Introducing Home Schooled Students to an Online Classroom

The advantages of an online learning community for home-schooled students are extensive – students can interact with their classmates, parents can work together to organize and run classes, and homeschool cooperatives can supplement their face-to-face curriculum with a regular meeting in the online classroom.

Before kids can start learning online, both kids and their parent-teachers must become familiar with online classroom. When they are comfortable in the online classroom, you will easily be able to conduct lessons and courses.

Homeschooling is fast becoming common in the United States. Currently, 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.

The advantages of an online learning community for home-schooled students are extensive. Students can interact with their classmates and with ideas under your guidance, without leaving home. Parents can work together to organize and run classes, without being limited by distance. Homeschool cooperatives can supplement their face to face curriculum with a regular meeting in the online classroom, that way Home-schooled students can have easier access to other kids and the ideas and experiences that other kids can bring to them.

Before kids can learn online, though, both kids and their parent teachers must become familiar with the online classroom. This paper will give you all the information that you need to run an orientation session for homeschooled students. When your students are comfortable in the online classroom, you will easily be able to conduct lessons and courses. You will have a checklist of topics to cover, as well as step-by-step instructions and helpful visuals to cover them effectively. The paper assumes that you are very new to WizIQ and online teaching and it, therefore, gives very detailed instructions.

It will show you how to introduce students to:

• The whiteboard drawing tools
• The microphone
• Text boxes
• The chat box
• Break out rooms
• Poll questions

Schedule and launch the WizIQ class. Send your students and their parents the attendee link. Schedule them for 15 minutes intervals with one other student. You can then repeat the orientation with each new pair, every 15 minutes. If someone comes late, or if you have an extra student, it is easy to incorporate them into the lesson. Also, as there are few students, you will be sure that they are learning what they need to know.

This paper will give you all the information that you need to run an orientation session for home-schooled students along with a checklist of topics to cover, step-by-step instructions and helpful visuals.