to young people. Together, students could make goofy drawings to define vocabulary words or create silly stories to learn about grammar. In small groups, it would be easy to let all of the students talk to each other. This sort of camaraderie, which is certainly more effective if supplemented by actual time to play together in person, is brilliantly fostered by regular online communication.
5. Interesting Curricula: The possibilities are as endless as the Internet. Never before in the history of the world have students had access to this much information, and much of it is well-made. Khan Academy, for example, is a free, web based curriculum which has hundreds of interesting videos about math, humanities and the economy. There are also many online curricula that are impeccably made, and are available for a small fee. Intellego Unit studies (www.intellegounitstudies.com) has social studies curricula available for k-12, organized into units, with videos, activities, and web-based lessons. Home-school kids could watch the video together, at a certain time with a parent-teacher, who could check in with kids to make sure that they understood.

Whitepaper, How WizIQ Can Support Home-Schooling Families outlines how WizIQ supports each of these needs. WizIQ Virtual Classroom is used by colleges, universities, K-12 schools, and businesses in order to deliver many forms of distance and blended instruction. The WizIQ’s eLearning platform is also unique in its flexibility, working just as well for homeschooling parents as it does for online universities.

Download this free whitepaper to
-Learn how WizIQ, through its robust functionality, supports home-school learners
-Get great ideas on managing the curriculum of your children, across grades

Download this whitepaper now and equip yourself with the tools to successfully teach your children at home and make their learning experience more rewarding.