Homeschooling at Your Fingertips!
New technology has changed the face of education and opened up many new opportunities for home educators. Home Educating Family Magazine recently spoke to Dr. Niel Nielson and Mitch Smith, the founders of Dew Learning. Our discussion included technology as an educational tool and their new online, iPad-compatible curriculum.
HEF: What are some of the major changes that new technology has brought to education, homeschooling in particular, in the past decade?
Dew Learning: Real-time learning and today’s events enable our children to see God’s work in all areas of life, like creation, math, art, etc. Next, interactive images and quizzes validate that our children are gaining the knowledge we are trying to transfer. When you see it, hear it, and do it, your level of comprehension goes from 10 percent up to 80 percent.
HEF: What are some of the potential problems that this technology brings with it?
Dew Learning: Like any technology, it must be managed. You can’t simply hand a computer or iPad to a child and walk away. The parent needs to work with the child through a lesson and teach them how to safely utilize the internet for additional apps, research, and activities.
HEF: Some parents are concerned that current technology tends to isolate kids too much. What’s your take on this?
Dew Learning: The isolation challenge isn’t really new. I remember my parents telling me to put down the book I was reading or turn off the television—I could get lost for hours in the world of Treasure Island or a college football game. Parents will always have to be parents, setting priorities and limits.
HEF: What made you decide to produce the Dew Learning Curriculum?
Dew Learning: Dew Learning was born from a desire by Mitch Smith, co-founder, to get curriculum for kindergarten through twelfth grade in the same medium his children most often used when engaging other forms of content. Watching his wife homeschool their three children, he saw her use print-based curriculum that was often outdated. She frequently had to rely on YouTube and the Internet for engaging activities, learning tools, instructional games, video, and current events. Likewise, Dr. Niel Nielson, co-founder, was helping in the development of international Christian schools in Asia, and saw the dual challenge of accessible, affordable, academically sound Christian curriculum, on the one hand, and resources and support for teachers, on the other. He also saw the rapid spread of technology providing access to the internet and the potential for digital delivery of curriculum. These two men were introduced via their third partner, Daryl Heald, whose children were both homeschooled and attending Christian private school. Daryl recognized the possibility of digital solutions for both homeschool and Christian schools.
HEF: What was the development process like, and how long did it take?
Dew Learning: It took our team twelve months to develop curriculum for kindergarten through fourth grade in eight subjects, while developing the Servant Interactive Platform that allows the team to create, edit, and publish the curriculum to the iPad app and web browser.
We began by hiring Dr. Melba Riddle, who wrote the scope and sequence, table of contents, and objectives for each subject and lesson. She and Niel interviewed many curriculum writers from across the country, exploring not only their academic and pedagogical capabilities but also their Christian testimony and understanding of Christian education. Out of that process, we hired the writers who have written our content.
HEF: What are the advantages of an online curriculum that might appeal to homeschoolers?
Dew Learning: First, you won’t have three to four books on the kitchen table for each child. Second, our children can engage with an up-to-date curriculum that includes historically proven content, but which is also continually updated. Third, the curriculum is in a medium with which our children currently access other forms of content.
iPads and apps address each level of cognition: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
One of the greatest assets of developing curriculum in this digital platform is that it is constantly living. At any time, in any lesson, we can insert updated text, activities, videos, and reports on current news events, coming from such trusted sources as God’s World News. With engaging media and activities, our tools help the parent transfer key educational learning elements to our children.
HEF: Currently, kindergarten through fourth grades are available. When will you be adding additional grades?
Dew Learning: We will be adding grades five through eight in May of 2014 and grades nine through twelve in May of 2015.
HEF: How much parental involvement and prep time is required with Dew Learning?
Dew Learning: With our lesson objectives, lesson plans, and suggested lesson activities, the time required to prepare for each lesson can be minimal. Parental involvement would naturally be greater in earlier grades, and then would be reduced, as the parent determines, year to year. Some subjects or subject areas require more or less ongoing parental involvement.
HEF: Did you have any concerns that kindergarten and early elementary students might be too young for an online curriculum?
Dew Learning: Young children seem to be especially adept at utilizing electronic media; they are, as many have said, “digital natives.” An asset of Dew Learning’s curriculum for early ages is that all lessons in kindergarten and first grade are narrated, so children can both see and hear the words. This suits both auditory and visual learning styles. It also enables the parent to manage multiple children in their daily schooling.
HEF: Why did you decide to go with a subscription-based service, rather than a purchased software program?
Dew Learning: For our family (Mitch), a closet full of old homeschool books really provided us no benefit. Given the uniqueness of each of our children, we rarely used the same curriculum year to year. When my wife would take our used books to a used homeschool book sale or sell them on Amazon, the money she got was rarely worth the effort. Dew Learning’s subscription pricing enables a family to use our curriculum cost effectively without feeling the need to recoup funds spent on much more expensive books that won’t be used with the next child. We initially priced our content for a homeschool family budget. Current numbers suggest a homeschool family spends $500 per year per child. Our current pricing has all eight courses for a child at $367.
HEF: I think we’ll see more resource and curriculum publishers taking advantage of the newest mobile technologies the way Dew Learning has. It’s an exciting time for home educators. When properly managed, digital content and media has the potential to enhance our children’s education and spark a love of learning that will serve them well no matter how much technology changes in the years to come.
This article appeared in Family Magazine 2013, Issue 3. Click here to learn more.
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