With schools shut, to flatten the coronavirus curve, parents around the globe have got a new job -homeschooling their children.

The pandemic has made us restrict all the three primary aspects of our lives to home: work, school, and family gatherings.

Most of the summer examinations have been cancelled, leaving numerous students dangling. For younger children, particularly those in grade school, there

has been a surge in homeschooling with parents available at home 24/7, thanks to the lockdown.

Could this now signal a new dawn for parenthood? Will this pandemic, resulting in the spread of homeschooling, lead to an enduring revolution in the way parents will bring up their offspring?

 

Evidence of Digital Homeschool Revolution from around the Globe

According to The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-Education schools in more than 100 countries around the globe are shut to protect against the spread of coronavirus: this has impacted the education of more than 1 billion children. For the fortunate ones, homeschooling will replace their traditional school, and virtual classrooms will be their learning platform.

In certain parts of the world, it will be down to guardians to prop up their child’s education, in the best way possible. Digital advances are key to supporting learning at home and making it as engaging and productive as possible.

Until the pandemic shut schools, just a minority of children were educated at home. In fact, homeschooling  was often considered inferior. In the United States, approximately 1.7 million kids were self-taught out of a national school populace of 56.6 million: a very small proportion of the population.

In a world now vulnerable to pandemics, the scenario is entirely different: homeschooling is now esteemed as it is the only resort to rescue the education of the young population. Around the globe, schools are utilising existing digital stages such as Microsoft and Google, together with newer conferencing applications like Zoom to educate their pupils.

In Japan, private organisations are offering web courses to students in lockdown through an advanced platform that allows students and guardians to pick which topic and subject they want to study. As more schools close, we should give further consideration to the most at-risk children, not just physically but also those who are vulnerable academically and psychologically.

In the interim, France has made “Mama classe à la Maison” (my study room at home), which can be downloaded on a variety of devices, for example a PC or a cell phone.

 

The Transformation of Education with K12 Online Schooling

As technology takes over from physical schooling during these challenging times, it is encouraging to see new and imaginative approaches to education being developed.

K12 is a term used predominantly in the United States and  Canada, amongst other nations. It stands for ‘k to twelve’ – kindergarten to 12^th grade, a publicly-supported program for grades prior to college.

The K12 Virtual Charter School provides education to students and applicants predominantly via the web or digital system. It works simply like the customary bricks and mortar schools we find in all countries, but operates virtually. The significant contrast between a traditional school and Online Public School from Home Programs is that the latter gives online training and an educational plan to homeschooled children.

The K12 Online Schooling tutoring framework depends totally on the web and effective application programming; thus, it requires an exact and capable programming supplier that bolsters online learning without any problems. In an online school, the study room can be comfortably accommodated within the home or outside, and on the go – any place where the internet is accessible. The entire K12 program is made available on the web: classes, attendance, initial enrollment etc. Testing of students, including placement testing, formative and  summative assessments, and homework drills are all conducted by utilising specialized adaptive testing software such as that provided by WebExaminer, including the K12 Placement Test Program, as used for over 10 years by k12.com

 

It is of course too soon to state that bricks-and-mortar schools will be ousted by e-learning made easy by K12 Online Schooling. However, the experience of a pandemic has given us a valuable opportunity to reconsider how we think about education and schooling.

 

Strengthening Parents & Homeschoolers

Currently, the world has been taken over by technology. As the pandemic has confined us to the walls of our home, there is huge demand for new ways to continue educating children. This means educators will not merely have to repeat their lessons in another medium, but also discover new ideas to make education fun, based on how individuals learn, where individuals learn and when they learn.

The possible after-effects could be that innovation has a much greater role to play in the classroom. Innovation cannot, by itself, change strategies for teaching and learning, but it can support instructors to provide better education to students at home.

WebExaminer is a leading supplier of e-evaluation programming and services, working with k12 and with blue-chip partners in the UK and US. It provides home school services to K12 Online School Programs to play out their capacities productively and adequately. WebExaminer is an innovator in its field, conveying modern and inventive online testing models effortlessly. Serving various customers and offering several different products, they are expert in providing bespoke e-evaluation services for K12 remote learning. With its Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT) technology, WebExaminer is empowering teachers, guardians, and tutors around the globe, giving students easy online access to tests while parents and teachers can monitor the students’ progress over time making homeschooling a rewarding learning experience for all.

Many people now believe that a lack of advanced innovation in the study room was impeding the learning of young children; this has now been addressed, thanks to the use of technology in homeschooling.

It seems the coronavirus pandemic has given us a glance at how homeschooling could transform to ‘Digital homeschooling,’ thereby giving rise to the possibility of a homeschooling revolution. Schools may never be the same again when they revive after COVID-19.