Educational Media, Home-School Basics

Educational Media

Traditional Media

These are the traditional print media.

Textbooks. Christian texts for all grade levels in all subject areas are available. Workbooks, teachers’ manuals, and supplementary materials also are available.

Worktexts. Combinatin text/workbooks can be purchased with or without supplementary materials.

Books. Use quality books from libraries or from other sources to supplement or motivate. Interlibrary loan allows you to borrow books from other libraries.

Unit Studies. Prepared unit study materials give suggestions for activities, assignments, and resources targeted to each grade level and learning style and relating several subject areas to one theme.

Newspapers and Periodicals. Current papers and magazines can be useful.

Electronic Media

The development of courses that use forms of electronic media has expanded the options available to home educators.

Audio Tapes. Audio tapes can contain instruction, discussions, drills, songs, etc.

Video Courses. Instructors are video- taped giving lectures complete with diagrams and other visual media. Class discussions are often taped as well. Videos can be stopped, rewound, and watched again until the content is grasped.

Computer Courses. Curriculum on CD-ROM includes a series of lessons with questions and automatic grading. Multimedia is interesting to students.

Satellite Broadcast. An assortment of classes or workshops on a variety of topics are available as a 24-hour a day, flexible, in-home satellite program.

Online Classes. Internet-based classes might present read-only material from a lecture or text or include audio and video tapes of a classroom setting. Opportunity to communicate with an instructor via e-mail or chat room may be added. Real-time discussion groups with teachers and/or other students using print only or added audio (conference call) or video (video-conferencing) may also be available. Work is submitted to an instructor.

Internet Research. Information on any subject can be found on the Internet.

Correspondence Courses Complete programs are available that incorporate traditional and/or electronic media and include consultations, recordkeeping, and/or accreditation.