From the outside world, the definition of safety is undoubtedly simple- The state in which conditions leading to physical, psychological, and material harm of individuals is prevented and controlled.  Meaning, safety is key to maintaining a properly functioning environment of any workplace, and school safety is not exceptional.

For kids in schools, their safety couples a safer learning and playing environment.

However, for many kids, it’s not always easy to access positive academic and playing surroundings. Discrimination by other kids, violence, theft, bullying, and fear of infractions—all of which threaten your kids’ safety.  Add to the fact that some kids live in unfavorable conditions from home resulting in psychological instabilities where support at schools becomes vital.

Before we discuss the tips for kid’s safety, here are some considerations to have in mind:

• The school safety measures should protect kids from violence, bullying, theft, threats, exposure to weapons, and substance abuse on and off the school grounds.
• Safety is just more than physical attributes. It’s to ensure kids eat healthy meals, play well, study, and can explore the use of technology.
• Also, it’s about ensuring kids are safely picked up after school with the right or approved persons—all of which should be the concern of both the parents and teachers.

Now, here are some tips to ensure the safety of your kids in school.

Have a plan for injury prevention

You may agree with me that most injuries by kids are fall-related or pedestrian-related crashes, which are preventable. Controlling or modifying your child’s environment is a top priority. In other words, be mindful of where your kids’ play.

But how can you do that?

Understand the school’s surrounding and ensure there is no harmful equipment on the playgrounds to prevent any unnecessary injuries. In cases where there is construction going on within the school premises, ensure you provide a helpful guide so that the kids stay safe from dropping objects.

Also, during their sports and recreation times, ensure the kids are wearing the proper protective gear to decrease their risk of injuries. Remind them of the rules of the game and that they must watch out for others so as to not cause injury to others.  Needless to say, kids need to also be prevented from hurting others intentionally, including when they may lose their temping in the heat of the moment.

Provide medications and first aid services.

Complete prevention of your child being hurt is something no one can guarantee. But, you can be ready to help if injuries occur with a little planning and ensuring the right resources are in place. Therefore, you must ensure there is a first aid protocol to treat injured kids.

Some kids will be on medications, which means they may need to carry their medicines to school.  School administrators and teachers need to be notified so they are aware of these prescriptions to also ensure they are kept away from other children.

It is important to remain vigilant and ensure the kids are aware of their medicines so there’s no chance of mixing if they are taking more than one. For safety purposes, explain to them why they should only take medications as directed.

Be aware of the kid’s food allergies.

Individuals with food allergies and compromised immune systems effected by certain foods should know what to do if they accidentally ingest food that can cause harm.  Some of the allergies will cause swelling, itching, fainting, among other serious effects.

With the allergy status of the kids in mind, you must let the kids check with you first before they take any food that has not been given to them in their lunch. Teachers should be aware and remind kids to be conscious of any allergy they have and ensure safety measures are in place.

Teach and warn kids on the effects of conflict

Sure, conflict is inevitable. It is part of most relationships, and children are not exempt.  Schools should have programs in place to teach kids about the potential dangers of fighting or even the slightest aggressive behavior against one of their classmates.

Better still, remind older kids of how much physical power that have over those who are smaller than them.  Instead of lashing out, report to their teachers when they are wronged or physically abused themselves. Finally, teach the kids the best way of resolving their differences without fighting. Let them know fighting can result in hurting themselves as well.

Ensure a flow of the essentials.

In this case, the basic essentials would be enough water supply, as well as proper and sufficient food. How your kids eat today would be of significant impact on their future. So, beyond the basics serious thought should be given to ensure each child has access to healthy foods.   For parents, it starts with healthy lunches.  For schools, in involves being aware of children in school who may not be getting adequate and healthy food at home.  Be aware of deficiency diseases.  Kids should also be taught about how proper diet and nutrition is crucial for their mental and physical growth.

