As a parent, you want the best possible future for your child. You want them to be safe and successful and happy. For many parents, this dream for their children includes attending college, an educational pathway that opens many doors to excellent career prospects.
Depending on how old your child is currently, it can be tough to know if it’s time to have that conversation with them yet. You might be asking yourself if it’s too early to talk to your kids about going to college and what their choice of college in the future may look like.
Your concerns are completely understandable, and we’re here to help. Here are a few things you should keep in mind to make your decision.
Experts Recommend Starting Early
If you ask the education experts, earlier is actually better when it comes to discussing college options with your children. By starting the dialogue early on in your child’s education, you’re informing them of their potential pathways well before they even need to make a decision. Plus, it can be quite motivating because it gives your child a goal to work toward throughout their education.
Tailor Your Approach to Your Child’s Grade Level
Depending on your child’s age and grade level, you’ll want to take a different approach in your conversations with them. Here’s a brief breakdown of how you should broach the topic fo/www.safesearchkids.com/is-it-too-early-to-talk-to-my-kids-about-college/r each grade level:
Elementary school – This is a great time to start sharing stories of your own college experience to start planting the seed and producing excitement in your child. If you live close to a college, consider dropping by for a sporting event or a talk that might be of interest to your child.
Middle school – When your child reaches eighth grade, this is an excellent point to start researching universities and exploring the topics of the grades needed to get into a good university. It’s also important to discuss the monetary component of going to college, especially if your child will need to contribute financially down the line. This gives them lots of time to familiarize themselves with the numbers and to plan accordingly.
High school – This is when the conversations will turn a bit more serious. You’ll want to encourage your kid to get good grades and SAT scores and to become involved in extracurriculars to boost their college applications. At this point, you’ll also want to propose campus tours of a few different schools.
Don’t Pressure or Preach
You may mean well but try your best not to pin all your hopes and dreams onto your child, especially if their own goals might look a little different. Don’t try to sway them into choosing one degree or one college over another and don’t focus on what worked for you when you attended university. Instead, ask them questions to get them engaged and excited. Focus on their interests, strengths, and passions and make recommendations based on that information.
If you’re wondering where to start when exploring college options for your child, check out American International College to kick start your journey.
Clearly, it’s never too early to start discussing college with your kids – it’s simply all about your approach. By customizing your approach to align with where your child is, you’ll support them and guide them to a successful future, whatever that may look like.
An Ideal Solution for Efficient School Transport Management
Parents are always worried about the safety of their children while sending them to school. That’s perhaps the key reason why they choose a school that is closest to their residence. Along with the quality of education and other better facilities, transport services have also become one of the priorities of parents when searching for the best school for their kids.
Today, most schools have their fleet of school buses to provide pick-up and drop facilities to their students and staff. They take all the essential measures to ensure student safety, especially while traveling on school buses. To achieve this, many schools are adopting the latest technology in the form of a school transport management system that makes the transportation management task much easier for the schools.
A Brief about Transport Management Systems
In today’s time, technological advancements have transformed the entire transportation management to a great extent. Today, most buses and other vehicles have GPS, Wi-Fi, satellite radio, and various other facilities that allow efficient and systematic management of transportation systems. The school transport management system is one such technological advancement in the field of education.
A transportation management system is a database-driven software system that allows users to plan, execute, and monitor their transportation system to ensure utmost safety and less chance of any accidents. By automating the whole process, the system significantly reduces the need for manual interferences. Also, various metrics can be analyzed in real-time and instant reports can be generated with all the key details of the transportation system.
The transport management system for schools consists of various robust, secure, and reliable transport management solutions. It can be one of the factors parents consider for their kids when choosing a school. It allows school administration to keep an eye over their entire transportation system in real-time. The system delivers various functionalities including vehicle tracking, route details, driver’s details, driver profile management, and more. Even parents can take the benefit of live tracking of school vehicles to determine the exact location of their children. Also, schools can connect with students as well as their parents easily via centralized transport management solutions.
