Using the iPad
By Sarah Dugger
Homeschooling with an iPad is quickly opening many doors. Resources that once cost hundreds of dollars and
took up a lot of space can now be acquired much cheaper and are portable.
Some of the favorite resources in our
home are educational games, E-Reader
tools, and videos. Children today are so
much more tech savvy than folks in my
generation. When I got my iPad, I really
had no clue how to operate it, so I gave
it to my kids and left it up to them to
show me what to do. They have trained
me well! In our homeschooling journey,
we have discovered a number of fun and
educational apps that fit really well with
our family.
My overall favorite app (or I should
say apps) is iBooks, which is useful for
reading books available in a PDF or E-Book format. I love being able to have my
virtual bookshelf at my fingertips. I am a
bona fide book junkie, and I really like
the fact that these electronic books take
up much less space than physical books.
A useful feature of iBooks is the abil-
ity to email PDF/E-Book files from my
virtual bookshelf. This allows me to use
my virtual bookshelf as a previewing and
storing location for electronic copies of
workbooks and other consumables. It is
wonderful to be able to have iBooks with
me to study or peruse for lessons when I
have a spare moment.
I love being able to have
my virtual bookshelf at
my fingertips.
children’s vocabulary and spelling skills
more than they know! True, games can be
time robbers, and that is why parents need
to determine the amount of time children
are allowed to play games—no matter how
educational they are.
Our children are all older now, middle
school through college graduates, and I
have learned to rely on the Khan Acad-
emy app to help me answer questions for
which my answers are inadequate. I have
even used this app in some of the co-op
classes I teach. It is a free app and is very
user friendly. For Mom and Dad, The
Old Schoolhouse® app provides a fabu-
lous way to read the magazine and links
to many helpful sites for homeschoolers.
