Homework and technology

I'll go on the record and say that I have never had a great love affair for homework.

Homework is:

• Difficult to set
• Hard to mark
• Challenging to manage
• Often disconnected from regularly classroom activities

Don't get me wrong, homework has it's place. However, as a parent of two primary school aged students I recognise the frustrations of parents everywhere. Here is a typical afternoon timetable.

5:17pm arrive home and tag grandparents

5:18pm attempt to turn off televisions and iPads

5:23pm set child #1 to Task A of homework that requires least supervision

5:24pm convinced child #2 to do some chores

5:27pm start prepping dinner

5:27-5:35pm start and stop dinner prep to answer questions from child #1

5:36pm realise that child #2 has absconded with friends and have argument about returning to do jobs and homework

5:38pm give up on dinner and sit with child #2 to start tasks

....

You get the picture!

When I moved to a flipped learning classroom, one of the first positive comments was from a parent who applauded the ability to set homework which students could literally do anywhere, anytime and pretty much anyhow they liked. And most importantly ... without their intervention!

And I understand the point. As parents we need to be multi-disciplinary. We need to be a reading coach, a maths checker, understand the tensile and compression properties of paddle pop sticks and so on. It can all be ... a little too much.

I think one of the reasons that homework gets such a hard wrap is exactly that, it is HARD. 

And think about this for a moment. Would we, as adults, leave the HARDEST part of our working day until the evening when we were tired, cranky, over it, and having to contend with dozens of other priorities (well we do, it's called children's homework)? No, we would leave simple tasks for the afternoon or evening or, better still, nothing at all. 

So, in an ideal world we wouldn't need homework. But I think we do. What we can do, however, is attempt to make it the kind of work that suits children and families during busy afternoons and evenings - like a short video al la flipped learning. 

In my next installment I will attempt to do homework in the morning.

5:17am wrestle children out of bed

5:18am attempt to prevent the turning on of televisions and iPads

...

I would love to hear more about how people are using technology to better handle homework!