Using the Internet to do Research
By Mimi Rothschild
Many parents who take on the task of homeschooling their children search for online educational material and resources to use. The Internet, with its varied resources, offers an array of instructional tools. With proper parental discretion and assessment, the Internet can prove to be a tool for augmenting your child’s homeschooling experience.
The Internet presents research resources including free dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias, calculators and conversion tools, plus literary and writing guides. Many of the tools are free, while some programs can be purchased or downloaded for a small fee. Such tools are vital for homeschooling parents and can help your child learn in the most effective and productive way possible.
Search engines can lead the homeschooling parent to a directory of sites that offer free biographies of famous individuals in addition to websites that offer online assistance in all areas of learning. By utilizing a keyword phrase, parents can locate resources. For example, when using a search engine, parents can use words like “homeschooling resources,” or “educational resources” and with the click of a button, locate the information they desire.
Local libraries can be searched right from the comfort of your own home and can provide you with an excellent avenue for homeschooling your children. In fact, many local libraries offer their catalog of books and other reference materials online and supply both parents and children with web tools for easy searches and browsing. Once you have searched through a library’s collection, you can then visit your local library and check out age appropriate books for supplementing your child’s homeschooling.
Many websites provide online libraries where homeschooling parents can select suitable research material and further allow their children to read them while they are online. One thing that homeschooling parents should note is that some online libraries charge a subscription price for access to their available texts while other reading services are provided at absolutely no charge to the subscriber. More often than not, the books that can be accessed on the Internet for free are sites that carry a lot of classical literature. Such works are numbered in the hundreds and can be viewed using Internet explorer or other programs like Adobe Reader or Microsoft Reader.
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