For millions of Americans, everyday life has turned around and landed in situations that no one could have expected, let alone prepared for. I’ll leave the political and medical joke to other website writers and instead focus on making lemonade from lemons. With countless children now telecommuting mostly for school and us “adults” not knowing how to work from home, many companies are offering free temporary access to programs and platforms to help and assist in the middle. of these unprecedented circumstances that we have found. we are sailing.

We’ve already covered a handful of resources companies are offering to telecommuters and educators during this time of ‘social distancing’ brought in as a way to prevent and slow the spread of the disease. However, over the past week, many companies in the business and EDU sectors have rushed to lend a hand to the many people who are now at home looking for ways to keep the kids entertained while staying productive. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I wanted to take the time to share a few that could be extremely useful during this time.

School

This one should touch the hearts of children and adults. There was nothing quite like going to school with a few dollars in your backpack knowing that when your class was called you were heading to the Book Fair. Since the 1980s, Scholastic has moved to schools across the country to donate not only books, but also teaching aids, toys, classroom accessories and more. With the advent of the Internet, you can pretty much visit the Book Fair anytime with Scholastic’s online store and supplement your child’s learning with their online educational resources.

Now that many children will learn remotely through ‘non-traditional’ methods, Scholastic is offering a Learn at Home website that will provide 20 days of articles, videos and activities to keep kids engaged and learning outside of the classroom. the classroom.

We know that missing school is not easy for your children or for you. But we
also know that there are easy ways to transform the unexpected weather at home
into exciting opportunities for your students to learn, reflect and grow.

Lauren Tarshis
Sr. VP, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher

The programs are completely free and offer content for Kindergarten through Grade 6. Each level currently contains five lessons and more will be added over the next few weeks for a total of twenty when all is said and done. You can read the full story in a letter from Scholastic here and find the Learn at Home website at the link below. You will need to configure and account but no worries, it’s free.

School Learning at Home

Learning age

You might not be familiar with Age of Learning, but chances are you’ve heard of ABCMouse. Age of Learning is the company behind the educational website as well as Reading IQ and Adventure Academy. The latter is very similar to ABCMouse .com but it focuses on 8-13 year olds. Reading IQ is solely dedicated to helping children improve their reading skills while encouraging them to ‘love reading’.

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For schools affected by the closures, Age of Learning offers free in-home access to all three websites. Our local school district has already implemented this and sent letters to allow parents to access the site. If your child’s school has not yet considered this issue, I encourage you to send a letter to your administrators so that they can begin the registration process as you cannot take advantage of the resources on an individual basis. You can find the registration site here.

Strolls

Online and distance learning is great, but it’s easy to get caught up in a computer screen and sit for hours without any physical activity and it’s just not healthy. Walkabouts from Activedinc is a website dedicated to learning on the move. As the name suggests, the lessons encourage kids to get up and move around as they take the lessons which are flash virtual tours of a wide variety of topics. Classes run from kindergarten to grade 2 and are free for everyone. Learn more and how to connect here.

Note: Walkabouts requires Flash, which is disabled by default on your Chromebook. You can activate it by going to the site settings. Click the lock icon to the right of the URL and select site settings. Activate Flash and reload the site.

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For teleworkers working from home, we have already discussed a few resources, including Google Gsuite Upgrades and Loom Videos offers for educators, but there are many more companies getting involved in helping employees and families who now work and learn from home. For educational resources, one website has taken on the daunting task of compiling a list of over a hundred websites that offer free tools anytime or temporarily to help parents and children during this time of year. off-site learning. You can find this list at the link below.

Incredible educational resources

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All of these tools are amazing and it’s great to see so many companies stepping up to tackle what could potentially be a national crisis, but all of this is useless if you don’t have a reliable internet connection. While many schools and libraries keep computer labs open for those who need internet access, this isn’t the best choice given that the topic of the day is social distancing. Fortunately, some of the biggest internet and cable providers are doing their part to help.

Comcast and Spectrum both rolled out 60 days of free internet to K-12 students living in eligible low-income households. Plus, both companies have opened their WiFi hotspots to everyone, which means you don’t need an account to access thousands of WiFi hotspots across the country. Comcast also offers assistance in obtaining a low cost computer for families eligible for the Internet Essentials plan which normally costs $ 9.95 / month but requires no credit check, contract setup fee. Below is the registration page for each company. If you are from the Comcast area, you can apply for Internet Essentials here. Potential Spectrum customers can call 1-844-488-8395.