Conclusion

Maintaining kids’ safety should be the topmost priority to both parents and teachers in and out of the schools. Therefore, each school must ensure they tolerate zero theft, bullying, violence, and discrimination of kids to enhance their safety.

Besides, parents and teachers must also ensure they help the kids understand their surroundings, provide the essentials like water and food, and provide medications and first aid services. Most importantly, put injury prevention plans in place and ensure protection against unfavorable weather conditions.

The Dangers of Texting and Walking

In this technologically advanced era, your kid can learn anything from coding languages to editing photographs online. All you need to do is explore your kids’ interests and you are good to go. Once you find the subject your kid wants to ace, you have to go to your web browser and find the best online course that can help your kid in learning that skill.

In this article, we will list some top online courses available for kids in 2021.

What are Online Courses?

Online courses are interactive teaching sessions shared  in a video format. When you opt for a particular online course, you will be asked to attend either live classes or you’ll get access to pre-built videos and other information to learn that course.

Online courses can be both free and paid depending upon the platform that is offering that course. Most of these courses include regular quizzes, test sessions, and much more to assure users that they are learning something new through the courses.

What are the Benefits of Online Courses?

Online courses meant for kids have the following benefits.

1. Online courses help kids in learn anything and everything within time flexible environment.
2. Interactive sessions offered by online courses help in grasping the information easily.
3. Kids can master any skill with online courses from comfort zone of their home.
4. The availability of a number of online courses helps kids to choose one that suits them best.
5. Online trial sessions offer an opportunity to try as many courses as your kid wants.
6. Online courses are affordable and time-efficient solutions to learn new skills.

How to Choose an Online Course for Your Kid?

There are plenty of courses available online. From hundreds of Edutech platforms to thousands of YouTube channels, the internet is flooded with several different types of online courses.

Choosing the online course that best suits your kid is indeed a difficult task. However, your task of selecting the online course can be made easy if you take care of a few points.

1. Trial Sessions: Every online course whether paid or unpaid offers trial sessions. Take the few trial sessions of the course provided by different platforms and then choose the one that suits your kids best.
2. Reviews: Most of the popular platforms allow students to write feedback about the course. You can go through reviews and feedback of various online courses before finally selecting one.
3. Reputation: The quality of online courses highly depends on the reputation of both the teacher and the platform. Research thoroughly about the teaching skills and style of that particular teacher before enrolling your kid in any online course.
4. Resources: Kids take time to grasp knowledge conveyed through online courses. Make sure the course you pick for your kid offers various resources like videos, worksheets, podcasts, and much more for a better experience for your kids.
5. Affordable: It is a myth that only expensive online courses offers best learning experience. Even the free and courses with nominal fees can offer the best teaching sessions. Make sure your online course is affordable and won’t burn your pockets unnecessarily.

Top Online Courses for Kids

Based on the reviews and recommendations, we have listed a few of the best online courses for kids.

1. No-Code Development Course

Mobile apps are the future of the digital industry. Mastering the skills required to create and publish apps at an early age can help your kid in the future.

Appy Pie Student Developer Certification Program can offer your kid a user-friendly environment to learn how to create an app without coding even a single line. This program consists of 4 interactive sessions (one-hour each)

The No-Code Development Course offered by Appy Pie helps your kid to turn their imaginations into reality. Your child need not learn heavy coding languages to create their app based on their ideas. This course is meant for any child from K-12 levels who have an entrepreneurial knack and a basic understanding of what mobile apps are. Joel Perez, the instructor of the Program offers a seamless and smooth onboarding experience for kids.

2. Piano Lessons for Absolute Beginner

If your kid is interested to learn any instrument, you can easily go with piano. Piano is one of the easiest instruments to learn that even kids would enjoy learning and playing it.

If your kid has a knack to learn the piano, then you need not spend a huge amount of money on piano classes. You just need to opt for Piano Lessons for Absolute Beginners offered by Udemy.

