Homeschool Technology Vs. Traditional Schools

Technology is an equal opportunity player when it comes to traditional public schools and homeschools. Because the public school administrative process is so slow, tedious, and fraught with a jungle of red tape, most schools today are stuck with technology that is a few years old. While a few years is no big deal in a Chevrolet or Ford, two years in the technology world is very apparent because of rapid technological advances, especially in computers.

Latest Computer Technology and a Growing Homeschool Market

The public school budgets that spent huge amounts of money on the "latest" technology years ago are currently stuck with computers that are years behind the current level of technology. Homeschools do not have this problem. The typical homeschooler has access to the latest and greatest available computer technology for the simple reason that only one computer is needed, and shared between one or two others.

Not only that, educational programs that used to only be available for public and private schools are now turning their bean-counting sniffers toward a new and emerging market - homeschool. As of 2007, over 1.5 million students are homeschooled according to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.

That represents an increase of 36 percent over the previous numbers. Based on these numbers, there are probably about 2 million homeschool students in the U.S. today. That represents a growing and thriving market and the folks who create educational materials are prepared to make the best educational materials available to homeschoolers as well as public schools.

Best Available Technology and Educational Materials go Online

Some of the best educational programs which were formerly only marketed to public schools are now being remade into homeschool versions. Apparently, these homeschool versions are more user-freindly, cheaper to produce, cost less, and are more efficient than the traditional classroom versions.

Better, Cheaper Curriculum for Homeschool

As more and more of this quality curriculum is made available online or in digital form, it becomes much easier to duplicate a traditional clasroom experience. Some proponents of these new curricula would even say that a typical classroom learning experience is far surpassed with the use of these new online and digital versions.

While public schools seem to be spending more and more time on non-academic pursuits in the classroom, homeschoolers are able to streamline the learning process, even learning at a pace that is suitable for each individual student. Marketers of educational materials are very aware of this and are creating more and more material designed specifically for the homeschool experience.

A Better Educational Experience

The new and ever increasing advances in technology are not the issue when it comes to whether a student gets a better education from a public school, or a homeschool environment. Technology can be a great help in teaching, and the latest technology can help students better prepare for the future. But there is more to teaching and education than technology. When it comes right down to it, the things that really matter are the quality of education and what sort of people our own kids turn out to be. each parent must carefully consider what is best for their own child.

Source: US Dept of Education