Features of Transport Management System
Some of the key features of a transport management system are mentioned below:
GPS Tracking: The transport management system for schools facilitates real-time GPS tracking. GPS or Global Positioning System is a technology that acts as a navigation satellite system and offers location, time, and speed synchronization. GPS technology works in almost all weather conditions. It is an ideal solution for tracking location, determining accurate time, and for navigation purposes. With GPS technology, school authorities can make their transportation system more efficient while ensuring student safety. The technology helps to optimize route management together with managing student’s pick-ups and drops in an efficient manner.
Live Tracking Facility for Parents: The system allows parents to remain updated regarding the pick-up and drop stops, traveling route, driver details (name and contact number), details of the school vehicle like number and identification, and other important details. With the help of a transport management system, parents can track the school bus and other details in real-time through their phones. This provides them the accurate details of the transportation system that their child is using. For any queries or concerns, the system allows them to connect directly with school management.
Transport Attendance Management: Transport attendance management is an essential feature of the transport management system. It allows school authorities to update details in the system with regards to holidays, vehicle scheduling, changes in routes, driver work shifts, assigning students, parents, and teachers to a particular school route, and various other details. With the help of the transport management system’s attendance management feature, it becomes very convenient for school management to create a precise and efficient schedule for the transportation system. This way it also helps to save a lot of time and resources by eliminating the requirement of manually deciding and managing things related to school transportation.
Carrier Contracts Management: The carrier contracts management feature of the school transport management system allows school authorities to track all their terms and carrier agreements in real-time. This allows authorities to access the carriers based on their specific requirements or parameters. Even the system can suggest the best carriers based on the specified parameters.
Transport Reports and Analytics: The transport management system also helps to keep a record of all the transportation related activities. It enables school administration to record and update details such as bus and transport insurance, license renewal, bus identification details, school bus route details, vehicle maintenance, expenses, student attendance, transport staff salary, etc. The report for all these details can be generated and analyzed easily.
Better Decision Making Ability: Based on the reports like vehicle usage, fuel consumption, driver’s behavior, any delays in pick-up or drops, and various other reports, school management can make important decisions. These informed decisions can contribute to improved vehicle performance, enhanced student safety, better service, etc.
Conclusion:
To create a secure and advanced school environment, education institutions must invest in the right transport management system. Nowadays, there are several school transport management system providers available in the market that can customize the solution based on the specific requirements of the education institutes. After all, investing in such systems is not only beneficial for school management in terms of automation, improved efficiency, better security, superior transport management, and cost-effectiveness but also beneficial for parents as they get peace of mind regarding the safety of their children.
Author Bio:
Shobhit Srivastava holds the position of Digital Marketing Executive at Ecosmob, a Customized VoIP and Web-IT Solution provider company. A writer at day and a reader at night, he is having keen digital marketing skills along with an experience in writing an SEO-friendly, creative & informative contents for distinct industries.
G Suite currently used by students and teachers for school is now Google Workspace for Education. It continues to provide tools that qualifying institutions can use for free. Google for Education allows educators and students to interact simply. Whether school is in session or consisting of online classes, these Workspace tools include essential web based applications.
Google Workspace allows teachers to plan and implement standard based lessons, manage grades and meet the needs of diverse learners. A more simple way to explain how these tools and resources help educators is to say that it’s a collection of apps, just like you have on your phone. These apps are designed for use in work and educational purposes.
Some of these apps already exist for any organization needing to engage collectively online, but many have been specifically created for teachers and their classrooms. These Google tools will help you to engage students to interact with the content of any lesson presented, including back and forth communication other than just email or live online session.
Three Reasons to Use Google Workspace for Education
Easy Collaboration between students and fellow teachers.
Use Google Workspace on any device with one log in.
Never before have these tools been more essential with many students having to attend their classes online. These resources bring all students together, whether at home or in school, to help increase everyday work flow for critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity with your students. All of this happens while supporting the standards in learning objectives that you have.
Google for Education Apps
You may recognize many of these Google platforms because as mentioned, many of them are not only used for education. Google for Education simply groups them all in one place through your Google account, in addition to adding specific apps essential for the online classroom.