It offers a free 58 minutes online course in the form of video session. This online course will you’re your kid to know about every key and its correspondent note. Your kid can also learn about major and minor scales along from a highly dignified piano teacher. And the biggest advantage of this online course is that your kid will be awarded by completion certificate also.

3. Codakid

Codakid is not particularly an online course but a highly efficient platform that offers interactive courses for kids. It tries to unleash the potential of young minds with its various online courses involving real coding instructions.

Codakid offers highly affordable courses with monthly and yearly subscriptions. Also, for a fun learning process, a team of friendly teachers will be available in every session of an online course.

With free trials and instant access, Codakid offers private online coding courses also. It offers more than 60 courses with over 750 challenges to test if kids can grasp something from online sessions or not. CodaKid assures your kid to master any coding language within a few months.

4. Introduction to Graphic Design

Graphics are nothing but attractive images. In this digital age, visually appealing graphics play an important role.

The graphic designing course is meant for all who have a creative knack and love to play with colors on a digital dashboard. This graphic designing course can help your kid to learn about logo designing, image editing, card making, and much more.

Appy Pie offers an interactive course Introduction to Graphic Design that is specially designed for kids. It will help create highly effective images, marketing materials, business cards, certificate design, and much more. This course covers the complete knowledge of Canva Tool and various techniques to create impressive graphics.

5. Online Language Learning

If you have an understanding of an additional language other than your mother tongue, it will really help you explore various industries. The best age for learning a new language is between 3-18 years.

Little Prim is one of the recommended educational platforms that offers several online courses to learn a new language. It offers online courses for 12 languages. You can pick anyone for your kid as per your choice.

Mastering a language is indeed a difficult task. However, Little Prim offers enjoyable online courses so that even a little kid can easily learn a language. It follows the technique of play and learn to engage the kids. It help your kids in mastering the new language within a few days.

Summing Up

We have offered you a list of selective online courses that are worth taking trials. These courses can help to add the X-factor to your kid’s personality.

Just try to explore the interests of your kid and take advantage of online courses. Make sure you take care of a few points while selecting the course that works best for your kids.

Happy Learning!

If you want to know more about already existing opportunities in education that you can take advantage now, join us as we look at the latest trends in EdTech.  Topics like eLearning, blockchain for education, gamification and AI are just a few sectors that are changing the education landscape.

The Next Level 2020/21 EdTech Trends for Your Education

Distance learning has already become just not another option but also a major rule for organizing the educational process. Recent challenges have pushed educators to adapt and respond to new opportunities and be proactive to stay ahead of the changes in education.  Many of these have become advantages not otherwise explored.

How Modern Technologies Are Used for Teaching and Learning

The main purpose of any technology recently applied in education should be for the purpose of facilitating the learning process and enhancing performance. This is achieved by applying technical means and tools. The use of new technologies for the most part was previously attributed to various courses and associated educational standards according to individual course activities. Now, it has become obvious that technologies can ensure the greater diversification of teaching methods. That is mainly related to arranging online classes and self-education.

The goal of applying advanced technical tools and arranging education online has been to bring at least the same results. Systems also need to be in place to ensure new types of learning can be measure results effectively. As we can now see that modern technologies can improve collaboration and performance, here are the main approaches to how this has been organized to the present.

EduTrends Enabling a Better Study Experience

Among all varieties of educational innovations, we have prepared for you a short overview of the latest ones and the most interesting, from our point of view. These are also widely-used technologies in modern education:

1. eLearning

Recent challenges that sent kids home from school have certainly opened our minds the idea that electronic learning can be effective.  For some students,  it can be even more effective than traditional classed.  This is only true if the process has been organized well.  When we speak about eLearning we usually mean any kind of education or learning process that is organized electronically.

Such courses enable the delivery of educational materials by using various computers, tablets, laptops, or even smartphones. The major advantage of this learning process is that students no longer need to have a passive role.  You may choose what course or material to take right at the moment. This may be through various podcasts, materials for reading, videos, and other materials. Delivery can be through Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or any other similar tools.

