Yes, schooling continues even while we’re away. And yes, the kids are going to be soaking up loads of incidental learning as we travel. They will do this through experiencing different cultures, museums, art galleries and just living life in different parts of the world in completely different ways. The exposure to different cultures is our main goal but we still need to cover the Alberta curriculum. That is the path they come from and the path they will go back into next year as they return to schooling. 

At this point I’m 34% sure we’ll return to Canada. Kidding! We’ll be home in July of 2023.

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Travelling Tech

We have the kids all kitted out with iPads, keyboards, and styluses. They also have battery packs and their own universal plug-ins. These things take up a lot of room and weight down our packs. The alternative is them lugging binders, textbooks, and a pencil case. These are their main learning tools they are trying to use. I have them loaded with digital textbooks and multiple ways that they can show what they know.

Apps

GoodNote is the main Binder/Note taking app. All of the PDFs they have for texts are in GoodNotes. It is handy because any changes they make appear on our copies. It is one way I track their progress. We sit and discuss their work. I make annotations in my colours and they in theirs on the same document.

ForScore for Music rehearsals and annotations. All the kids repertoire has been scanned and uploaded to ForScore App. We’ve started using the base features of annotation, page turning, and indexing at this point. It is a very powerful app that also allows our kids to track their practice time. I’ve added a couple of audio files for listening to their pieces. Listening is the main learning style in Suzuki so having those attached audio file is great.

ScreenTime

Having their own devices is a first for two of them and it has been a painful process. There are apps for: word processing, spreadsheets, PDF annotation, movie making, presentations, communication, image editing, and yes even a few games. I wish it was just the games that that were the problem. In Cerne Abbas we had a beautiful English village outside the door that was left practically untouched by the industrial revolution and yet we have to pry them away from their screens. Or when they’re supposed to be working I have to lockdown the iPads so they can only do the school work.

Kobos

Kobos are our main reading tool. I appreciate that they are an e-paper display that won’t be interrupting sleep patterns. It is nice that they are limited in what the kids can do with them. They can read books, sketch (not well), and use a very cumbersome slow web browser. This means I can let them read themselves to sleep, not something I would allow them to do on an iPad. Kobos have a store just like Kindles and some kind of subscription service. We don’t use either of those though. Ours are linked to our local library so we can download books to them for free.

Curriculum

We are following the Alberta curriculum for grades 5, 9, and 11. I will be teaching the 5 and 9 and the 11 will be through asynchronous via the web. The grade 5 and 9 curriculum is familiar to me. I’ve taught grade 5 and programmed lessons for grade 5 teachers. I’m confident that I can teach those lessons if my kids want to learn them.

It is the grade 11 lessons where I’m leaning on prebuilt lessons that can be tackled anytime and anywhere. At this point I was able to get ahold of the English 20 lessons so that is being completed early. When school officially starts the completed questions can be copy/pasted. Then we don’t fall behind in our curricular learning while we do our travel learning.

And that is how we’re learning as we travel. If you have resources or ideas that you want to share drop me a note below.