Core Services of Google Workspace for Education
Whether conducting classes in school, online or a little of both, here are the Google apps that will make it easier for your students to connect through their each individual Google accounts, just as teachers and administrators are doing.
Classroom: This is one of the most commonly used workpace apps but many Google Classroom’s features may not be fully utilized. Even though the classroom is online, it is very secure as only those who are invited can join through a class code emailed to each individual student. Once a classroom is created teachers can can add various classes and sections as needed. Some key features of Google Classroom are:
Track classwork and submit assignments.
Check originality, feedback, and grades. Share resources and interact in the class stream or by email.
Parents and Guardians can get a regular email summary of student’s work.
Review announcements and activities.
Drive: Think of Google Drive as a flash drive that is stored on a different computer that you can access from anywhere and from any of your devices. This is the same for students. It’s the easy way to share lesson files or educational videos and everyone in your class will have the latest copies. Add and remove files at will or update documents without having to forward revised materials your students. Drive brings all of the Workspace tools together for easy access on the cloud by everyone in your class. Inside Google Drive you can create docs, work sheets, slides and forms for various purposes.
Docs: Any document your would normally create, print off and hand our to your students can be created in Google Docs. These docs will be available instantly for your entire class to see. You can restrict these documents from being edited by students, or their may be circumstances when you want to allow editing, if not students then with other teachers or administrators you share documents with. You can gain more control over PDF files using PDF editing software.
Sheets: Make your lessons come to life with colorful charts and graphs. Built-in formulas, pivot tables and conditional formatting options save time and simplify common spreadsheet tasks. Choose from a wide variety of budgets, schedules, and other pre-made spreadsheets — all designed to make your work that much better, and your life that much easier.
Slides: Google slides allow you to choose from a variety of presentation themes. There are hundreds of fonts, embedded video and animations as well. A wide array of pitches, portfolios and other pre-made presentations are also available.
Forms: Imagine the ability to create a pop quiz without having to print off copies and wait for students to attend your class? Google Forms is also a great place to get feedback from students. For example, lets say you want to create a place for students to leave questions or comments. Rather than sending out an email and getting overwhelmed with responses, you can create a form for them to list their name and comment or question. It’s also a great way for all students to see what their online classmates are thinking, just as if they were in a school classroom asking a question.
Sites: One of Google’s oldest platforms, Google Sites is easiest way for you to create a website for your classroom. Update it as regularly as you wish or simply use your class website to present year long resources, including links to safe websites for research. Many teachers provide a link to Safe Search Engines such as our Google safe search tools.
Assignments: This tool allows teachers to streamline the distribution of assignments to students, as well as analyze and grade all work. Google Assignments integrates into your LMS (Learning Management System after your school administrator has turned on the tool within your domain. Learn more about how it works at https://edu.google.com/intl/en_ca/assignments/
Meet: Here is where you set up your classrooms for distance learning. Just as all of Google for Education tools, it’s free for schools and gives you complete control to meet security and privately. You can block students from using classic Hangouts and Google Chat on their school-managed Chromebooks. You can block all students. Or, set different rules for students in certain groups.
Chrome: There are a lot of benefits to making Google chrome your default browser. First and foremost is the idea that Chrome works best with Google. Since you’re using all of these Google tools you’re less likely to encounter any snags. Using Google Chrome also allows you to keep everything the same no matter what device you are using thanks for Chrome Sync.
Gmail: Pretty straight forward here. Your Google email is connected to your Google account and has the same log in credentials as any Workspace tool you are currently using, all while maintaining efficient communication between administrators, teachers, and students. Gmail is not required by students to be part of an online class, but they will need a Google account and an alternate email address to get class notifications.
Calendar: The easy way to schedule online classes. Students and parents are always kept “in the loop” and everyone can get reminders about upcoming activities. You can also create multiple calendars that everyone can use together. Use of this app by all participants means students don’t have to create their own calendars to keep track of their schedules.
Contacts: Busy teachers often have different groups they need to communicate with. With Contacts you can organize and merge your contacts, as well as create personal mailing lists. Quickly send messages to specific groups of people with a single click.
