Online Homeschooling

Many parents are very confident about homeschooling their children in elementary school and in middle school, but are worried about homeschooling their teenagers through high school.

We believe that homeschooling through high school is not only possible, but has many benefits, for both the child and the parents.

Homeschooling through high school: concerns

Of course, it’s important to choose a fully accredited high school homeschooling program that offers a full, rigorous high school curriculum. This would enable your child to receive a high school diploma and easily transition to college.

It is also important to make sure the child engages in competitive sports and in other extracurricular activities that develop her potential and help her to get into the best colleges.

While many parents are worried about not being able to help their child with their high-school level learning, they need to realize that the public school system does not really provide that much support to students who show major learning difficulties, so that in most cases, it’s either up to the parents to help, or they need to hire tutors. If helping your student with the advanced material is of concern, the same concern exists whether they are home schooled or go to public school.

Homeschooling through high school: advantages

One of the biggest advantages of homeschooling a teenager is that they are so independent. Homeschooling is perfect for them, enabling them to manage their own education (with your supervision of course). For you, this means significantly less time spent teaching and supervising, and more time to pursue your own interests. Of course, 3D online homeschooling is especially suited for teens, who enjoy virtual worlds and texting for leisure, and appreciate being able to incorporate those into their learning.

Another advantage of homeschooling teens is that you are relieving them from the intense peer pressure and the need to conform that are so prevalent in the typical public school classroom. You are allowing your teen to focus on academics and to socialize in a safe, violence and drug free environment. Sure, teens need to socialize – but is the public school classroom atmosphere the best place for that? We think it can actually be a very emotionally damaging atmosphere for many teenagers, who would do so much better socializing in a more natural, mixed-age, accepting environment.

We love online homeschooling and believe that it’s very suitable for many types of students, including gifted students and special needs students. But online homeshooling has the potential to be just as dry and boring as traditional schooling! This is why we are so excited about 3D immersive education for K-12 students.

3D immersive education is a virtual reality and game-based learning method. It combines interactive 3D graphics, game and simulation technology, virtual reality, voice chat, Web cameras and rich digital media with collaborative online course environments and classrooms to give students a wonderful sense of “being there” even when they learn from a distance. 3D immersive education is fun and exciting for children, and it provides both teachers and students with the ability to connect and communicate in a way that greatly enhances the distant learning experience.

Traditionally, 3D immersive platforms were available only to university students, but today, online schools such as WiloStar3D are offering next-generation immersive education in the form of a fully accredited 3D immersive learning curriculum for K-12 students.

Unlike traditional computer-based learning systems, which can be repetitive and boring, Immersive Education is fun – in fact it’s just as fun as a video game, only it’s educational and provides your child with a fully accredited online learning experience that can take them all the way through high school and allow them to continue to college. While old-world educators often dismiss the importance of “fun” in learning, next-generation educators know better. When learning is fun and exciting, children do much better academically. They are more challenged, and material retention rates are significantly higher.

Immersive Education is very suitable for intelligent, independent students and for creative and visual learners. It supports self-directed learning while also offering social interaction in the form of collaborative group-based learning environments and 3D classrooms.

To us, Immersive Education is simply a tool – a wonderful tool to get students excited about learning.

Asperger’s Syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder. Children diagnosed with Asperger’s show significant difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. Unlike autistic children, Asperger’s children preserve higher levels of linguistic and cognitive development.

Children with Asperger’s are not mentally challenged. In fact, many of them are gifted. They are however socially impaired and need a lot of patience and one-on-one adult interaction, both of which are not typically available in a traditional school setting.

Aspie children are essentially socially impaired and have a very hard time socializing with other kids. With ongoing training and lots of adult feedback and assistance they can learn basic social skills, but they’ll probably always seem “different” to other kids, which often means rejection, bullying and taunting.

Many parents to Aspie children decide at some point that public school is simply not a good environment for their child. For some families, small private schools provide the answer, while for others, homeschooling is the perfect solution.

Aspie kids often flourish when homeschooled because they are removed from a stressful social situation and can focus their energies on academics, and on gentle, guided socializing. Unlike the harsh classroom environment at school, the homeschooled Asperger’s child can experience positive social experiences through family activities and homeschool group activities, where, unlike school, parents are there to help, guide and give gentle feedback.

3D online homeschooling is especially suited to Asperger’s children because many Aspie kids flourish in an online 3D environment, which they perceive as safer and less threatening than face to face interaction. Research shows that face-to face interactions are extremely difficult for people with Asperger’s while interactions via computer virtual environment technology are more manageable because they tend to be slower than face-to-face interactions. Slowing down the rate of interactions may provide users with autism-type disorders with time to think of alternative ways of dealing with a particular situation, thus reducing their anxiety level.

Of course, we are not recommending that kids with Asperger’s be totally removed from in-person social situations. But we do believe that the combination of online, special needs homeschooling and gentle, supervised real-life social exposure is very beneficial to Aspie kids and enables them to reach their full potential, academically and socially.