2. Blockchain for Education

The technology of distributed ledger has changed dramatically in many industries and it has also touched education. We can say even more – that is one of the most beneficial tech trends in education students may experience. It is used for arranging the so-called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that enable not only learning, but also the assessment of the gained knowledge and skills. Even more – the approach enables students to have extra benefits during the job-hunting process as they submit results of the completed courses to prospective employees.

3. Video-Assisted Education

Besides the fact that videos are more engaging, you can easily go back and review material or skip certain pieces to arrange your time more freely. Video assisted education is an ed-tech tool already common in school classrooms and not just select online learners. This approach can be very effective for distance learning. Videos, especially animated ones, can enrich any course or lesson dramatically. The resistance for online educators to use this teaching method if often due to a lack of knowledge of how to create or find educational videos for use in their online teaching.

4. Gamification

This current and possibly one of the most exciting trends in education enables learning to interact and be more engaging. This makes real fun of any educational process and can boost engagement and productivity. By striving to get higher scores in any game, the students strive to gain more knowledge and express such on time. And all these things are made in an atmosphere of fun. That can certainly sound amazing to any parent or educator, as long as they see positive results.

5. Artificial Intelligence

This is one of the primary trends in modern innovation in education that can help keep students from being left behind as other progress. It can make basic and other study activities automatic, for instance, in terms of grading. This tool is also effective for arranging the process of delivering study help by tutors. It is also possible to assess and monitor the performance that students have. It is predicted that the role of artificial intelligence in education will increase further, for obvious reasons.

The plagiarism checker is considered to be one of the manifestations of artificial intelligence. The plagiarism calculation algorithm finds non-unique lines in the text. This type of plagiarism check is constantly being improved. Many schools have already introduced plagiarism testing with artificial intelligence.

6. Social Media Networks in Education

Since the birth of social media networks, they have always been a way for students to connect with friends outside of the classroom.  When students are unable to get together in person, which is especially true for eLearners, they can use these same networks to create study groups.  Student to student connection away from school already becoming more widely used by many educational institutions and courses. This is more than reasonable as many students spend a lot of time there anyway. Such networks are also used at the moment as communication tools between the representatives of their educational institutions.

This approach enables the sharing of various educational materials, opinions by commenting on posts and arranging discussions. The success of using social media networks in education makes us believe it is possible to build a new culture of collaboration in the area of education and improve it dramatically.

7. Learning Analytics

The existing landscape for this type of tool has been expanded dramatically. Learning analytics has become even more relevant to higher education.  This tool enables the optimizing of the educational process and measuring the result of such by educators.

Learning analytics has been also used by various online tutors and similar services for obtaining relevant feedback on various matters. When teachers or tutors review the feedback for their students, this enables you to enhance the learning process and make it more productive. For instance, educators can see exactly what type of information (infographics, images, videos) work better. This technology can also identify students that are experiencing various challenges and assist them in overcoming learning difficulties.

Will Virtual Learning Remain Continue to Grow?

We presume that the trend will remain even after coping with the challenges the world is facing. There will also be the need for it in some form and this approach has presented many benefits for students and teachers alike. Virtual learning can save time, offer more freedom, and when done properly can produce the same results as a traditionally-organized education process. Only time will tell whether or not virtual learning will continue to grow or subside to previously normal levels.

What Does the Future with EdTech Look Like?

Regardless of the specifics, we believe the application of various online technologies will remain a trend and implement new aspects of developing technologies. Firstly, Edtech trends seek to bring better accessibility, more safety for online-learning, a focus on emphasizing the correctness of online-learning, enabling less but effective supervision, and ensuring other aspects crucial for effectiveness.

Last Words

Applying various online tools instead of traditional approaches has a good probability of gaining new benefits for managing time and performance. Independence and technical awareness are crucial aspects every student should explore for success in life.  Educators can help by also learning how to offer present new EdTech innovations in their classrooms to ensure no student is left behind.

