Using Apps and Technology in our Homeschool ... while keeping kids SAFE.

[As if it needs to be said: The views expressed in this blog post are that of the author, not necessarily Lux Christi, which as an entity has no views of its own].

This is one of the most controversial parts of homeschooling and parenting, to be honest. Some parents fully embrace technology in hopes of giving their kids a leg up on the future job market. Some parents completely eschew technology in their children's learning space (and sometimes in general) to keep them fully safe from predators and other dangers through the internet.

I find myself in the middle of these, as do most parents, I imagine. I don't keep ALL technology out of our house (I'm writing on a blog post at the moment, after all). But I am painfully aware of addictive tendencies within our ADHD population in our household, and I am likewise wary of the darker sides of the internet encroaching into our otherwise safe home. So I employ a few safeguards in our own family and will share some tips here for you. Take what works for YOUR FAMILY, and leave the rest. ;-)

PHONES.

We do a couple things to be able to communicate OFF SMART PHONES for as long as possible (full disclosure: my kids range from ages 14-4):

1. When our kids are ready to start riding their bikes with each other for exercise, we buy the Gizmo Watch from Verizon. Right now they're up to Gizmo version 3. (This is not an affiliate link). It's currently $149 for the watch (they are really hard to break--over the past five years and four watches, only one ever broke during a bike crash. But hey, my son was fine!), and you pay monthly for the phone line. It is NOT an internet phone, so they get their own phone number, and you pay about $5/month for the line if you're already a Verizon user and $10/month for the line if you aren't. Using your parental smart phone, you download and manage each line through the Gizmo Parent App. I control any phone number that wants to call my children by programming them into their account. Through the parental app, my husband and I (and grandparents are temporarily added to this during family vacations) can text with our kids too. They can call and text each other's Gizmo watches, and we have real-time GPS locations for them all. There are also some exercise games and step counters on the watches.

2. Tin Can Phones: The New-School "Landline" Phone for Friends. (Not an affiliate link). They can call 911 on these corded phones, and my daughter actually got so excited about getting to talk to her friends (Yay, teenage years--send help!) that she paid for a Tin Can phone for her friend. Like the Gizmo, I program in the phone numbers I want my kids to be able to call and who are able to call my kids. You don't even need to pay for a monthly line in order to use these--they can call other Tin Can phones for free. You can also set Quiet Times and Do Not Disturb times.

TABLETS.

I'm going to preface this block by saying that we don't let our kids use tablets very often, but we DO literally assign them tablet time under certain profiles that have exclusively educational apps and/or games. Apple iPads can be set up to be pretty "locked down," but they are expensive, and truth be told, I don't want my kids breaking them, and I can't afford to buy several for fun. ;-)

We DO like to collect refurbished Amazon Kindle Fires during Amazon Prime Day Sales. These are used EXCLUSIVELY for education in our household. When we first started doing this, I was able to get several for $33 each on Prime Day. Alas, inflation ... now I find them for $49.99 right now (affiliate link*).

But they are still the economical, controllable choice as far as I am concerned. Here's how we manage the Kindles: DO NOT BUY THE AMAZON FIRE "KIDS" tablet. Those, ironically, cannot be controlled very well. Once you put the Amazon Kids+ Profile onto a Fire, you open it up to what Amazon thinks is acceptable for your child's age. I haven't subscribed to it myself, and it might work well in other households, but my kids canNOT be given 10,000 apps. It would be far too addictive for them. You know your children best, so only do the Amazon Kids+ if you discern it will work for you. For OUR FAMILY, we simply create a child's profile (no need to create separate profiles for each child, unless you want a teen/tween one and a early elementary one separately--and in fact, Amazon won't let you create more than four kids' profiles. Too bad we have more than four kids!).

1. We buy the plain, refurbished Amazon Kindle Fire 7 tablets. We manage our household profiles, content, and devices, so that ONLY the apps, audiobooks, ebooks, and websites that we actually LOAD ONTO THE FIRE will show up and be accessible to our children. NOTHING ELSE. Here's how we do it.

2. Control children's profiles, devices, and content by going to parents.amazon.com, accessible by logging in with your Amazon account credentials. (As you see below, we have four profiles for our kids).

3. 

   Click on the "Content" tab to add Audible audiobooks that you own, apps that you have purchased (for free or at cost), and even websites. For instance, we link to our children's Math-U-See virtual toolbox and even their video lessons. For our co-op specifically, you could download Moodle and have access to the Schola Rosa materials and/or Traditio Nostra. Below, you see the options. We use the third option down: Amazon content, and the fourth option: Websites and videos. We SKIP the Amazon Kids+ (which has an additional monthly cost as well as the inability to completely control what they see).

   

4. Within the Amazon content, I add some Montessori-style puzzle games, audiobooks, Starfall (a family favorite!), and sometimes I go in and add the games that serve no real purpose but to entertain--but I usually only do that before we go on vacation and spend 16+ hours in a car. ;-) The options pulled up include any app/book/video that I have bought even for myself.

5. 

   Our kids don't have access to the web browser normally, but I checked it below so that you could see some options. You can add ONLY hand-selected websites or you can allow them access with Microsoft Bing safeguards. You can ALWAYS block specific websites. If the idea of letting them have ANY access to the internet at all scares you, then you can uncheck it and be done with it.

   

*All links to products above are Amazon affiliate links unless otherwise noted. This means that we are happy to share a link to the products as found on Amazon, and your buying the products after clicking on our affiliate link will provide monetary compensation directly to Lux Christi Homeschool Community. These products are in line with our mission to foster a vibrant educational community in which we educate our children to seek and spread Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, so that they will ultimately seek to become saints. We hope they will help your family to fulfill your own homeschooling mission as well!