Keep: The quick way to stay organized. Create quick lists and add structured information and sub tasks. Easily access your notes and lists on the web and your mobile devices. Google Workspace administrators can control who uses Google Keep within your school. Users who have Keep turned on can use it to create, manage, and share notes within your school.
Admin: Google for Education within every school is controlled by an administrator. The Google Admin console is their access to manage all teachers and students using Workspace. There are plenty of free online tutorials to learn how to operate all of Google’s work and educationally based apps. Google also provides training for educators to become Google Workspace administrators to fully utilize the power of the formally named platform G Suite. Courses are held online and are regularly scheduled to continued availability.
Integrate the collaborative power of Google into your LMS
5 Reasons to Sign your Kids Up for Online Spanish Classes
If you have noticed your kid is interested in Spanish, use this moment to promote the child’s healthy development. Foreign language develops a kid’s ability to multitask, improves memory and boosts critical-thinking skills. And the good news is that you can easily integrate the language learning process into a child’s everyday routine using an online format.
Benefits of online Spanish classes.
Despite a popular belief, a foreign language in no way confuses a child and interferes with the mother tongue. Bilingual children are more creative and learn much faster. The earlier is the age of a learner, the less he is inhibited by the fear of making mistakes. And a new language increases opportunities for cross-cultural connection. For example, Spanish will let you speak with more than 463-million audience worldwide. And the rapid growth of e-learning language resources makes it possible to get a lot of additional advantages from online Spanish classes.
1. A unique opportunity to create an individual schedule.
When you visit regular offline classes, you have to adhere to a certain time pattern. And it is a different story with online study. It is up to you how long your Spanish class is going to be and how often you will take it. It is really cool when the study rhythm is formed not by the school bell and breaks between lessons, but by you. Moreover, at home, the atmosphere is often predictable and calm. The kid develops his own rhythm and follows it without additional loads and worries to miss something. This approach will also allow adapting classes to individual features of each child – some need more time for verbal tasks while it takes longer for others to master grammar rules.
2. Identify a child’s weaknesses and work on them.
Individual work with an online tutor will immediately demonstrate what material a child absorbs on the go and where more efforts are needed. It may become a surprise to parents who have previously voiced dissatisfaction with the school as a whole or with teachers about the child’s lack of success in a particular field of knowledge.
Besides, parents can observe their child and determine whether the child is attentive during classes or they are having trouble with speech. Full-time education does not allow to reveal such hidden problems as the teacher is not always able to spot them in a bigger group of children.
3. Perfect Spanish Immersion
Online classes allow kids to dive directly into the Spanish environment without traveling abroad. Traditional classes have more focus on writing and reading, and the teachers are rarely native speakers. No matter where in the world you are located, you are just a click away from a Spanish tutor. There are many online resources such as Preply that will instantly take you to live language surroundings. And online immersion is a proven path to language proficiency. The ability to interact with native speakers stimulates kid’s engagement and speeds up language fluency.
4. Repetition.
The famous Latin proverb says “Repetitio est mater studiorum.” And it is especially true when learning a foreign language. Children at school are often embarrassed to ask the teacher to explain the material again when they did not understand something. And this problem disappears online – the child can listen to the lesson or part of it as many times as needed to consolidate knowledge. Tests that can be taken several times until all queries are resolved. Moreover, you can always return to the old lessons in the online format to refresh the Spanish grammar rules.
5. Development of self-discipline skills
Learning to learn is a top skill a person throughout life. Education experts are convinced that in 2030 the learning process will be continuous. Therefore, it is vital to pump this skill starting from an early age. In traditional classes, kids are more distracted and are more influenced by teachers, while distant classes teach kids to be more focused. Many studies prove that students who study remotely have fewer behavioral issues, more stable self-esteem, they easily master higher education and are more successful in adult life.
And the main advantage of online language classes is that parents are actively involved in the learning process. They can constantly monitor the child’s progress. This encouragement and support make a significant contribution to children’s academic success. The list of the above-mentioned benefits can be continued. But the verdict is obvious – online Spanish classes will not pass without positive results.