How to Aid Student Growth In and Outside the Classroom

Due to recent events and advancements in technology, parents have been opting for online speech therapy for their kids. Children can continue with their education and get help with their speech and language issues from the comfort and safety of their homes. However, learning via web access has both positives and downsides. Here are some factors to consider.

Understanding Speech Therapy and How It Works

So what, exactly, is speech therapy? Provided by a speech and language pathologist (SLP), speech therapy evaluates and treats children, identifying communication struggles and helping them speak and listen with greater proficiency. Most schools have a trained therapist on their staff to help children dealing with articulation and verbal comprehension. These professionals also help with developing proper fluency, understanding instructions and social cues, and expressing themselves clearly. Children may perform exercises under the therapist’s direction to tone their facial and throat muscles to form words clearly.

Teletherapy Can Prove Beneficial

Now that kids are attending digital classrooms using tools like Zoom, Skype, and Google Meet, speech therapy is also offered online. Parents can sign up their kids for teletherapy sessions with trained SLPs.

Most virtual sessions proceed much like personal one-on-one sessions. Therapists use cue cards, images, books, reading classes, and verbal exercises such as poems and rhymes to help kids with their speech challenges. This method of teaching has several advantages.

Most importantly, therapists can continue to treat their patients without having to meet them personally. Children need not miss out just because of stay-at-home orders. Considering that the key to successful therapy is repetition and practice, kids can continue to make progress even if they are at home. Therapists can connect with kids in real-time, having interactive practice lessons via the web access using audio and video applications.

Another essential of speech therapy is group classes. Kids learn best when watching their friends speak words, recite poems, and perform actions and exercises. Teletherapy allows SLPs to conduct sessions with multiple students, each mimicking the motions other kids make and learning quickly. Interacting with their friends and having fun while they work is essential to maintain interest.

Children Can Access Learning Programs Using their Android Tablet or iPad.

Recent speech therapy programs are easy to access and use. You won’t have to invest in special apps or download and install them for video conferencing. The sessions are brought to you via live streaming. Parents only need to permit screen access to the therapist. Complete confidentiality is maintained as the SLP designs classes around the child’s specific deficits and works on correcting them. For instance:

• They may take over the screens to make small adjustments and adapt images, so the child understands them better.
• Words are added and removed according to the student’s advancing capabilities.
• Visual tools make the entire session fun and interesting. Kids can tap on an image to see an animation that reveals more about the bird or animal. Or, perhaps, the letter and words that start with the letter.
• SLPs can watch and evaluate the child to make recommendations for additional classes accordingly.
• Parents can be present in the room when the class is in progress to understand how to conduct reading lessons.

Is Online Speech Therapy Right for Your Family?

While adopting technology to continue with speech therapy sessions is a great idea, it can have some downsides also. Here are some factors you will want to keep in mind.

• Children need web access with a high-speed internet connection and devices like laptops, PCs, tablets, or phones to connect with their therapists. Students with unreliable internet access or a bustling home where they can’t concentrate may find it hard to acquire these essentials.
• Getting kids to sit still and attend classes can be challenging. Parents may have to supervise to ensure that the child maintains focus.
• Effective speech therapy is also about picking by facial expressions and subtle body language cues. Children learn best when they watch how facial muscles work and coordinate sounds with lip movement. With the quality limitations of video, they could miss out on these intricacies and nuances of speech therapy. This could result in slower progress.
• Equipment failure and breaks in internet connection could hamper real-time classes. Both students and therapists have to learn to navigate applications. Often, small errors like keying in the wrong password or students being unable to log in could lead to unwanted delays in getting the classes going.
• Considering that many kids also rely on the internet to keep up with their regular studies and curriculum, speech therapy could add to the total digital time and fatigue.

Using technology and web access to ensure that kids keep up their education and speech therapy is a great idea whether they are taking virtual school classes or not. However, parents, kids, and therapists have to work their way around the challenges so that the program achieves the desired results.

Is Online Therapy for Teens a Viable Solution?