Pandemic homeschooling has been a big part of many parents lives for the last few months. Educating your kids while doing your own job at home turns out to be really hard!
I’ve been experimenting with a new format for educating my kids (two 8-year-old boys) and their cousins (8 and 9 year olds), and it works surprisingly well. It requires 1 parent giving about 50% attention, and works for 5 kids, so it is a lot more efficient than each parent teaching their kids 1-on-1. Parents take turns running the “pod”.
The kids all log onto zoom together and take turns sharing their screen. They each spend about 5 minutes working on Khan Academy math exercises. It looks like this:
Watching other kids do math turns out to be surprisingly engaging for kids. It’s weirdly like pair programming, and also a bit like twitch. The person who has the screen feels like they are the center of attention, and the other kids want to see how they do, want to help, want to compare themselves. When one kid is stuck another kid will jump in and explain how to do the problem. When they finish a section, or when 5 minutes are up, the next kid shares her screen and the does whatever section they have next in their Khan Academy.
Khan academy is amazing. It started out good and has gotten better and better over the years. The MOOC boom of 2013–14 lead to a lot of excitement and investment, and there’s been years of maturing and optimizing since then. At this point Khan Academy is a full-fledged curriculum for grade school kids. But Khan Academy and other MOOCs weren’t as successful as pundits thought they would be, mostly because they lacked a real-time social cohort. Doing stuff with other people is a major motivating factor for kids and grownups alike.
What I’ve learned is that you can add that social layer easily with video conferencing. And it works great with kids (who have spent the pandemic months becoming experts in video conferencing).
I’m going to keep experimenting with this format, and will post more updates with some trick and tips for making your pod school a success. If you’re interested in trying this format let me know: I would love to share what I’ve learned from trying this, and find out how it works when you try it.
how to school during a pandemic 